Timbo here, your resident Pies fan to discuss what was a pretty disappointing season for Collingwood in 2024.
The Pies failed to back up their 2023 flag, not even making finals, the seventh team to do so in the Top 8 era of the AFL. So where did it all go wrong for the Magpies?
I think there were multiple points of failure across the season. Some of them were of the club’s own doing, and some of them ranged from unlucky to unbelievable. Here I will go through some of the issues that contributed to the Pies not being able to back up their 2023 flag.
The Off-field:
To win a flag, an entire club – not just the team, the entire CLUB has to be pulling in the same direction. CEO Craig Kelly is aware of this and had this to say in 2023:
“I personally believe that unless you get it all aligned, unless you look at it and get everyone playing their position like you have in a footy club when you have a successful team, the footy gods don’t give you the end goal that that you want. I think the Sydney Swans, Geelong, Richmond they’re benchmarks and we’ve got to want to get to that level across our whole business, not just our footy department”.
I think it is fair to say Collingwood’s off-field was far from pulling in the same direction in 2024.
Head of Football, Graeme Wright, attempted to resign from his position after the 2023 flag – there were rumors this was due to a rift between himself and Craig Kelly. The club, not wanting to lose him, instead allowed him to take a year off hoping he would come back refreshed after 12 months and continue in the role – this was perhaps the first mistake of the Pies own doing.
This had a snowball effect across the entire footy department. With no Head of Football, responsibilities were shared amongst McRae’s coaching staff – preventing them from focusing fully on their coaching duties across the lines they were responsible for. This also apparently led to in-fighting in the coaching ranks, with Brendan Bolton and Justin Leppitsch at loggerheads over who would take over which of Graeme Wright’s responsibilities.
So the Pies entered the 2024 season with a thinly spread coaching staff (who were rumored to be unhappy with each other), and no Head of Football – before the first bounce of the 2024 season the off-field component was far from aligned. Add to this that halfway through the season, reports emerged about allegations of racism against current CEO Craig Kelly in the workplace – an area the Pies had worked so hard to improve on since the bungled handling of the “Do Better” report. Jeff Browne as The President and Craig Kelly had been commended for turning around the culture of the club after Eddie resigned, along with coach Craig McRae. So for the club to be in the midst of another racism scandal was de-stabilising, to say the least.
After a 2023 season where everything was seemingly golden off-field for the Pies, 2024 started poorly, and only got worse as the season progressed – and as Craig Kelly himself pointed out above, it can be hard to win a premiership if your off-field isn’t set up to win one.
Gameplan change:
In the 2023 season, the Pies thrived from turnover. Their defensive setup allowed them to force their opponents into turnovers across the middle of the ground, where the Pies would then move the ball swiftly to score.
As we all know in the AFL, once you win the flag you become the hunted. Teams spend the off-season dissecting your gameplan and how to beat it. McRae knew this, so decided to implement a new gameplan in 2024.
The gameplan changed from scoring from turnover to locking the ball in the forward half and scoring from repeat entries – the recruitment of Lachie Schultz from Freo, who was one of the best pressure small forwards in the AFL in 2023, was a sign of this change. Throw in Beau McCreery (probably my favorite player at the Pies, currently) who looks like he chases and tackles just for fun, and you theoretically have two players in your forward 50 that make defenders nervous with ball in hand.
This new gameplan was evident from “opening round” where the Pies laid 60 tackles to GWS’ 36, 21 of those tackles were in the Pies forward 50 despite losing the game. The Pies would then go on to lose their next two games against ,Sydney and St Kilda, and it was noted at the time the Pies had become a lot easier to score against. Teams were able to transition the ball far more easily and create more chances inside 50.
I think the reason for this is that while the forward 50 pressure may have been ramped up, teams figured out a way to get through it, and once they did the Pies were shown up defensively, particularly without Nathan Murphy (more on this later).
The gameplan evolved throughout the season, and it was often forced to due to injuries to key personnel. Combined with the Pies limited off-season between winning a flag and playing in Opening Round, I just don’t think there was enough time to imbed the new gameplan, perhaps evidenced by Lachie Schultz taking awhile to find his feet and having nowhere near the season he had for Freo in 2023.
