A top-four spot will go on the line when Collingwood and Hawthorn face off for the only time this season this Friday night.
After missing the finals last year for the first time since 2005 on the back of a horror second half of the season plagued by injuries and heavy defeats, Collingwood have rebounded this year, winning eight of their twelve matches so far to currently be sitting fifth on the ladder.
Their eight wins have, however, come against sides currently outside the top eight, six of which were against each of the bottom six (Essendon, St Kilda, Melbourne, Carlton, the Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast Suns).
That being said, their highest-ranked victim so far this season is the GWS Giants, who were fifth entering Round 11. The Pies won that match by 42 points.
It could be enough to suggest that the Pies have inherited the West Coast Eagles’ tag of being the competition’s “flat track bullies”, but you need not look as far back as their recent performance against Fremantle to suggest otherwise.
In an entertaining match out in the west last Thursday night, the Pies matched it with the competition leaders for most of the match, leading at quarter and half-time and being level at the final change before eventually going down by seven points.
What didn’t help the Pies’ cause was that Travis Cloke, who has kicked 31 goals for the season to date, went scoreless for the first time since Round 17 last year, having kicked 12 goals in the Pies’ previous two matches (seven against Melbourne and five against GWS).
Cloke’s woes aside, it’s the same intensity Nathan Buckley’s men will have to emulate if they are to beat Hawthorn for the first time since 2011 this Friday night.
The Hawks have become a bogey team not just for the Pies, but also Buckley himself, with the two-time reigning premiers having won their last seven matches against the Pies dating back to the start of Buckley’s coaching tenure in 2012.
That being said, the former captain has never tasted success against the Hawks in a coaching capacity, with their most recent win over the Hawks being, ironically, their last win under his predecessor, Mick Malthouse, in the 2011 preliminary final.
After a slow start to the season in which they lost four of seven matches after thrashing the Geelong Cats in Round 1, Alastair Clarkson’s men have rediscovered their touch and last week displaced the Pies in the top four on percentage by virtue of their 38-point win over Essendon at the MCG last Saturday afternoon.
Not only did it mark their fourth consecutive victory, it also put back on track their bid to become the first three-peat premiers since the Brisbane Lions from 2001-03.
Their showdown against the Pies will be their first Friday night match all year, and the first of three in the timeslot, with matches against Carlton (Round 17) and Port Adelaide (Round 21), both at Etihad Stadium, to come later in the year.
In the meantime, we had been treated to some embarrassingly one-sided matches in the timeslot throughout the first half of the season.
This includes the West Coast Eagles’ 69-point thrashing of Carlton in Round 2, in which ex-Blue Josh J Kennedy tormented his old side with ten goals, Collingwood’s 74-point win over St Kilda the following round, the Pies’ 75-point thrashing of the Blues, and the Geelong Cats’ 78-point win over the Blues.
Hopefully, this Friday night’s game between the Pies and Hawks won’t be as one-sided as some of the ones we have seen earlier this season, though the Hawks have won their last seven meetings by an average of 41.5 points.
The lure of a top-four spot will spur both teams to perform well, and the stakes will be high in the Pies’ case, as not only have they never beaten the Hawks under Nathan Buckley’s coaching, it will also be their only crack at them this year.
The big question will be whether they can break that duck, or whether the Hawks can extend that dominance to eight matches and go a game clear inside the top four as they continue on their bid for a third straight flag.
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