Round 8 – West Coast v Collingwood: Debacle (Floreat Pica Society)

West Coast v Collingwood

by Rory Adams

 

 

Bucks viewed this as an outlier and in truth that is fairly accurate as we have only had a few drubbings in the past 3-4 years if the competition is viewed as a whole, but maybe with our record against the Eagles in recent times this was not an outlier event – they have had our number for a few seasons and once again we were no match for their midfield nor forward line muscle.

 

It was good to see no Jeremy McGovern for once and we must have not known who to kick to at the start of the game as he is our usual forward 50 target whenever we play against the Eagles. His match payment is actually calculated against Collingwoods salary cap for this annual event.

 

Then I was told that Pendlebury was out and it really struck me that this is such a rare event and that we really did look pretty average in the midfield on paper.

 

Despite all this we started brightly and were really out-running the Eagles and looked like our smalls might be too quick. Cameron looked good up forward and we had our usual fast start.

 

The reality of the midfield gulf started to open up in the second term and the disappointing aspect was that when the heat went on we broke fairly easily and never got back on terms – half time couldn’t come fast enough.

 

After the main break we need to come out strong but really the Eagles were up and running and could do little wrong including nailing every 50/50 shot for goal. At one stage we had repeat forward 50 entries and Mihocek kicked a great goal but the ball was touched off the boot and you really knew it was not our day.

 

The Eagles then cemented the win prior to the last change and because Collingwood is on an odd number of points I think Bucks did not care about percentage and went into rest mode for a few players and tried a few things. This probably made things worse as Nic Nat and midfield were doing as they liked against very inexperienced centre square players.

 

Bucks did move Mihocek and Moore and maybe should have done this during the third term and see if any different results could eventuate, but doubt it would have mattered that much.

 

We needed harder bodies against these guys – with no Greenwood we have no great tagger – Wills is a trier but does not get enough of it and against Nic Nat the whole midfield needs to be set up to defend – maybe we are not used to this as Grundy does normally win his fair share of hit outs.

 

Apart from getting players back from injury we need the following guys to lift:
Phillips / Crisp / Stephenson / Brown / Thomas – all were not terrible yesterday but all are having below par seasons so far and are the players we need the lift from if we are going to contend at all.

 

The votes were tough to decide on – Eagles probably had the best 10 players on the ground – and I might be being kind.

 

3. Quaynor – this guy is going to be very good and we need to get the ball in his hands coming out of defence as much as possible
2. Adams – always tries hard and got enough of it in a badly beaten midfield.
1. Treloar – as above with Adams but I am not sure either beat their opponents.

 

 

 

 

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Comments

  1. Very fair analysis. Except Stephenson “not terrible”? You mean deplorable? Listless? Lost?

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