“An old man’s dream ended, a young man’s vision of the future opened wide,” the American sportswriter Red Smith wrote when 37-year-old Joe Louis was knocked out by Rocky Marciano. “Young men have visions, old men have dreams. But the place for old men to dream is beside the fire.”
It’s tempting to analogise this current Collingwood side, to pension them off, to declare them too old and too slow. When they lost to GWS in the opening game, the Age’s Jake Niall said they were shuffling around like Joe Biden. It’s tempting, when they field 11 players who are 30 or older, when a 35-year-old is knocked senseless in the opening seconds and when they’re run ragged by a comparatively young and superbly conditioned team, to say that the team is out of time.
Certainly that was the impression in the immediate aftermath of last Thursday night’s game. Craig McRae’s folksiness can sometimes seem a bit put on, a bit of comms strategy. But he’s always good value, especially after bad losses. He doesn’t deflect, doesn’t pick fights with journalists, doesn’t reel off well thumbed lines designed to buy time. It’s something that Simon Goodwin always struggled with – to speak a language the fans can relate to.
McRae’s optimism is constitutional, and is reflected in his team, who for the entirety of his tenure have believed they can win from any position. But Thursday night was different. We all saw what happened, and he didn’t shy away from it. This wasn’t about age. The Pies are a system-based team, and the system broke down. He used the word glue several times. This was a team that had come unglued.
From the moment he arrived, the key to this Collingwood system has been the way they defend. At their very best, their defenders would swallow space. They had excellent footwork, anticipation and synergy. They were so good at playing to their individual and collective strengths and mitigating their weaknesses. They’d give the opposition just enough temptation to attack, and they’d cover it in twos and threes. They had a great sense of risk and reward – of when to apply a vice like grip and when to launch one of their cavalry attacks off half back.
It’s almost entirely absent now. So much of it was disrupted when Nathan Murphy retired. He did all the unglamorous defending – the blocks, the dragging of players to dead space. Scott Pendlebury told Niall how important he was to their system, how he “picks up the pieces”, allowing Darcy Moore and Jeremy Howe to roam.
But looking at this season in isolation, and the last month in particular, the backline has been scrambling and unmoored. There’s no doubt that the injury to Howe rattled them emotionally and unglued them structurally. I was unglued just watching it. And with a key cog in the system having his brain scanned, his fellow defenders stood revealed.
Moore has been a magnificent footballer for Collingwood. But in recent weeks he’s been taken to places he’s not entirely comfortable with. Patrick Voss is one of many examples of opponents having a specific plan for him, of dragging him deep, of making him defend one on one.
Billy Frampton is the ultimate system-based magnet. His role in the 2023 grand final was pivotal. But they need a hell of lot more from him than dragging a gun key defender out of the game. Opposition coaches are targeting him, and as honest as he is, he’s being exposed. Isaac Quaynor has been better this year, but he’s heavily reliant on Howe, and seems a bit loose and lost without him.
Dan Houston is another concern. From the moment he ironed out Izak Rankine, he’s been a tentative footballer. He and his new teammates seem unsure of his role in the system. He gave away too many free kicks against Brisbane and butchered the ball against Hawthorn. At Port Adelaide he was one of the best kicks in the country. But his kicking at Collingwood has been poky and increasingly costly.
On Saturday, they play the top team Adelaide in hostile territory. If they lose, it won’t be because of their age profile. It won’t be because of Pendlebury, who was actually one of their better players on Thursday. It will be because of their defence, the majority of whom are in the career sweet spot in terms of age. Collingwood are good travellers, they play at the Adelaide Oval exceptionally well and their system has often held up when all have written them off. But when the defence is exposed, the system collapses. And there’s no bigger test than the Adelaide forward six – a mix of the brutish, the canny, the flashy, the freakish, the unobtrusive and the selfless – a mix that the Collingwood system no longer seems equipped to handle.
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