Yet another Collingwood season unravels into a mess of injuries.
I don’t know what other word does this current crisis justice. Plethora? Quagmire? Sea?
No.
It’s just a mess.
Injuries have been recurring at Collingwood since Nathan Buckley took over as coach in 2012.
They’re actually now expected – ingrained into the psyche of the everyday supporter. Everybody I know expects to come away from a game with at least one query, and for another to pop up during the week.
I go to games where my priority isn’t the result, but getting through it unscathed. The moment a player gets up gingerly, I see six weeks. If somebody limps off, it’s 12 weeks.
Collingwood addressed soft-tissue injuries five years ago at an AGM, but that’s been the only acknowledgement that they get lots of injuries.
Statistically, the Magpies have repeatedly figured highly in injury lists – but I can’t see that any genuine attempt has been made to investigate, identify, and remedy the issue.
Because that’s what you do with a problem, right?
But the problem keeps happening.
Maybe our protocols are injured.
I know my faith, optimism, hope, and blind support is.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Media/Getty Images)
Here are five reasons why my head is about to explode.
It keeps happening
I want to see solutions. Are we doing anything about it? Have we ever? Or do we just motor on, hoping, praying, gambling that it’ll work itself out?
It hurts player development
If you can’t pump games into players, you can’t develop them. If you can’t develop them, they fall by the wayside. That’s a waste of potential and resources.
Sure, not every player makes it in the AFL, and sometimes that’s entirely beyond the club’s control, but you want to give players every chance of making it, don’t you?
It wastes the best of club champions
Scott Pendlebury has valiantly gone out week after week after week over the last eight years, plying his trade to the best of his ability, even as the team has repeatedly failed around him.
Sure, some players are unlucky. They never get to play in a premiership, or they rarely get to play in finals. But Collingwood have wasted the best of Pendlebury, along with players such as Travis Cloke and Dane Swan because the team has kept falling down around them.
It ruins careers
Ben Reid was All-Australian in 2011. He looked set for a prosperous career. Jamie Elliott burst into the game in 2012. Nathan Freeman was drafted in 2013 at pick ten, and over the next two years never played a game. Matthew Scharenberg was pick six in the same draft, and in the six years since has played just 35 games.
How many players have gone nowhere? Or been diminished?
It hurts team development
Depth is an illusion. Teams can lose certain players and cover them. That occurred last year with Collingwood. Injuries created opportunities, and even forced on-field strategies to adapt.
But lose the wrong handful of players and it undermines team functionality. Some players are good at a specific thing, and while others can attempt to cover that contribution, they simply can’t do it as well. Anybody who just seems them as interchangeable drones doesn’t know anything about football.
Case in point: Taylor Adams, a tenacious, fearless, in-and-under midfielder. Collingwood have other mids, but nobody like this.
(Photo: Dylan Burns/AFL Photos)
Last year in the grand final, the Pies would’ve killed for Darcy Moore or Lynden Dunn to play fullback, with no disrespect intended to Tyson Goldsack. You can’t replace these players. Lose enough of them and you have what’s happening now.
The team becomes a spluttering engine that produces no cohesion. Then that affects confidence. Then it becomes this chicken-and-the-egg situation – what came first? It doesn’t even matter, because the ongoing result is the same.
The team’s not going to develop when it’s delivering this output. Players are going to struggle. Let’s pour some more champagne down the drain while we all scratch our heads and talk about how we’re not playing our brand of football.
Some bodies cannot endure the rigours of AFL football. Unfortunately, we’re always seeing players falling by the wayside. Every club would lament the fortunes of one or two players who have all the talent but not the durability.
And clubs can have bad runs. After Collingwood’s failed premiership assaults in 2002 and ’03, the 2004 and ’05 seasons imploded. It felt like a combination of the club paying for the strenuous campaigns and a miasma of failure that mixed into a cocktail that inebriated Collingwood’s efforts, resulting in lots of injuries and dispirited efforts.
But once they got through those two years, they righted the ship and played finals under Mick Malthouse from 2006 to 2011.
But this has been going on from 2012 until today. Who knows when it’ll end? I don’t have the confidence to say 2020 will be any different – not when it’s happened every year.
Am I meant to continue to believe it’s just a bad run? Or that Collingwood just continues to be so unlucky that they’ve recruited a lot of players whose bodies aren’t up to it?
Logically, there has to be some common denominator. Is it the training regimen? Is it the training surface? Is it recovery? Is someone torturing a string of voodoo dolls representing the players? Is it a combination of a number of things? Is it something else altogether?
I don’t know.
But I’ve had it.
It’s frustrating, it’s discouraging, it’s deflating. And I’m watching the game in the stands, or from the comfort of my couch. How the hell would the players feel experiencing this time and time and time again?
The only thing more abhorrent than the injuries themselves is that nothing’s been done about it, and we’ve witnessed season after season after season derailed.
Is this an emotive rant? Yes it is, but with good reason.
Collingwood’s credo is “Only the best”.
Time to prove it.
Ertan yurtsever
Guest
No it’s called Nathan Buckley, the karma bus is well and truly parked on top of Nathan and Eddie, ever since the 2011 transition and will continue until they have gone.
SeymoreButts
Roar Rookie
Injuries are a fact of life and to be honest I think most of the time they are just bad luck. It only takes a little bit of pressure on the side of your knee to do a anterior cruciate ligament.. I know big fit guys who did it playing touch football or when their dog ran into them at the beach.. Nicnat hardly missed a game in his first few years and now hes had a bunch of injuries all one after the other......conversely Shuey missed a lot of football early in his career and now seems to be injury free. I genuinely think it comes down to plain bad luck.
