- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
For six consecutive weeks, it seems the AFL has made a collective pact to let Nick Daicos run free. And in five of those weeks, Collingwood’s opposition has paid the price.
Essendon are the latest team to be burned, with the result a 28-point three quarter time Anzac Day lead and famous victory turned on its head in an instant. Two final-quarter Daicos goals, including the go-ahead, to go with six disposals and two inside 50s, made the Anzac Day medal a no-brainer, as good a fight as Steele Sidebottom put up.
Yes, Nick Daicos wins a lot of handball receives – but only because teams are content with him running around the side of his Magpies teammates for the cheap give-off, precisely because he uses it so superbly. Yes, he takes his fair share of kick outs, but only because when he doesn’t, you’re left with Brayden Maynard shanking one off the instep for the easiest goal Sam Weideman will kick in his life.
Yes, Nick Daicos had just seven contested possessions, five of them in the final quarter when he was switched on-ball. But he doesn’t need to. The Pies have Tom Mitchell, or Jordan De Goey, or Scott Pendlebury for that.
At some point, we need to collectively realise the Pies’ entire game revolves around freeing up Daicos. It’s similar to Richmond in 2017, who as a team combined to do all Dustin Martin’s defending for him. Maybe this latest performance, and three more Brownlow votes, will be the wake-up call everyone else needs.
The Bombers did have a plan to curb his influence early; when Daicos began at half-back, it was Will Snelling who occupied him, charged with ensuring all his disposals were well and truly in defensive 50.
The Pies still looked for him, and he headed to quarter time with 11 touches; but just 106 metres gained tells you of their impact. Whenever he ventured beyond halfway, there Snelling was, checking his run, staying goal side, ensuring he was never on the end of it. Just two of those 11 touches were inside 50s, and it meant the Pies’ forays forward just lacked that extra bit of polish.
Conceding just one goal to quarter time despite seven forward half turnovers, the Bombers could head in well pleased with their lead – especially given they had two goals themselves from just four of them.
The Dons’ handball game made for electric running, forcing the Pies into a taste of their own medicine. Remarkably, they had more handpasses (50) than kicks at quarter time, adjusting for Darcy Moore’s early intercept-marking dominance with rapid run and carry from the coalface.
With a 9-7 clearance advantage, 3-1 from centre bounces, and a +9 ground-ball differential, everything flowed from there.
But the problem with the Pies is you can’t keep them down forever. Sooner or later, they’ll get a run on out of the centre, makeshift ruckman or no, and they’re just about impossible to stop at full flight. In the second term, the Pies won all seven centre bounces, and 13-3 in clearances overall. It was a bloodbath.
Brad Scott’s call to play Sam Draper primarily forward and have Andrew Phillips as his main ruckman, was backfiring, despite Draper looking dangerous in attack. Phillips just isn’t as good a tap ruckman, and despite getting his hands to the ball far more than Nathan Kreuger or Billy Frampton, had virtually no chemistry with his midfield.
Neither is Phillips as impressive a follow-up big man as Draper is; no surprise when Draper became the majority ruck in the third quarter, it was his desperation at ground level, little toe-pokes and repeat efforts, that led to an utter obliteration in midfield.
After more handballs than kicks to quarter time, the Magpies clamped down on the Bombers’ run and spread, bringing Jack Crisp up from half-back as an extra man at stoppages. They had 23 handballs for the 54 kicks in the second term as a result, the Dons forced into playing slower, tempo footy that let the Pies set up behind the ball. Of the 11 times they rebounded from defensive 50, just three weren’t intercepted by the Magpies.
The game turned on its head in the third quarter, and for two reasons: Draper’s influence, and the injection of Stringer onto the ball.
Stringer is an enigma; at 29, he still doesn’t have the engine to become a full-time midfield in the manner Jordan De Goey is at the moment, but when he’s on there are few if any players in the game more damaging.
After just three disposals in the first half, blanketed by Maynard among others, he had three clearances on his own in the third term, with the Bombers winning that stat 12-4. Making things harder for the Pies was Stringer’s brute strength: his first instinct is to take the tackler on, meaning often three opponents gravitate towards him and leave others free.
It was fitting that the two most influential Bombers for the quarter combined for a spectacular set play goal from a forward 50 stoppage, for their sixth goal of a quarter for the ages.
The quarter was spectacular – but they had nothing left in the tank, as it transpired. 28 points is a match-winning lead against most teams, but not Collingwood. Never Collingwood.
Teams that roll the dice in the last quarter to try and reel in a big lead usually die by the sword, and it only takes a goal or two to snuff out the resistance. Collingwood, though, are better equipped than most to pull it off, because nothing changes about the way they play. They’re made for taking the game on.
The pivotal point may have been Scott Pendlebury’s poke in the eye: wonderful all day with his composure through traffic a highlight, his absence threw the Magpies’ midfield set-up into chaos. And chaos is hard to predict.
Josh Daicos spent time in their late, while Mitchell and Crisp found their second wind to charge unto the breach again and again. Then, of course, there was the other Daicos.
Nick Daicos of the Magpies celebrates a goal. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
Slowly but surely growing in influence across the previous three quarters, this was a stage made for the No.35. He genuinely doesn’t care about being burned the other day: the trust he and Craig McRae have in his fellow midfielders, and their set-up behind the ball, is so complete. Throughout the day, but mostly in the final term, he was free to go wherever he pleased.
No half-back in the game’s history has ever played like he does. There’s no heed to an opponent; he just goes where the ball is, and the Magpies give it to him.
And when he goes into the midfield, there are more problems still: Scott, like every other coach in the game, isn’t willing to jeopardise his midfield structure to take one of his players out of the game to play stopper. Port Adelaide gave it a shot in Round 2 with Lachie Jones, and it didn’t work, and it seems to have made everyone else just give up.
But it’s not necessarily about tagging: it’s about making sure he can’t do as he pleases. It’s about making sure when he does receive the ball, he has half a second to get rid of it, rather than two or three. It’s easier said than done – but no one has really done anything about it to this point.
His running power and endurance for a 20-year old are out of this world. In the last quarter, he started the crucial play that put the Pies more than a goal up, the one that effectively sealed the deal, behind two Bombers in Jye Menzie and Mason Redman on the wing.
Menzie was shot – he couldn’t go with him. Neither, as it turned out, could Redman. And the fatal mistake came inside 50 – drawn up to a disputed ball inside 50, Daicos sat on the outside, watched Redman sucked in, received the handball, and snapped through a goal.
As magnificent as Daicos was when the game had to be one, this lies with Brad Scott and his Bombers. The most dangerous player on the ground can’t be left free inside 50. He plays with no accountability, so he can’t be relied upon to take himself out of the contest. He will go to the most dangerous spot again and again, and recognises what that spot is better than anyone else in the game.
Two out of three times, he might not end up with the ball, and you get away with it. But on that third occasion, he will kill you. Every. Single. Time.
It’s time the AFL realised Daicos getting 40 disposals isn’t a sign that his touches are meaningless – it’s a sign the Pies are looking to use him on every occasion. Virtually every time they attack, he’s involved in some way, either sparking the move with a slicing kick from half-back, on the end of a handball receive from midfied, or waltzing into the goalsquare without a care in the world and no Bombers in sight to bring the Magpies within reach.
It’s oh so worth a team seeing what happens if you can take Daicos out of the game, and put some time into stopping him wherever he goes. It’s oh so worth seeing who if anyone the Pies can turn to if their best kick is kept under wraps.
The Bombers couldn’t, or wouldn’t – and it cost them the game.
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.