This is the fourth of nineteen articles that are looking at the meta-results for both team and players, as collected from ELO-Following Football’s wide range of sources.

Today, the Collingwood Magpies.

Back in 2017

The team finished 13th with a home-and-away record of 9-12-1, with a percentage of just under 100 and a prolonged death-watch for its coach, Nathan Buckley, that ended with a sigh and resignation to the fact that they didn’t feel they could hire anyone better.

The expectations for the team

Were that they’d be searching for a new head man right now. Seriously, we here at ELO-Following Football may have been the only ones who believed they’d make finals this year.

Coming into the season, the players who were considered to be in the top 50 in the league by the AFLPA or The Roar were surprisingly few; Scott Pendlebury (top ten), Steele Sidebottom, and Adam Treloar.

In 2018, the team finished

Within a goal of the title. You probably already knew that. They landed in third place at the end of August with a record of 15-7, and a percentage slightly above Hawthorn’s of 120.4. That only meant their defeat of Richmond was a death knell in the third round and not a wound in the first.

They lost a thriller in Perth to the Eagles in the qualifying finals, destroyed the Giants in the semi-final, held Mason Cox’s coming out party in the second quarter of their destruction of the minor premiers, and scored the first five goals en route to what could have been a premiership.

As with any close game, there were reasons to believe that they were robbed (mostly in the process of Dom Sheed’s outstanding final goal), but as Buckley and any other good coach would say, they could have prevented that from being an issue by scoring a few more times.

It’s been…

About a month since the grand final, and it still stings, doesn’t it, Magpie fans?

It’s been five years since their last finals appearance, back in 2013, with four below-average seasons between that year and this one that just finished. But it seemed like forever to Magpie faithful, who hadn’t gone five years without finals since the turn of the century.

It’s been eight years since that magical re-run of a Saturday, when they defeated St Kilda in the last take-two Grand Final in history.

It’s been 16 seasons since coach Buckley last played in a Grand Final, which he did in both 2002 and 2003, both losses to the Brisbane Lions (although he played admirably in both, gathering 56 disposals between the two games). Can you understand his angst about losing his first as a coach?

It’s been 89 years since the only undefeated regular season in AFL/VFL history, pulled off by the 1929 Magpies. They went 18-0, only to sleepwalk through the semi-final and lose by 62 to Richmond (perhaps 2018 was revenge for that loss?).

They got their own revenge by defeating the Tigers in the grand final to finish the season 19-1 with the third of four consecutive flags, as well as the fourth of five straight minor premierships. They won 78 out of 90 regular season games from 1926-1930!

According to our patented “ELO-Following Football” rating system, the team started the season in the middle of the pack with a rating of 51.1. There were no dramatic swings in their rating, just as there weren’t any in their record.

A nice jump after Round 4 (their 106-58 win at Adelaide) put them above 50 to stay, their stomping of the Demons in Round 12 solidified them above 60, and they entered the finals at 63.5, fifth highest in the league. They finished finals in fourth, behind Geelong, West Coast, and Melbourne, at 68.9, slightly above the Richmond team they dismantled.

The other rating systems said similar if not as positive things. FMI never had them above sixth during the season, while the Wooden Finger ratings placed them in the top five after the Melbourne win and kept them there the rest of the year. US Footy actually had them third going into finals, behind expected premier Richmond and eventual premier West Coast.

Across the spectrum game-by-game expectations

Final record: 15-7
Betting Line expectations: 13-8-1. Perhaps it took a while for bettors to decide if the Magpies were for real? The Pies were 13-9 against the spread this season.
ELO-Following Football forecasts: 15-7.
AFL.com.au game predictions: 13-9.
The Roar predictions: Our folks thought the Magpies would go 13-8-1. Individual votes tallied to 77-44.
”Pick-A-Winner” predictions: 15.5 to 6.5
The Age forecasters: 16-6, and the individual pundits totaled 170-94.
BetEasy “CrowdBet” percentages: The averages favoured Collingwood just 13 times.
My own game-by-game predictions pegged them at 16-6.

What was their best game of the season?

We tried – I mean, really tried! – to make something else the best, but there’s no getting past that feeling of not only winning a prelim final, but to do so by utterly embarrassing the reigning premiers and prohibitive favorites, 97-58 (and it wasn’t that close).

Brodie Grundy, Jordan de Goey, Steele Sidebottom and the legend-in-the-making, Mason Cox, simply toyed with the team that most of us thought to be invincible on the MCG stage. The sight of the Oklahoma State University product, the former soccer and basketball player (not star, mind you), taking contested marks like a man among boys was amazing to watch, and puts the kind of pressure on him in 2019 that Tom Boyd has struggled to live up to so far.

If you’re looking for an in-season game, Round 4’s win in Adelaide is a good one. It was the first sign this 2018 bunch might not be a mediocre team.

Which game would they most like to erase from memory?

It was a really good season, and most Collingwood supporters would probably like to remember all 26 games, good and bad. But the first two matches are forgettable, mostly because they felt like the previous few years had.

A Round 1 loss to bully-on-the-block Hawthorn by 34, and a Round 2 loss by 16 to the rich-kid-down-the-street Giants. After that, a chance to catch their footing and defeat hapless Carlton in Round 3, followed by that big upset in Adelaide the next week, and they were at 2-2 and climbing from then on. They never dipped below .500 again.