Wayne Kerr
Guest
I would rather have an injury crisis earlier in the year, like Richmond. It gives them a chance to play their younger players and forces those injured players when properly fit to fight for selection later in the season. It makes it tough for the Pies for the run home to the business end of the season. Maybe its too much sports science causing all these injuries? There is a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a lot of sports science is voodoo magic with unsubstantiated peer review evidence. The classic example is all this pickle juice nonsense for cramps, the reviews hedge their bets each way on it. It could also be that Collingwood is just unlucky with injuries!
Peter the Scribe
Roar Guru
Swannie? Dusty? The Cats don't have many do they? Hawks? Wingard but he's come in after the flags.
Peter the Scribe
Roar Guru
How have we gone Chris against say the Blues, Demons, Bombers, Fremantle in this period?
Peter the Scribe
Roar Guru
you know what its like when youre sacked TTF....
Chris
Guest
Coaching Staff: Who stays and who goes? Nobody has touched on this prickly thorn of an issue. Nathan Buckley, Robert Harvey, Brenton Sanderson, Justin Longmuir, Garry Hocking, Tarkyn Lockyer, Jared Rivers, Brad Gotch, Matthew Boyd, Anthony Rocca. Hardly a person with success among them on the player management and coaching side of things. If Eddie McGuire steps down and Craig Kelly takes over we might get a Luke Hodge or a Sam Mitchell who actually know what winning big ones is all about! If that fails a die in the wool Maggie. Where are they? At Hawthorn or Sydney and other undisclosed destinations who have just happened to be more successful than we have been over the same period of time. Monkhurst, Wright, Shaw, Ireland, Barham, Richardson, etc etc. Need I labour the point any longer? We have lost our soul and that's why we´ve lost the faithful and the bif ones.
Doctor Rotcod
Roar Rookie
My people will get back to your people
Doctor Rotcod
Roar Rookie
Chris Masten has some ink. That's about it for the Eagles. You may have a point
greg
Guest
The sad fact is we'll all be back here next year saying exactly the same things.Nothing will have changed.
Peter the Scribe
Roar Guru
Wellsy ain’t top 5 anymore but he would be a dangerous forward if fit. Sublime foot skills.
Peter the Scribe
Roar Guru
The players they’ll move on will probably have played a combined total of about 5 games. Reid, Wells, Goldsack, Broomhead, Wills and maybe Crocker. Hardly even a blip on the radar .
Chris
Guest
None of the teams that have won flags over the past decade have been inundated with tat-bearing staff. Desire-Dedication-Discipline-Determination=Destination. Tattoo artists not Grand Final winning podiums.
Chris
Guest
We seem to have a yobo tattoo culture, too! There seems more concern about paying Dane Swan and his mates to decorate these guys in the kitschiest fashion possible as opposed to winning games and getting fit. Let's hit the tattoo parlours pals!
Chris
Guest
Taking an extended holiday after last year's GF loss was anything but the right thing to do! Arrogance and ignorance are two vices that are closely connected. The comments and attitude of Eddie McGuire since the 2011 GF loss have been anything but exemplary. We have become the laughing stock of the AFL thanks to Abbott and Costello. I'd rather we were in the wilderness for seven years so as to create a revived Collingwood in the Abbotsford tradition instead of trying to buy cheap short term self-acclaimed success in the form of GF losses every ten years. The long term evidence of success comes in a triangular flag that waves proudly from a flagpost and is accompanied by a silver trophy Messrs Buckly and McGuire!
Chris
Guest
Skill? Non-existent! Passion? Gone! Physique? Below the required standards! Running a quarter horse in the Melbourne Cup=Collingwood in a likely 27 week AFL season.
Chris
Guest
Now for all us die-in-the wool Maggies the worst footnote of all! Essendon for the flag in 2019 and to do a Cronulla. Those that repent are rewarded in the Kingdom of AFL! Carlton to embark on a sustained period of success with flags in the next ten years. Collingwood? Can't even get near the VFL Pennant! No way near the AFLW! A no-show in the VFLW! Then Eddie will try to get us to back the netball team to quash our anger. Meanwhile the membership numbers wain and decline. Where to now? We have lost our flock! Preston has forged an alliance with Carlton whereas we have become the SANFL in Victoria. The whole situation beckons beggars´belief!
Chris
Guest
The players to be moved on feature:- Daniel Wells, Ben Reid, Jamie Elliott, Tim Broomhead, Lynden Dunn, Tyson Goldsack, Travis Varcoe, Josh Thomas, Nathan Murphy, Rupert Wills, Ben Crocker, Sam Murray just for starters. That means twelve new faces at Collingwood come rain, hail or shine! That's 25 % of the playing staff. Requirements: Six key position players; a decent back-up ruckman; a couple of fast moving and accurate half-back and half forward flankers; inside midfielders with stamina and fitness. Conclusion: Five years in the wilderness until a new batch of first rounders get drafted and developed. Ditch the "Paddy" as this isn't Gaelic Football or Irish Cross-country running. Coup d'etat McGuire and Buckley as Laurel and Hardy went out when silent films became voiced. Look for proper six footers not Collingwood ones. In short, the whole dump needs a swift kick up the tail and get a true Magpie at the helm. Heath Shaw?Gavin Brown? Give him at least five years to establish a culture as Buckley's been given oodles of time and given us pure embarrassment laced with false hope. Last year, the boys played beyond themselves to save him his job because they felt sorry for him. The emotion charged atmosphere has well and truly subsided and we have reverted back to skill instead of passion.
RT
Roar Rookie
I think they might move on a few players. Hence the Collingwood on the decline comment.
RT
Roar Rookie
A bit like Don a few weeks ago maintaining that Bennell is in the top 5 players in the league.