Collingwood's win was great, but don't call it 'gutsy'

Within moments of Collingwood beating West Coast in the first elimination final Collingwood supporters were posting on social media that it was a ‘gutsy’ win.

On Twitter journalist Rohan Connolly said he hoped Essendon players watched how Collingwood had played that game to get an idea of “fair dinkum commitment”.

I must be one of the few Collingwood supporters who didn’t think it was gusty.

I mean, why was it? Why was it gusty?

Because Collingwood limped into the finals? Because they’d been playing largely uninspiring football for the last couple of months? Because West Coast had hammered them earlier in the year?

Kane Cornes is being roundly mocked because he said Collingwood were just making up the numbers. He said what the majority were thinking.

But everybody’s conclusion was based on a simple premise: if Collingwood went into the game against West Coast playing that slow, indirect, unadventurous brand of football that they’ve tried to make work for the last two years, then they’d get smashed.

The Collingwood that went out there wasn’t that Collingwood.

Here’s where the game was won.

(Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)

1. Collingwood played manically
Collingwood took the game on. They ran, they went direct, they got the ball into their forward 50 quickly.

Coming out of defence they were usually immediately on the counterattack. They ran through the middle and whizzed with handballs to break open defensive pressure, and when they bombed into forward 50 they did so before the opposition had a chance to flood back and outnumber Collingwood’s forwards.

That’s a dilution of the gameplan as a whole, but I use it to contrast what we’ve all been seeing and more and more people have been condemning.

It feels as if after losing the 2018 grand final part of the determination was that Collingwood needed to learn how to control the game and control the tempo and then move into high gear at will. But the latter never happened and the former led to a stagnancy that often saw Collingwood crumble.

Somehow somebody in the Collingwood brains trust decided they should try the brand of football that championed their 2018 assault and to abandon the stagnant, error-laden, indirect style that they played 2014-17, and 2019-20.

This 2018 style is exciting and often anarchic. When it works, it results in goals.

When it doesn’t, it often creates possibilities.

2. They played Mason Cox deep
At 211 centimetres Cox is the biggest forward in the league. He’s proven over his short career that he can take a good mark. One of his best strengths is he plays with attitude. He’s not timid. A lot of the best players in our game have swagger.

Yet for the last two years Collingwood allowed him to get dragged up the ground. When they played him deep they moved the ball so slowly that by the time they kicked it forward Cox would have two or more (usually more) opponents hanging off him. Often long bombs wrong-sided him.

Yet Cox copped the flak for not constantly producing miracles when anybody would struggle under that absurd system.

Against West Coast, Collingwood played Cox out of the goal square. They got the ball in quickly and deeply and before defenders could impede him. He was given the freedom to run at the ball and use his height and reach to clunk it.

And, what a shock, it worked. Cox kicked three goals in the first quarter and dishevelled the Eagles defence.

Now, I’m not elevating Cox to the ranks of Jason Dunstall, Tony Lockett or Gary Ablett Sr, but he has his strengths, and this game – like the 2018 preliminary final – is one of the few times in the last two years Collingwood has played to them and given him every chance of succeeding.

He may not be perfect, but that’s exactly why they need to tailor a strategy to exploit his strengths rather than expose his weaknesses.

Mason Cox. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)

3. They innovated
Did playing Brodie Grundy and Darcy Cameron on Nic Naitanui influence the game? Nic Nat was still brilliant. His dominance created a number of goals directly from centre bounces.

At the beginning of the third and fourth quarters Nathan Buckley started Cameron in the ruck. For the final bounce, when only one point separated the teams, Buckley again opted for Cameron to be in the ruck.

Now, how much this impacted Nic Nat only he would know. But it changed the dynamics of what hadn’t worked the last time these two played and what was likely to not work again given how Nic Nat has dominated Grundy.

It’s about the most novel thing Collingwood’s done since throwing Brody Mihocek forward in 2018. But it shows that change from existing structures isn’t a bad thing, and can open up new possibilities.

(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

An extra credit to Nathan Buckley and company
What a horrible lead-up to a final: fly interstate to go directly into quarantine, have staff in campervans, have the West Australian media label them “dirty”, and so on.

Previous incarnations of Collingwood might’ve complained about training in quarantine, staff having to camp out and all the possible preparation detractors. Then they could point to those issues as reasons why they weren’t at their best.

If there’s one thing Nathan Buckley has done well, it’s that he doesn’t make excuses or insulate the team for failure with preliminary qualifications.

When they’ve failed he’s simply said they have to get better.

So if it’s not “gutsy”, what is it?
This is professional sport. It’s a final. Who’s going out there and isn’t going to be “gutsy”?

Everybody is giving it their all. Regardless of positions, form, personnel et cetera, once that team marches out they do everything within their power to win that game and get to the following week.

So to exemplify this as “gutsy” – as if to say previous efforts haven’t been – distracts from what it actually was.

It was a smart win – the coaching brains trust were smart enough to finally switch (back) to a more damaging brand of football, found ways to innovate across the field to give them an edge over their opponent and went in with absolute focus on what needed to be done.

If Collingwood had lost, I would’ve switched off disappointed but thinking I don’t mind losing if that’s going to be Collingwood’s brand.

Credit again to Buckley and company for daring to reinvent how they tackled that game.

If this was to remain their approach, I’m sure there’d be a lot fewer critics, including myself.