If we were to speak of the club in as many words as they had wins in 2018

“If everyone believes Cox a typical American – hard working, funny, larger-than-life – that’s okay with US!”
(If the joke has to be explained, the author’s an American, too. So, now you know)

Meta-player of the year results

1. Brodie Grundy – 476 points (4th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Equal first, for his first such medal. Received 17 Brownlow votes, second on the team (10th overall).
Last year’s result: Sixth (62nd overall), and fourth in 2016.
Notable games: Five dominant games (R2, 4, 10, 19, and 22), four prominent games (R3, 16, 20, and 23), and two notable games (R11 and 15). That’s half his games!
All-Australian ruckman (I/C), ELO-FF top 22 and ruck/forward.

2. Steele Sidebottom – 315 points (17th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Equal first, his second medal. Received 24 Brownlow votes, most on the team and second overall.
Last year’s result: Fifth (60th overall), third in 2016.
Notable games: Four prominent games (R3, 4, 14, and 23), and two notable games (R12 and 22).
All-Australian centre, ELO-FF top 22. Gary Ayres AFLCA Award – Outstanding player during finals.

3. Scott Pendlebury – 290 points (24th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Third. Received 15 Brownlow votes, third on the team.
Last year’s result: First in both 2017 (17th overall) and 2016 (12th overall).
Notable games: Two dominant games (R5 and 18), three prominent games (R9, 14, and 16), and three notable games (R15, 19, and 23).
All-Australian 40-man roster.

4. Jordan de Goey – 258 points (30th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Eighth. Received 12 Brownlow votes, fourth on the team.
Last year’s result: Seventh (150th overall).
Notable games: Two dominant games (R12 and 18), three prominent games (R7, 9, and 16), and one notable game (R21).
All-Australian 40-man roster, ELO-FF First team I/C Forward.

5. Tom Phillips – 191 points (59th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Sixth.
Last year’s result: 18th.
Notable games: One dominant game, in R11, and one prominent game, in R10, back-to-back.

6. Adam Treloar – 171 points (69th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: not in top ten. Fifth in Brownlow votes received at Collingwood this year with eight.
Last year’s result: third (39th overall) and second in 2016 (18th overall).
Notable games: Two dominant games (R5 and 9) and one prominent game (R4).

7. Taylor Adams – 158 points (73rd overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Fifth, plus first in finals. Received six Brownlow votes, sixth most on the club.
Last year’s result: Second (26th overall), and sixth in 2016.
Notable games: One dominant game, in R22, one prominent game, in R18, and one notable game, in R21.

8. Jeremy Howe – 136 points (85th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Seventh.
Last year’s result: Fourth (52nd overall), and fifth in 2016.
Notable games: One prominent game (R6) and one notable game (R2).

9. Josh Thomas – 107 points (106th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Ninth.
Last year’s result: 26th.
Notable games: Two prominent games, in R3 and R15.

10. Jack Crisp – 86 points (145th overall)
Best & Fairest finish: Fourth.
Last year’s result: 14th (13th in 2016).
Notable games: none.

Collingwood had eight top 100 players and 13 top 200 players in the 2018 ELO-FF meta-rankings.

Honourable mentions
Mason Cox – 13th place (81 points), one dominant game (R12), All-American team. (Not roster – “team”. He’s it, for now…)
Will Hoskin-Elliott – equal 11th place (85 points), one prominent game (R11).
Brayden Maynard – 14th place (48 points), 10th place in Best & Fairest voting.
Jaidyn Stephenson – equal 11th place (85 points), one prominent game (R4), 2018 NAB Rising Star Award.

Player movement during the trade period

In: Dayne Beams, Jordan Roughead
Gone: Alex Fasolo, who wasn’t playing much anymore anyway, unfortunately.
Current list of draft picks: 41, 44, 51, 56, 57, 93. But they wouldn’t be likely to play any teenaged first or second rounders anyway, so it’s no real loss for this club not to have a high-level draft day presence.

2019 list highlights

Backs: Jack Crisp, Lynden Dunn, Tyson Goldsack, Jeremy Howe, Tom Langdon, Brayden Maynard, Darcy Moore, Sam Murray, Matthew Scharenberg.
Midfielders: Taylor Adams, James Aish, Dayne Beams, Scott Pendlebury, Tom Phillips, Steele Sidebottom, Brayden Sier, Adam Treloar, Daniel Wells.
Ruckmen: Brodie Grundy, Jordan Roughead.
Forwards: Mason Cox, Ben Crocker, Jordan deGoey, Jamie Elliot, Will Hoskin-Elliott, Chris Mayne, Brody Mihocek, Ben Reid, Jaidyn Stephenson, Josh Thomas, Travis Varcoe.

Forecast for 2019

Here’s the situation: the most economically powerful club in the league has been revitalised in 2018, with not only veteran stars like Sidebottom and Pendlebury still playing at or near the top of their abilities but budding stars like Brodie Grundy, Jordan de Goey, Taylor Adams, Tom Phillips and, yes, even Mason Cox – that’s going to be a good team again next year.

Add Dayne Beams and Jordan Roughead to that? They should slot right in where the holes already were. Then, add to that a chip on their shoulder after the painful loss on Grand Final day, coupled with the confidence from September that they can beat any team, any day, anywhere?

Pencil the Magpies in for top four, easily. We think they’ll finish second next season.