Losing is never simple, and that’s where this story begins.
On Saturday night under a sky of washed-out grey, Collingwood buckled under their own inertia in a 34-point loss to Hawthorn. This is despite it being fewer than six months since the club President, Eddie McGuire, told a full house at Crown Casino that the Magpies’ mid-year review into its football, operations and governance departments would leave them well placed, and that their football would do the talking.
Although McGuire is obliged to utter miles of stuff like this, you sense he is a man whose search for the truth is impeded by an inability to detach himself from the ego; that is to say an inability to recognise where the chutzpah ends and a bruisingly comic forward line begins.
“I’m watching natural forwards at one end and a makeshift forward line at the other,” tweeted the dual Copeland Medal winner, Mick McGuane. Meanwhile Darcy Moore, Collingwood’s only natural forward in their 22, was used to bolster the Magpies’ defence, while Mason Cox dropped everything that came his way.
In the lead-up to round one, Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley noted he had no intention of overhauling the Magpies’ game plan, despite not playing finals since 2013 and last year finishing 13th with just nine wins. Outside of recruits Sam Murray and Jaidyn Stephenson, there doesn’t appear to be much that differentiates Saturday night’s Collingwood from the previous four years’ instalments.
And again, like last year (and the year before that, and the year before that) Buckley spoke to the media after the loss looking as though he carried his frustration around like a cartoon anvil, pretending it wasn’t heavy should he feel its full weight and fall. “A disappointing night at the office,” said Buckley simply.
Last year Hawthorn’s Tom Mitchell racked up 50 possessions against Collingwood. On Saturday night he helped himself to a league record 54. The impact of some of those in Collingwood’s midfield would’ve been more easily explained had they been wearing a visitor’s badge.
Collingwood’s onballers were unable to curb the influence of Mitchell, who Buckley described as “one of the cleanest ball-handlers in the shoebox”. In contrast, Adam Treloar, for whom the Pies traded both their 2015 and 2016 first round draft picks, concurrently topped Collingwood’s list for most disposals (33) and least efficient use (42 per cent).
“When you’re not clean with the ball it’s pretty hard to find time and space,” said Buckley, sounding more and more like a man who was just shit out of luck. But to hear the late Tom Petty sing it, “even the losers get lucky sometimes”.
In the same first round of the draft that Collingwood traded out of, their traditional rivals Carlton used their third pick (No12 overall) to select Charlie Curnow, a 6’3” 18-year-old who ran a 14.5 beep test at the AFL Draft Combine. After just a handful of games to his name, Curnow is the at the centre of opening round hype, Dermott Brereton doubling-down on his earlier comparison of the third-year Blue to Carlton legend Anthony Koutoufides.
“I’ve had a few people tell me that they sit in the stands and they can see me down there,” says Koutoufides the morning after Carlton’s 26-point loss to the reigning premiers. “I can see the similarities. He’s got the shoulders and he runs… he’s got that aerobic capacity and he’s very quick as well. I think he has the ability to be able to do it all. He’s already shown that he can take a mark and can kick a goal. The hair too, the curly hair I had when I was younger. I was thinking I might bring it back just to join the bandwagon.”
Koutoufides believes players like Curnow don’t come around often. “You might be lucky to get one in a decade, although I need to be careful as I don’t want to put too much pressure on him, particularly a guy like Charlie who’s just turned 21,” he says, before pausing a moment to collect his thoughts. “It’s unbelievable, when you think about it. He’s still so young… Charlie’s very advanced compared to me, there’s still a lot of ways he can get better.”
This reflects the optimism of most Carlton supporters who left the MCG remarkably upbeat after another round one loss on a Thursday night. Unlike Collingwood, Carlton has been able to manage the expectations of an otherwise impatient supporter group.
Change there has been sold on the green shoots of its playing list, not green papers of its administration. One team asked its supporters to invest in a future. It overhauled its list and introduced a new game style. The other asked for trust in the here and now. Its passivity has an unhurried rhythm unusual for the start of a season where clubs deal in the intangibles of hype and hope.
But losing is never simple. It’s only round one, and the story has a way to go before it ends.
