For a smart footballer, Jack Ginnivan made a dumb decision. For a player of great self-awareness on the field, he showed precious little off it.
Ginnivan admitted on Saturday that he had taken illicit drugs recently in the Torquay Hotel toilets. Taking drugs is not smart, but he is far from the first or last footballer to do that. Plenty of others will have done it this summer, if history and past AFL testing numbers are a guide. But he wasn’t punished for that; he is yet another player suspended not for using drugs but being seen using them.
Jack Ginnivan.Credit:AFL Photos
The drug use was only one part of Ginnivan’s silliness. The other part was his complete lack of self-awareness.
Ginnivan didn’t read the room. And that is not the bathroom, where to be fair he had a right to expect privacy from being filmed. He didn’t read his club’s locker room.
Ginnivan should have looked around at the start of the summer and seen there were a couple of new faces there. One in particular should have jumped out at him: Bobby Hill.
Collingwood recruited the ex-Giants small forward in the off-season and in doing so added pressure for places for small forwards in their team.
Collingwood footy boss Graham Wright (left) supported by club CEO Craig Kelly on Sunday morning.Credit:Penny Stephens
Collingwood’s Craig McRae, like many coaches, is a believer that you bring players in from other clubs expecting them to play. Their magnets start on the board at the beginning of pre-season, and it is for others to push them out by the time round one comes around.
You don’t bring in players on wages such as those of Hill, Dan McStay and Tom Mitchell and not figure them to be in your best team. Given his contract size and low trade price, Billy Frampton was a slightly different case, but he too has almost certainly trained himself into round one.
So Hill was always highly likely to play round one; the question was only who went out for him to come in. Now Ginnivan has sacrificed his place.
Ginnivan finds the goals – 40 last year – and Hill too has a nose for the goals, if not at the rate Ginnivan does. Ginnivan averages 1.6 a game across his two AFL seasons, while Hill’s average is half that at 0.8 a game, though he has played up the field at times.
Collingwood recruit Bobby Hill Credit:Gertty Images
Ginnivan has kicked a lot of his goals from head-high free kicks and the officiating changed mid-season last year, so this source of goals significantly dried up for him, but he still kept kicking goals at a rate that is good for a small forward.
But McRae’s game is a Richmond-style territory game, built on pressure and turnovers.
Hill is quick. Ginnivan isn’t. Since he arrived at Collingwood, Hill has been told to focus all summer on tackling. He won’t lose his ability to stand on shoulders for marks or to snap goals, but they want him to use his pace to add tackling pressure.
Collingwood’s Jack Ginnivan and Jamie Elliott.Credit:AFL Photos
Ginnivan averages 1.4 tackles a game, Hill 2.6. Beau McCreery is probably more critical to McRae’s preferred style of game than Ginnivan. He has power, pace and averaged 3.9 tackles a game last year.
Jamie Elliott, a tall forward in a small forward’s body, is not really a true like-for-like with Ginnivan because he is so versatile, but he has pace and power and despite being a target forward, he too averaged 3.9 tackles a game last season.
McStay, who came in as a target key forward and second ruck, had the attraction that he is quick. So too Nathan Kreuger 12 months earlier. McRae wants pace in his forward line.
McRae is the type of coach that does not dwell so much on who kicks the goals as how they are kicked and how many the team kicks. Pressure is part of a system that delivers the goals.
This is why Ginnivan’s lack of self-awareness was so poor. He needed to know that despite his profile and goal-kicking haul in 2022, his position in the team was already not as assured as might be assumed. Now through his own actions he has lost his hold on a spot in the opening games. It is now for others to lose incumbency and for him to earn back his place.
Despite the competition, Ginnivan would probably have still been in the Pies’ best team for round one before Saturday’s story broke – any player who can regularly kick goals is hard to ignore – but he had to know there was more pressure on and the world had changed since last year. His world certainly has now.
Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.
