In the annals of non-finals Collingwood-Carlton results that are as painful as they are joyous, depending on your jumper, this sits comfortably near the top.
There can be no sweeter days for Collingwood than Sunday at the MCG. Confirm top four and deny Carlton the finals … by one point. And Essendon sacked their coach.
Jack Ginnivan celebrates a goal with teammates on Sunday.Credit:AFL Photos
Former Carlton president George Harris famously declared the small margin more enjoyable than the big over Collingwood. This was one of those.
This unconvincing Collingwood team, that refuses to find ways to win by big margins also finds ways not to lose. Twenty-five points down, unable to buy a goal for a quarter and they kick five. No one has spoken of Jamie Elliott in All Australian terms this year. They should. He wins games.
Nathan Buckley correctly pointed out earlier this year that we needed to stop being surprised that Collingwood were good. This was a team he said that had been good for five years and had one bad year, last year. He was right and sort of wrong.
Collingwood have felt unlikely all year because they did finish second bottom last year. Their rise to the top four is as great a jump year-on-year as they have ever had. In 1977 they went from wooden spoon to minor premier, but there were only 12 teams in the then VFL at the time. In 2018 they went from 13th to third. This is bigger than those years.
Zac Williams of the Blues looks dejected after a loss.Credit:AFL Photos
They’ve also felt unlikely because a change of coach heralded the idea of a side being rebuilt. That idea was also born of the earlier firesale of moneyed players. They have felt unconvincing because their winning margins were so slim. They have felt unconvincing because they lost their All Australian ruckman Brodie Grundy and felt all year like it would bite them at some stage and it hasn’t really.
And yet against that they have just kept winning. Or kept winning, just.
Of course, the margin on Sunday was going to be small, they all have been and of course in the last quarter they would not lie down.
They feel unconvincing because they don’t have a regular structure. They don’t have dominant big key forwards. They have only one regular big key back. They have regularly been beaten in the midfield in clearances and been smashed around the ball. And yet they have kept winning.
They are team whose sum is better than its parts.
Their satisfaction in victory heading into finals is that they defeated a team whose assets were where Collingwood is weak. Carlton have two big key forwards who stretched their undersized defence.
And yet, Carlton kicked eight goals in one quarter and only two for the rest of the game. That is a team that has a defensive understanding.
Nathan Murphy is only 192 centimetres but is very strong overhead, and is recklessly brave. Jeremy Howe is undersized with an outsized leap and any team would want Brayden Maynard.
They have a forward line that relies not on big, dominant key targets, but that has made them more unpredictable. They have the honest and strong Brodie Mihocek, they have found a marking target in Ash Johnson and they have Elliott who plays as both small forward and tall and just creates goals. They have Jack Ginnivan, who is an irritant but on Sunday pleasingly kicked goals by looking first for the ball not the free kick. They have Ollie Henry waiting in the wings.
They have a midfield that is still Scott Pendlebury-reliant for he remains their best player and they were able to bring Jordan De Goey back. He was serviceable without being brilliant.
Where it ends is anyone’s guess, we have been waiting for the ride to end all year. It will at some point, but it is a satisfying return for Craig McRae who must surely be the coach of the year.
Patrick Cripps takes in the loss.Credit:AFL Photos
BLUES’ CONSOLATION
In the sober morning’s reflection Carlton will acknowledge growth and improvement from 13th last year to being a point away from just drawing with Collingwood and playing finals this year. In fact, they were less than that away from it. They were 0.6 per cent away from finals even without winning or drawing on Sunday.
They will be consoled by the fact they went into this match without Sam Walsh, George Hewitt and Matt Kennedy and were in a position to win. But the fact is they were in a position to win and should have won. They kicked eight goals in a quarter and only two in the other three. How do you do that?
As great as the growth has been this year this is a side that was in the top four half-way through the year and ended up missing the eight. It has been a good year under a new coach but given where they were half-way through the year, given they have a team with the two best key forwards of the last two years, and given where they were half-way through the last quarter on Sunday, Carlton should have played finals.
Tom Lynch.Credit:Getty Images
TIGERS SWEAT ON LYNCH
Richmond look the most dangerous premiership threat outside the top four. That danger, however, has a rider, in as much as the threat rides on the iced-up groin of Tom Lynch.
If Lynch is actually sore and was not just literally put on ice then that is a finals-shaping injury. Lynch is Richmond’s point of difference in this team that has regenerated on the run.
When he left the ground on Saturday he had kicked his 60th goal of the season and might well have given the Coleman Medal a late shake had he stayed on the ground. (As it was Charlie Curnow saw to that on Sunday).
It was prudent to get him off and probably the ice reflected nothing more than prudence. It would be a shock if he were not to play week one of the finals. But it will now be the most watched groin at MCG since Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones in 1995.
ZORKO DRAMA
Dayne Zorko’s behaviour should not be allowed to rest with a handshake at the end of the game and a “sorry mate, all good” in the heat of the battle.
We saw the distress in Harrison Petty. Players go out to play football not to be assailed by comments about family members. The game has long gone past that; even the Australian cricket team has worked that out.
Zorko has priors for his behaviour on the field going too far. His interactions with Gold Coast’s Touk Miller, when he refused to shake his hand after one game, then after another game made a point of exaggeratedly shaking it while continuing to make comments to Miller point to a player who indulges the verbal side of the game but struggles with finding the right line.
What is the right penalty? I don’t know, but I know nothing is not enough. Brisbane at least should have serious questions about the man invested as their leader.
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