As the rain made a soft applause over a sea of black and white during the grand final parade, Nathan Buckley looked a different man to the man of sorrows of seasons’ past.
Winning games and coach of the year helps (as does not having your performance review carried out on the back pages of the Melbourne press), but there is something about Buckley, about Collingwood, that is reminiscent of last year’s Tigers.
Like Damian Hardwick, Buckley appears to have released the homo ludens gene from the recesses of his psyche and is loving his work – and it is clearly rubbing off on his players, who over the past two weeks have clearly enjoyed their football, playing for their coach and each other.
“I’ve been well supported by a club that I love and we’re in a pretty good spot now, so we want to look after Saturday,” said Buckley on the Footy Show, on Thursday night.
If the Pies can bring the pressure they applied to Richmond in the preliminary final, particularly for the first fifteen minutes when mistakes are amplified, they’ll go a long way to looking after Saturday. But premierships are not won on pressure alone, and if Collingwood is to win a 16th flag, it must neutralise the advantage the Eagles have up forward with Josh Kennedy and Jack Darling. And that starts in the middle with All-Australian (back-up) ruckman Brodie Grundy.
In the absence of the Eagles’ Nic Naitanui, Grundy’s last two games against the Eagles, including the qualifying final earlier this month have been solid, without dominating. The Eagles through the agency of Scott Lycett and Nathan Vardy have been able to counter Grundy’s influence around the ground.
Grundy’s ability to influence the outcome on Saturday will depend on his ability to bring Scott Pendlebury and Steele Sidebottom into the game at the centre bounce and stoppages, as well as his discipline to drop behind the ball in defence to help what appears to be an undermanned defence.
Despite this being the era of team defence, the one-on-one battles still matter. On exposed form – and granted for Tyson Goldsack there’s not been much of it – the Eagles have an advantage in their forward half. Kennedy’s form in the preliminary final against the Demons was portentous and signalled that he is well place to battle the other demons, those of his previous grand final appearance where he failed to kick a goal against Hawthorn in 2015.
He will take some comfort in the fact that Goldsack is likely to get the job on him, having kicked six on the Collingwood defender last year. If Kennedy can start well and draw other defenders to the contest, the game may also open for Darling and other West Coast forwards such as the veteran Mark LeCras and the exciting Willie Rioli.
But at the other end of the ground, the Eagles are not without their problems. Despite being named to play, there still appears to be some doubt about the fitness of Jeremy McGovern. Speaking at the grand final parade, West Coast coach Adam Simpson said that his key defender still must pass a fitness test to be cleared to play. Setting aside that grand final eve is a time for mind games, the Eagles’ coach was reluctant to make any guarantees.
“I don’t know if I’m extremely confident, I’m hopeful.”
Simpson will also be hopeful that Mason Cox doesn’t have another game like he did last week. The hype created by the Texan’s three-goal game last week has seen Collingwood’s media team fielding requests from Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post and the New York Times. Cox is no stranger to the big occasion (he once guarded Joel Embiid in a college basketball game) and were he to have a similar game again, it’d be one helluva story.
But the story of this year’s grand final, regardless of who wins, will be resilience. Both Collingwood and West Coast have this year found an almost impossible solution out of the soup.
When the Eagles lost Naitanui with a knee injury against Collingwood in Round 17, most pundits wrote them off, and nobody changed their mind after Andrew Gaff’s moment of madness three weeks later. If the Eagles play as they did last Saturday they will be hard to resist and if McGovern plays you sense that if they can nullify the contest in the middle, they have the advantage at either end of the ground.
But it’s difficult to write Collingwood off, particularly once you’ve written them off so many times before. Last year, after their CEO resigned in July and they finished the season in 13th a month later, it felt as though the easy way home for Collingwood’s review into its operations would be to replace Buckley.
But Collingwood president Eddie McGuire held firm. And he says he’s enjoyed this season more than any with the possible exception of 2010, telling the AFR earlier this week that a football club is a great place for the soul.
“When the boys start winning football games that takes care of itself.”
Whatever happens on Saturday, McGuire can draw comfort in that his club is a different one to seasons’ past.
