Coll V Ess – my favorite game of the year!
I’ve always loved Anzac day.
As a kid I basically grew up in an RSL. My Grandfather was the President of the local RSL, my Grandmother was president of the Ladies Auxiliary. My mother ended up working at the local RSL for many years as the finance manager. My father was the Treasurer on the committee. I think I knew the words to the Ode of Remembrance before I knew the theme song to Play School!
My grandfather and my father are both veterans, and I regularly attend the dawn service with Papa Higgins. For me personally, it is often an emotional day. I am a huge advocate for remembering the sacrifices that our current servicemen and women, and our veterans have made.
Unfortunately for Papa Higgins, once we are done remembering our veteran’s service and sacrifice, he has a less than peaceful day ahead. As a closeted Hawks fan, he regularly spends the Anzac afternoon shaking his head in bemusement as Mama Higgins and I scream at the TV for three hours, riding the roller coaster of emotions that often comes with the annual Anzac day fixture.
I’m lucky enough to be a huge Anzac day fan, and a huge Collingwood fan. So when this fixture was invented back in the 90s it was really a win/win for me. It really is a special fixture on the AFL calendar, and hearing (or not hearing) 100,000 people observe silence as the last post is echoing around the G, followed by the huge roar from both sets of supporters after the anthems, I mean it really sends a shiver down your spine!
This game also seems to always be a pretty close affair, no matter where both sides are on the ladder. In 30 Anzac Day fixtures there have been two draws, and 15 other games decided by 20 points or less – will we see another close one today?
Essendon has improved over the last couple of games with 100+ scores as they beat Melbourne and took Gold Coast to the wire, meanwhile the Pies are grinding out wins with their defensive system impressive, but failing to score over 100 points since the 2025 season. With an hour to go until the first bounce, I’ll be back!
I wrote the above about half an hour before the bounce, and if I’m honest I wasn’t super-confident for the Pies going into this one, but with every quarter I saw signs, pleasing signs for the Pies. Essendon were competitive, but ultimately I’m not sure how much I can say about them positively even if I didn’t go for Collingwood.
The Bombers were thumped, and by the end they were largely uncompetitive and pretty much resembled witches hats. It was really disappointing considering they looked as though they had turned a corner over the last couple of weeks. I’ll do my best to find some positives for the Bombers fans here, but let’s get stuck into what I noticed.
Old Man River:
Of course I’m going to start with Scott Pendlebury. If this game is any evidence, I suspect he might be quite good at football, and he certainly has a bright future ahead of him!
Jokes aside, the commentary at halftime was heavily focused on Naicos and Roberts and the games they had put together. Meanwhile, Pendlebury was just quietly putting together a very neat game in his 19th Anzac Day match. He had 22 possessions at that point, and while Naicos was wasting most of his, Pendlebury just looked so composed.
I actually messaged my fellow Mongrel Writers just before the bounce and said I had a feeling that Pendles was going to win the medal today. You could call me Nostradamus – I wouldn’t, but you guys could if you want.
No doubt Pendles will come up against tougher opposition than he did today, but he did a lot of his work in the first and second quarters when the game was largely competitive. He barely wasted a possession and rarely looked hurried. This is hardly a surprise, we’ve witnessed this composure for 430 games before today (did you guys know he had a basketball background?), but Archie Roberts aside (more on him later) Pendlebury just made the game look easy when the heat was on; and then feasted during party time.
It is the icing on the cake for Pendlebury in what is most likely his last ever Anzac day game as a player in what will end as a career full of records.
The ol’ 1-2 ruck setup:
What have the Pies found here?
In just his fifth game, Oscar Steene was probably the most influential big man on the ground. I could not for the life of me find a live stat for hitouts to advantage during the game, and only just now as I am writing this section have I managed to find them on the AFL website – Steene had .eight
In my notes, I attributed Steene with nine hitouts to advantage (I may have got excited), but when I say hitouts to advantage, these were proper hitouts to advantage. Eight times, Steene beat Wright or Blakiston and hit the ball five metres away from the contest where a Pies player was able to run into clear space. These weren’t taps that landed in a players lap who was immediately tackled leading to a secondary ball-up, these were fair dinkum influential hit outs that gave the Pies ascendancy in the middle.
Cameron did most of the ruckwork around the ground where wrestling and a more mature body often wins out over an athletic jump, and was no slouch himself with six hitouts to advantage, but not one of those was as obvious as Steene’s.
So the Pies, often the masters of momentum in recent seasons, now have a genuine 1-2 punch in the ruck. Need to slow the game down and prevent clear stoppage wins for the other team? In you go Darcy Cameron. Need to get the ball out into space to try and score, you’re up Oscar Steene!
While the new ruck rules have certainly not slowed down A-grade ruckmen like Gawn and Grundy, they have certainly opened the door for someone like Steene to make an impact, and in just his 5th game he certainly did that.
El-Hawli v Elliott
El-Hawli was probably one of the few winners for the Bombers today. Given the unenviable task of defending Jamie Elliott, who kicked five in this fixture last year, it was a big ask for a young player in his 13th game.
In the first half though, when the game was on the line, he did his job admirably. Elliott barely had a sniff in the first quarter. He dropped a mark he arguably should have taken, and was so frustrated that he gave away two free kicks to El Hawli in the first quarter alone.
El Hawli also helped himself to 23 possessions on the day, and although Elliott finished with 2.2 from 5 marks, both of those goals came in the second half when the game was pretty done and dusted. Elliott can be a tough match up for even the most experienced of defenders, but El-Hawli is one of few Bombers who can hold his head high.