McRae also attempted to move the magnets quite a bit – some of this was forced and some of it worked such as Josh Daicos across half back, Steele Sidebottom as a tagger and Noble out to a wing. Some of it was perhaps not such a great success such as Frampton swinging between forward and back and being good at neither really, Quaynor to a wing, Will Hoskin-Elliott in defence, and Jeremy Howe as a swingman – I just felt when Howe was swung forward, the defence looked even more vulnerable. The best teams have stability on and off-field, and Collingwood had neither to start 2024.
Injuries:
Now before anyone comments about how every club get’s injuries throughout a season, I agree with you, and I’m not at all saying that this is an excuse for some of the poor form from the Pies this season. Infact some of our best football was played when fringe/young players were given games, consider this list:
Harvey Harrison, Joe Richards, Reef McInnes, Nathan Kreuger, Will Parker, Charlie Dean, Ed Allan, Tew Jiath, Lachie Sullivan, Jack Bytel, Ned Long & Fin Macrae.
There’s 12 players that in 2023 were barely sighted in Collingwood’s best 22 or were not even at the club. That gives you some indication as to the injuries the Pies suffered last season.
The Pies started the season without Dan McStay who did an ACL in the pre-season, as well as question marks over Nathan Murphy (who would eventually be medically retired). McStay and Murphy were arguably our best and/or most important bookends in 2023 – with no disrespect intended to guys like Brody Mihocek and Darcy Moore.
McStay would command the opposition’s best defender in 2023 – allowing Mihocek to be matched up on the oppositions second, or even third-best key defender. Nathan Murphy allowed guys like Moore, Howe and Quaynor to come off their man and intercept mark. Without Murphy, the team lacked a real one-on-one defensive stopper and “premiership hero” Billy Frampton spent 2024 letting us know he is not the answer. While McStay and Murphy may not have been the “best” players at either end of the ground in 2023, they were arguably the most important to the Pies system.
Throw in injuries throughout the season to Tom Mitchell (17 games missed), Jordan De Goey (11 and a half games missed), Mason Cox (seven games missed), Brodie Mihocek (12 games missed), Jamie Elliott (eight games missed) and only 13 Collingwood players managed to play 20 or more games for the season, and these were players who were integral to our 2023 success.
While some may argue that Mason Cox is not in Collingwood’s best 22, he just is. He is a tough matchup forward of the ball, and allows Darcy Cameron to have a breather in the ruck. Losing de Goey and Mitchell for large portions of the season also hurt as they are the “in and under” players at centre bounces.
The Pies managed a setup for a period of about five games where all the other Collingwood centre bounce players would basically block their opponents and create a lane for Nick Daicos to swoop on the tap, but this was eventually figured out by opposition coaches. Too much was left to guys like Lachie Sullivan and Ned Long (as pre or mid season pickups) when it came to the grunt work in Collingwood’s midfield.
While I agree that all teams suffer injuries throughout a season, this Pies team was decimated by lengthy injuries to structurally important players, often all at the same time – and any team who goes into a match with a forward line comprised of Bobby Hill and an underperforming Lachie Schultz as your most experienced players is going to struggle.
Premiership hangover?
This is term bandied about quite a bit, and I think it applied to the Pies in 2024, but not in the way you might think.
I don’t think the Pies were arrogant, or resting on their laurels – you only need look as far as footage of Isaac Quaynor back in the gym the day after “Mad Monday” to illustrate this – but they definitely drank a bit more and didn’t get as much sleep as those teams who went to bed at 9pm (given the premiership window is 12am – see what I did there?!).
They then started their season a lot earlier than previous seasons with the introduction of “opening round”. I don’t think it is any coincidence that the two grand final teams of 2023 in Brisbane and Collingwood, both played in opening round, and both started the season poorly. By Round Eight, Brisbane were 3-5, and the Pies were marginally better at 4-3-1.
The short turnaround between the Grand Final and the early start with Opening Round (which was not confirmed until just before the season started) was a curse for both clubs.
Add in the fact the Pies were trying to bed in a new gameplan, and there simply wasn’t enough time for players to get physically and mentally fit between the Grand Final and Opening Round.
So, everything that went right for the Pies in 2023, went wrong for them in 2024.
Off-field they were a mess, on field they just could not get the right players fit at the right time, and the new gameplan took some fine-tuning after an earlier than normal start to the season.
Despite all this, the Pies pushed for a spot in the 8 right to the last round, and I think you would be writing them off at your own peril in 2025.
