Collingwood lacks the fitness to be a force in the AFL

At the end of season 2013 the Collingwood Football Cub made some big decisions that have ongoing repercussions today.

Come the end of 2013, Collingwood had played in its eighth finals series in a row. That year, David Buttifant – Collingwood’s then head of fitness and at that time widely regarded as the best conditioning guru in the AFL – parted ways with the club, ending his 13-year association with Collingwood.

His replacement was Bill Davoren who remains at the club to this day and was previously the head of fitness at St Kilda in 2013 and prior to that, the Western Bulldogs between 2009-2012.

During the 2013 off season, the club also made to decision to stop sending the playing group to Arizona on yearly pre-season high altitude training camps, a practice that had begun in 2005, the last time Collingwood missed the finals.

Collingwood hasn’t played a final since. And will miss the eight again in 2017 for the fourth year in a row.

My feelings from watching Collingwood games since Round 1 in 2014 to last weekend is that Collingwood losses go one of two ways.

Scenario 1: Collingwood usually start competitively, if ugly, against opponents before their opponents get a run on and are out of reach by the final siren despite the Pies best efforts.

Scenario 2: When Collingwood start slowly, the Pies spend some time playing high intensity football to claw back some ground before falling away by the end.

I went to the archives and looked at every Collingwood quarter score from Round 1, 2014 up to Round 17 last week against the Gold Coast Suns. That’s 328 games in all.

What I found is that Collingwood have only had four four-quarter games in 82 matches. (Defined here as taking a lead into quarter time and extending the margin at each change to the final siren.)

These have been against St Kilda in 2014, Carlton in 2015, Brisbane in 2016 and GWS in 2014. Sides that finished 18th, 18th, 17th in those respective years as well as a developing Giants side that had lost its entire bench by the third quarter that game in Round 10, 2014.

Furthermore, in both 2014 and 2015 Collingwood were 8-3 in the win-loss at the hallway stage of the season and firmly in the eight, before falling away dramatically in the second half of both years to miss September action.

On the flip side only eight times has the reverse been inflicted against the Pies. Collingwood compete in games against all opponents, mostly, irrespective of the final result.

Of the 46 losses suffered by the Magpies since 2014 only 12 have been by a blowout margin of 40-plus points.

Then I looked specifically at Collingwood’s fourth quarters to gauge how the club finishes games. Looking at the 50 last Pies final quarters, I found that Collingwood have outscored their opponents in only 18 out of those 50 for a success rate of 36 per cent.

The combined number of points they have outscored those opponents in those 18 quarters is 184 at an average of 10.22 points per quarter.

That’s less than two straight kicks. A margin that is possible to be clawed back in under 60 seconds. Collingwood do not run out games well.

What does all of this have to do with fitness?

If the conditioning staff prepare the players properly then the team should be able to finish games strongly and run over tiring opponents. Percentage can also be boosted at the end of games.

A lot of Collingwood games that I have seen in person and on TV seem to involve the Magpies winning their fair share of the ball in close through the game – Collingwood are top six for both contested possessions and clearances in 2017. But they then come unstuck as teammates struggle to break away into space repeatedly from their opposition men. This means that there are very few good options to kick or handball to when the Pies have ball in hand.

Also, Collingwood players then struggle to stay with their man on turnovers with opponents easily gaining separation. That allows the opposition the advantages of time and space going into Collingwood’s attack.

(AAP Image/Julian Smith)

Also, when muscles are searing with built up lactic acid, disposal becomes wonky, wobbly legs result in missed set shots that are very gettable, and fatigue scrambles and slows down the mental decision making process. All these factors have plagued Collingwood’s play in recent years.

A blueprint to beat Collingwood in games seemingly would be to resist the Magpies’ inevitable in-game surges by limiting the damage to the scoreboard, safe in the knowledge that the Pies will soon tire and can be opened up. Unable to keep up, they can be quickly and heavily scored against.

Very few of us have the privilege of seeing the training process and player conditioning within AFL clubs and even fewer would be able to compare the numbers between AFL clubs.

It would be very interesting to view and compare the Collingwood’s players fitness scores, standards and KPIs against the players of clubs such as the Geelong Cats or Sydney Swans, two clubs that run out games extremely well and that you can never write off until the final siren.

While many factors have combined towards the Magpies’ dramatic, seemingly irreversible demise since 2014 – including coaching, drafting and trading –
player conditioning and management appears the biggest factor holding Collingwood back.