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For the last ten years, defence has been king in the AFL world.
Ever since the mighty Hawthorn dynasty crumbled into dust in the mid-2010s, the enduring philosophy of successful clubs has been built around restricting the opposition – either through ferocious, Richmond-esque pressure on the ball carrier, or a suffocating wall of interceptors in the back 50 a la Geelong.
The days of freewheeling, frenetic football, initiated by the Cats’ golden era and to a lesser extent the Hawks, Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs, went out of fad. Between 2005 and 2015, every single premier averaged over 100 points per match; the last team to even reach that average was Melbourne in 2018.
It’s led to an era with constant concern about the death of footy, of consistent tinkering with the rules from the AFL to try and spark it back to life, and an obsession with nostalgia in every corner of the media.
Which is why you should be excited about what Collingwood are doing at the moment. They are playing exhilarating, high-scoring, ultra-aggressive football; and what’s more, they are winning while doing it.
Not since the triple-premiership Hawks has a side played such a rollicking half against quality opposition as the Magpies served Port Adelaide on Saturday afternoon at the MCG.
It wasn’t just the 13 goals to five they piled on, or the 49-point lead: we see high-scoring quarters on occasion, and they don’t always correlate to exhilarating footy. It was the way they charged through the corridor with murderous intent, swarmed on every loose ball like flies on a corpse, and overwhelmed the Power’s back six nearly every time they ventured forward.
Every player has a role, and every player executed it perfectly. If you’re not part of the ‘black and white wave’, as I’m calling the Pies’ now infamous surge down the ground and into attacking 50 at full flight, then you’re pressuring the opposition into the mistakes that spark the chain. Jack Crisp’s wonderful run-down of Lachie Jones midway through the second quarter was just as significant as the eye-catching runs from stoppages or the goals on the run from 50.
The Pies, remarkably, led the tackle count 34-22 at half time, despite overwhelming dominance of possession time. That’s a stat line that usually indicates a woeful opposition, but the Power weren’t all that bad: they just simply could not cope with what they were dealt with.
You can’t tackle someone without the footy, and the Pies’ fast handballing was through the congestion and into space far too quick for Port to react. It was all they could do just to keep up.
At the coalface, Scott Pendlebury has been reborn as a composed, precise, and underratedly tough inside midfielder, just when it seemed finishing his career as a half-back marshal was how he’d wind down.
Pendlebury had three tackles in the first three minutes, one of them winning a holding the ball free kick for the Pies’ first clearance. That’s a tone-setter if ever there was one.
He’s never been quick, which in another universe would have made him a possible weak link in the Magpies’ intensely speedy style; but he’s good enough, smart enough, and hungry enough to still remain one of the team’s most crucial contributors.
Ditto Steele Sidebottom, who with six contested possessions in the first quarter as part of a 44-24 domination over a side that had just done something equally brutal to Brisbane last week, came in from the wing time and time again to impose himself at the coalface.
The veterans’ influence meant Tom Mitchell and Taylor Adams, the usual distributors in close, had little to do. Adams, as it happens, is becoming a very dangerous presence inside 50, with his footy smarts and nose for a goal belying a player long derided for his ordinary disposal and lack of breakaway pace.
He’s become a real two-factor footballer, capable of having an influence away from stoppages in a way he’s struggled to previously.
Of course, once the footy was won – and with the Pies 80-47 ahead in the contested possession count at half time, and 23-14 up in the clearances, it was in their hands more often than not – the runners got to work.
The Magpies have found a way to, somehow, outnumber the opposition at virtually every contest – the Power won’t be the last team they thoroughly outwork in all facets of the game.
Nick Daicos is obviously the poster boy for the Magpies in this facet – and with 32 disposals, two goals and probably three Brownlow votes, he was phenomenal as ever.
During the week Craig McRae dared the Power to try and tag him, and it soon became clear why: Lachie Jones simply didn’t have the speed or spatial awareness to go with him. Daicos the younger knows before just about anyone else where the ball is going when the Pies have it, and far too often left his would-be tagger in his wake.
Making matters worse for Port, the strategy did nothing to stop the Magpies getting an extra man to the contest, making it all the easier to gain the outnumber. Other teams would be hesistant about leaving their defence in a five-on-five situation; the Pies, though, have total trust in Darcy Moore and company to hold firm long enough for their cavalry to race back and give support.
It’s not just Daicos, though: brother Josh rarely gets the respect he deserves as an outstanding footballer in his own right these days. He’s almost the best wingman in the game: he, like his younger brother, has such elite spatial awareness that he’s just about always in open territory, one handball further afield to be used in a chain.
Jamie Elliott and Josh Daicos of the Magpies celebrate a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Also like his brother, he’s superb by foot, crafty near goals, and – the one negative – occasionally capable of biting off more than he can chew, like the ambitious cross-goal pass to start the third term that was cut off by Todd Marshall for a Power goal.
When they’re in full flight, Collingwood move the ball from in congestion to open space via a fast chain of handballs, with which they sliced the Power to shreds. 84 handpasses to just 100 kicks by half time laid bare their desire to keep the ball within their black and white wave, moving the ball at great pace without ever going too fast for themselves.
