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Despite public support from Nathan Buckley and Lynden Dunn that Mason Cox would be straight back in the side following his one-match ban, the American experiment at the Pies has run its course.
Playing his first game of AFL at the age of a 25, the former Big 12 college basketball player had the makings a potential gun. At 211cm and 110kg, Cox was just what Collingwood needed at the time to inject some height and power into an underperforming squad.
His first season certainly wasn’t an overwhelming success, but Cox did show some of the signs the club must have seen in him the year prior. Playing 11 games and kicking 17 goals was a pretty good return for a man in his situation and, while he wasn’t setting the world on fire, he certainly was showing glimpses of untapped potential.
Cox’s second season, however, did highlight the problems with his game. He was proving a capable ruckman averaging 16.1 hit-outs per game but, unfortunately, he found himself competing with one of Collingwood’s best players in a poor season, Brodie Grundy.
Grundy averaged 35.7 hit-outs over the course of his 20 games and it became pretty clear that neither of the big men had the chops to be a legitimate forward option and a back-up ruckman. It was clear that Grundy was the first choice.
Having lost Travis Cloke, the Magpies were seriously lacking going forward, relying on a young Darcy Moore to be their target man. It was clear, however, that neither of the ruckmen was capable of playing this role with success.
With three rounds to go in 2017, Grundy picked up a slight injury, leaving Cox to play the next two games as the first choice ruck, during which he actually performed quite well.
Furthermore, in the dead rubber match (for the Pies) against Melbourne, Buckley decided to play the returning Grundy as well as Cox – and it worked!
The win against the Dees that began their nightmare 48 hours gave the Pies fans and coach a glimpse of what could be.
However, coming into his third season in 2018, to me it is clear that he just can’t cut it. The outlier that was the finale to the 2017 season, I would say was more a testament to Melbourne’s ability to choke rather than the quality of playing Collingwood’s big men together.
The opening game in 2018 suggests that Pies fans are in for a similar season to the last – frustrating.
Mason Cox, the 211cm giant, finished without a single mark and, at least twice, comically dropped uncontested marks in the second half. It’s impossible to execute any sort of game plan while playing a tall forward line featuring a target man who simply can’t mark the footy.
The man hadn’t even heard of AFL until he was in his early 20s and no amount of physical superiority can make up for the lack of match sense that comes from years of playing the sport.
Cox is far from the only issue the club is facing and has given AFL his best crack.
Nevertheless, I believe he has been given enough chances and, at the age of 27, Collingwood need to look elsewhere to remedy their goalscoring issues.
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