Unlike his defensive compatriot….
Is it Harry or Ben?
You never see Harry and Ben McKay in the same place at the same time, but today you certainly saw Ben McKay in the wrong place all the time.
He started poorly, with a lazy kick gifting the Pies second goal of the game to Lachie Schultz, but it only got worse for the other McKay from there.
McKay may have actually been Essendon’s leading score assist player on the field in the third quarter, the only issue was he was assisting Collingwood to score!
The most polite way I can say this is that he was extremely weak in two contests, and an absolute moron in the third contest. Twice he allowed himself to be easily blocked off the ball by a much smaller opponent, allowing McStay to basically take uncontested marks on both occasions.
The third contest was perhaps the most damning though. After another Essendon player assisting him in spoiling a Collingwood player, McKay incorrectly assumed the contest was over and began applauding either himself or his teammate (I really hope it was teammate), as the ball bounced off the goal line back into play and Angus Anderson swooped on it for the easiest of finishes.
I know I sound harsh on McKay here, but I think he deserves it. In what is commonly considered the second biggest AFL fixture of the season, there is simply no excuse to be as uncompetitive as McKay was in this game, and it’s not the first time he’s shown this lack of fight in his Bombers career. He also had an opportunity to take an intercept mark in the last quarter, but in acres of space chose to punch the ball and it ended in a Collingwood goal.
From all reports McKay is on decent money, and I feel like Essendon is certainly not getting value for money here. North received pick 3 as compensation back in 2023 which they used on Zane Duursma. Duursma has certainly not set the world in fire in his first two seasons at North, but if you had to pick on over the other, surely Duursma has more up side?
Any positives for Essendon?
Glad you asked – there were a couple.
Nate Caddy was so close to an amazing quarter in the first. He is the player that Essendon should be looking to build around in the future. He never drops his head, and if not for some wayward kicking would have probably been the most influential player on the ground at quarter time.
Caddy opened the third quarter with his first goal, beating not one, not two, but three Collingwood opponents to kick a great goal that showed his talent as much as it showed his workrate. Maynard is no slouch and he hates to lose a contest, but lose it he did as Caddy dipped, ducked, dodged and dived to escape the clutches of both Maynard and Howe.
The Bombers have also found one in Archie Roberts. He reminds me a bit of Nick Martin in that you can put him almost anywhere on the field and he will give you value. His first half was immense in this one and he was one of the reasons Essendon was still in the game at half time. His ability to intercept, but then also use the ball going the other way was a real highlight, and he finished the game with 707 metres gained! I know metres gained is not always a reliable indicator of influence on the game, but not too many of his 22 first half disposals missed the mark.
He is probably the only Bomber who can hold his head high post match.
Other stuff:
Geez the coverage today was really ordinary, reportedly across Fox and Seven. The sound from the crowd and the umpire regularly dropped out, there were cut aways to replays of grass during live passages of play. Just a really bizarre/ordinary day for the broadcasters across all platforms.
I know HB likes to highlight new/young players in all his reviews, but with about seven new Bombers and two or three new Pies in this one I found it hard to keep track. It was also a tough day to be a young Bomber player, but I will say there was a particularly nice piece of play from the Bombers youngsters in the first quarter that started with an intercept possession from Farrow, who found Robey, who found Day-Wicks for a Bombers goal. I did note under Farrow’s name after that passage of play “composed” and he had a pretty good game with 19 disposals.
As a Pies man, I love Naicos, but I honestly get some of the hatred directed towards him. The commentators literally gush over every little thing he does. At halftime they showed a highlights package of Steene tapping it directly to Naicos three times in the second quarter, and not one of them mentioned the ruckwork of Steene! It was all about how Naicos got on the move and influenced the contest. Two things can be true at once, and no question Naicos got better as the game wore on, but it took two players to make those plays so maybe highlight the other guy?!
Also I think this might be the best game I’ve seen Dan Houston play for the Pies. He’s getting better with every game and a bit like Lachie Schultz, he looks much more comfortable in his role in his second season.
And that will just about do me. I’ve tried to be as impartial as I can be, but after halftime this was really just party-time for the Pies, and you could almost see it coming. The game could have been over at half-time if the Pies hadn’t kicked 1.6 in the second quarter – infact the second quarter lead to Mama Higgins dropping a rare F bomb when she noted “just kick a fucking goal!”
I’m kind of selling my own team up the river here, but I’m just going to say it anyway. The Pies have found yet another way to exploit the stand rule on occasion. Much was made of the Pies players taking a few steps towards the corridor last season, and ultimately this lead to a harsher interpretation of the stand rule this season. But next time you watch a Pies game, watch how they approach the mark from the corridor side of the marking player while waiting for the umpire to call stand. It’s a small thing, but it happened several times today and effectively preventing the Bombers trying to bite off the 45 degree kick.
And that will just about do me. I’ve tried to be as impartial as I can be, but after halftime this was really just party-time for the Pies, and you could almost see it coming. The game could have been over at half-time if the Pies hadn’t kicked 1.6 in the second quarter – infact the second quarter lead to Mama Higgins dropping a rare F bomb when she noted “just kick a fucking goal!”
I’m still not 100% sold on the Pies going deep into finals, and next Thursday against the Hawks will be a proper litmus test for where they are at – and could possibly end in divorce for Mama and Papa Higgins!
The Dons will take on the Lions at Marvel on Saturday, and when you consider the Lions demolished the Pies by 54 points a few weeks ago, well that could get ugly. Sorry to all the Mongrel Essendon fans, but it was really tough to find a good word to say about them today!