Case in point as well was just 32 Magpie marks were recorded up to half time – the one important stat in which the Power found their noses in front. Those numbers normalised after half time as Port began to match the Pies in close, evened up the territory battle, and forced the Pies to need to move the ball more methodically out of defence; but those first-half numbers still warrant a closer look.
Remarkably, seven of those marks were contested, and seven inside 50. They’d handball their way through the Power press until they were close enough, then try and find a marking target inside 50; or, alternately, take strong intercept grabs as their pressure forced Port to go for the long hopeful balls forward the Pies avoided for most of the day.
Uncontested marks have become a real trend in recent years, spearheaded by pre-2022 Geelong, as a way of controlling the ball, denying the opposition possession, and moving forward incrementally and risk-free. None of those things make for captivating footy, and the Pies couldn’t have a more different method.
For the marks inside 50, the Pies are spoiled for choice: Dan McStay presented superbly for the footy after a quiet club debut in Round 1, and was far better than his solitary goal would indicate.
Jamie Elliott, Brody Mihocek and Jordan De Goey are also constant threats for a defence to contend with, while nipping at their heels are Beau McCreery and Bobby Hill, tasked with harassing the opposition into mistakes and snap the odd one through too.
As for the contested grabs, Darcy Cameron is more than up to the task: his emergence as one of the game’s best mobile ruckmen has been vital in taking Collingwood from good but inconsistent at the start of last year into the force to be reckoned with they are now.
His ruckwork is getting more advanced by the week, and he thoroughly outplayed Scott Lycett at centre bounces; but his biggest weapon is his mobility to get from contest to contest, present a sizeable aerial target, and get involved in the quick handball chains when required.
Peak Brodie Grundy had him covered as far as his work at ground level goes – though with 16 contested possessions, that gap is rapidly shrinking – but Grundy certainly never took the sort of towering contested grabs Cameron is doing regularly these days.
In front of goal he’s not the best, but you can tell he has the instincts of a forward by the way he flies for the ball and knows where the drop zone is. And the screamer he took right on the final siren perfectly capped off a landmark day for a bloke who needed to wait years for his first proper crack at senior footy.
That’s the Magpies’ offensive threat – but that sort of power usually comes with a trade-off on the other side of the coin. It was as impressive for the Pies to be able to restrict Port to just nine goals, considering the electric way in which this game was played and the score they gave up to Geelong last week, than to pile on the points of their own.
The Power, by three quarter time, had just six fewer inside 50s than Collingwood, though they trailed 34-19 with the game gone at half time and lost the count 57-47 by the end.
Down back, they were vulnerable whenever the Power could move the ball quickly to their forwards – Charlie Dixon was far too good for Billy Frampton to a degree that, had his teammates been able to break even ahead of the ball, might have meant a bag of six or seven.
Brayden Maynard, John Noble and co. are exceptional small defenders, both from a lockdown and rebounding role: Junior Rioli and Orazio Fantasia, who ripped the Lions to pieces, were barely sighed. But as far as talls go, the Pies are probably still one big short, notwithstanding Moore’s brilliance.
But the Pies don’t just defend by depriving the opposition the footy – they do it with a defensive structure perfectly set up to rebound anything but the most incisive entries – the most attacking defence we’ve seen since the 2007-2011 Cats. It’s McRae’s finest addition as coach from a long, long list.
For starters, their midfielders tackle ferociously, clog up space, and for the most part, don’t give the opposition an inch. That’s why, midway through the second quarter with the Pies dominant, an inside kick was intercepted by Sam Powell-Pepper, who, with Port players streaming forward for the turnover, chose instead to slow the play up, go back to take his kick rather than playing on, and move laterally. Pressure does that to you.
Those same midfielders, particularly Jack Crisp, also swarm back in numbers to prevent lead-up marks, meaning only the quickest, cleanest break away can end with the ball on an opposition forward’s chest.
If you hesitate, if you fumble, if you go sideways, if you do anything but head straight for goal and hit your leading man lace out, that’s all the time the Pies need to make things very difficult for you.
And then on the counterattack, they’re manic.
The Pies are the first team since the Hawks, almost a decade ago, to actively back themselves to kick a higher score than the opposition. They’re fine with a shootout – they’ll trust their team defence to hold firm enough, and the gauntlet they run to succeed often enough, for a winning score every day of the week.
It’s remarkable that this is remarkable, but in this day and age of footy, where coaches would prefer a low-scoring scrap to anything watchable for the average punter, it is.
Compare McRae’s outward urging for his team to ’embrace the chaos’ in the last two seasons to his predecessor Nathan Buckley, who remarked after a quite brilliant, thrilling game between the Magpies and Brisbane in early 2018 that he hated every minute of it.
The AFL is a copycat industry; teams look to replicate what the successful ones do, their style germinates, and becomes the accepted norm around the league.
The Cats of 2007-2011 were so unstoppable an attacking powerhouse that anyone wanting to beat them had to outscore them. It wasn’t, in the end, Ross Lyon’s militantly defensive St Kilda that brought them unstuck, but rather a Magpies outfit that could fight fire with fire.
That’s what the Magpies are doing now – they are fast making it necessary for teams to score and score big to take them down. They won’t always find it as easy as they did in the first half against Port Adelaide, but it’s a style they trust – and they have more than enough weapons to pull it off again and again, against anyone.
We may just be seeing the game take another turn… this time, for the better.
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