In the first seven weeks of the season, Brodie Grundy was the worst player in the AFL.
I can’t prove this by any objective measure. But from my mouth to God’s ears. I can give you the deep, honest assurance that it’s the truth.
Grundy, like his team, was lost. All the pieces were there. The raw athleticism and talent, the youthful exuberance, the flashes of courage and daring. But that’s all they were – flashes – and the potential was overwhelmed by a maddening mindlessness that defined his play.
He gave away stupid free kicks (seven in one game against West Coast alone), blended awful decisions with dreadful skill execution, and, most damning of all, gave no consistent effort. His errors oscillated from infuriating to downright comical. They were almost impressive – it must have taken a special sort of human being to believe that what he attempted could have worked.
Even the best moment of the early part of Grundy’s season, the goal in the dying seconds to beat Richmond, was a mistake. The goal only came because Grundy, the team’s ruckman and supposedly an aerial target, forgot to jump for the mark before the ball fortuitously found its way into his hands.
Grundy’s stagnation, or really, his regression, was symbolic of his team. Collingwood were supposed to be a finals threat. After losing to Carlton in round seven, a game where Grundy had two kicks and embarrassed himself, the Pies were 2-5 and their season was effectively over.
Things were starting to get dicey for Grundy too. He stormed onto the scene in 2013, kicking Darren Jolly out of the team and ending the premiership ruckman’s career. He looked like some bizarre, wonderful infusion of Jeff White and Nic Naitanui, someone with aerial explosion and an improbably low centre of gravity that allowed him to dominate at ground level. He ran like a bull and looked more like a winger than a ruckman with the ball in hand, backing himself to run and carry, a confident candy salesman unafraid to sidestep opponents.
Most impressively, he played with a bull’s mentality, relentless in the contest, possessing that Luke Hodge and Joel Selwood gene where it often felt like he wanted to get hurt. By just his fifth game, when he was still only 19 years old, it seemed a certainty that Collingwood had found its ruckman for the next decade.
But then things started to get weird. Form abandoned him over 2014 and 2015, coming in fits and starts. He was dropped for Jarrod Witts, which was a problem, because Jarrod Witts isn’t good at football. In 2014, Grundy never topped 16 disposals, and he kicked just three goals in 15 games. His numbers improved in 2015, but his output remained patchy.
In 2013, Grundy looked like a foundational piece of a premiership team. By the end of 2015, he was looking like just a guy, a talented ruckman whose potential sometimes manifested itself, but usually remained hidden. He was nothing more than a less composed Josh Fraser with cooler hair.
He bottomed out in round seven this year against Carlton. He’d made the transition from star-in-the-making, to worryingly inconsistent, to aggressively awful, in less than 50 games. Never exactly a technician in the ruck, Grundy needed to make his presence felt with his physical gifts around the ground, his speed, agility and hardness, but he wasn’t doing that.
Regulation kicks became turnovers, footballing basics like standing the mark became 50m penalties, and the haircut drifted from ‘potentially iconic’ to ‘you look like the guy at the house party who kills the mood by putting on “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. and I hate you’.
But Collingwood kept faith in him, largely because they had to. In a lost season you have to live and die with potential-loaded youth, and Grundy’s upside was too high not to give him the chance to burn every bridge available before he flamed out. Jarrod Witts knocking on the door is not exactly Walter White knocking on the door.
After bottoming out, Grundy has risen from the ashes like a phoenix, and the Magpies have (sort of) risen with him. His stats are up across the board, and after spending five of his first six games goalless, he’s kicked majors in six of his past nine. His effort has been more consistent, and the past two weeks have been the best of his career, taking the honours against Shane Mumford and Sam Jacobs. He’s polled coaches’ votes in each of the past four weeks, including a perfect ten against Fremantle and nine against GWS.
There are still plenty of kinks to be ironed out. When he kicked Jolly out of the league, Jolly left a curse with him, with Grundy confidently continuing the Sydney and Collingwood premiership ruckman’s mandate to give away as many ruck infringement free kicks as possible. Grundy is 12th in the league in free kicks against, but the eye test and my heart tell me that he’s No.1.
His ruck work still leaves a lot to be desired, sitting just 16th in the league in hitouts per game despite doing the vast majority of Collingwood’s ruckwork. The timing on his jumps needs to be improved, and so does his general awareness. His body work around stoppages is much, much better than his centre bounce ruckwork – he’s always been able to grind but he needs to learn how to dance.
He’s still good for two or three ‘Wait, what, Brodie, no!’ moments per game, and his kicking looks technically perfect at times for a player of his size, but at other times his disposal is so bad it looks like he’s throwing games. He will never be his captain or his coach.
For the first two months of the season these shortcomings were the reality dominating Grundy. Now they’re just flaws to be worked on. The good outweighs the bad, and the limitless potential drowns out the frustration of growing pains.
After Round 7, Collingwood were in a hopeless place and so was their ruckman. Ten rounds later, hope abounds for both once again.
Football is cool like that.
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