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I should preface this by saying that I volunteered for this preview in the hopes that it would land on Scott Pendlebury’s record-breaking game, as he is my favourite non-Swans player in the competition. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that Collingwood thought Pendlebury breaking the games record was equivalent to the Pope visiting town, so the occasion has been saved for the MCG, where Pendlebury will wear a golden number, the game will have exclusive air-time on Fox Footy, and the Rolling Stones and Madonna will be flying in just for a half-time performance to commemorate the achievement.
As it stands, me writing this preview is now like going through the McDonalds drive through at the end of a night out. You really wanted chips from the kebab shop, but you’ve settled for the golden arches because they’re on the Uber drive home and you’ve committed to it now.
Anyway, we play Collingwood this week in the annual Marn Grook game. It is always a special occasion on our calendar each year, but it will be extra special for Collingwood, as most of their players were born before the White Australia Policy was abolished.
The Teams
What makes this game fascinating is that it has the potential to truly crystalise where each team is at. Collingwood are coming off a bit of a thrashing at the hands of Geelong on what was supposed to be a big occasion for them. Under Craig McCrae, the Pies have generally been nothing if not competitive and plucky, but they were neither of those things against Geelong, really. If they back it up with a similar performance against the Swans, it will be very tempting to put a line through their successful 2022-2025 era and mark it as “finished.” Or, they can produce a response that emphatically declares there is still life in them by taking down the ladder-leaders.
By the same token, the form of the Swans has been mildly questionable, if not out-right alarming. We do not look as imperious and as impenetrable as we did when we bullied the Suns into submission, or wore the Bulldogs down to a pulp. Is it a combination of the opposition taking it right up to us and us simply “doing enough” to take care of business, or is it emblematic of something more troubling? This could be the game that answers that question. A third consecutive performance that has Dean Cox looking like someone pinched his parking spot in the post-match press conference could suggest things are not all they seem atop the ladder. But a return to our absolute best will suggest that the previous two weeks were a small storm we successfully weathered.
The Game Plan
Collingwood have a fascinating team make-up at the moment, as it is mostly older players who aren’t quite what they were in their primes, and younger players who don’t quite look like taking Collingwood to the promised land. That is interesting because it leaves them wide open and vulnerable to a team that is faster than their veterans, and more skilful than their rookies. Now who on Earth is a team that plays a fast and skilful brand of footy?
This does create the potential for us to do a bit of a number on Collingwood. The problem is that of late, it feels like our brand has become so fast and skilful that the wheels are starting to fall off it a bit more than we’d like. It feels like sometimes we can be less Fast & Furious, and more like one of the stunt cars in The Naked Gun.
So eager are we to handball that we’re handballing to players who aren’t yet in place to receive it. So keen are we to showcase our skills that we’re attempting cute things like lookaway handballs and dinky side-steps and ankle-breakers. It’s a style of play that is ultra-damaging, yes, but is also just begging for pressure to clamp it down and punish it. One wrong step, one handball too many, one second of over-possessing too long, and it can be Turnover City.
In that sense – and I mean this as no disrespect to Collingwood – there is a possibility that we could become our own worst enemies at some point.
The Players
We already know Scott Pendlebury won’t be playing. I believe he’s presenting to the United Nations General Assembly.* Knowing Collingwood's track record on the values front, my bet is he is presenting evidence of WMDs in Iraq.
*Or at least that’s what the AFL media think his record is the equivalent of.
Darcy Moore will be out with concussion, which is a major blow and I think it has the potential to dramatically change the result of the game. Collingwood are now in this up to their eyeballs.
It’s hard to know who else will be available or unavailable to them, because I don’t have access to Collingwood’s aged care facility logs. But last I heard, Steele Sidebottom didn’t know if he was Arthur or Martha, and Jeremy Howe hurt his back jumping up and yelling “BINGO.”
On our end, selection has been like a revolving door this year, with players constantly being managed with injuries that are kiiiiinda injuries but also kiiiiinda not, and we never really know for sure until they're randomly confirmed as in one day, or randomly confirmed as returning the next. Peter Ladhams, Caiden Cleary and Corey Warner are the guys who get stuck in the revolving door when it jams – putting in performances that are too good for the VFL, but evidently not being perceived as in Cox & co’s best 23.
I think there is a chance Warner Jr. gets another opportunity at senior level this week. 30+ and four goals is a stat-line that is bloody difficult to ignore. But then again, so was Ladhams’ 40+ disposal game a few weeks ago. Hell, if Lachie Rankin couldn’t get a senior promotion after his 12 disposal game against Coburg in round 9, 2022, then it really shows how difficult it is to break out from the lower level.
If you’ll all allow me to get a bit fancy (see: w***er-ish), I have made no secret of the fact that I think dropping players can be a positive thing, particularly if they are players who we see as having a meaningful role to play in the best 23 and we need to get them to their best footy when it matters most. It brings me to Riley Bice, who I think has not been awful, and has certainly been good enough that seeing “Bice (omitted)” at selection would rightfully raise some eyebrows from his friends and family. But it’s a question of can he be better? Yes. Will he get better by being in the AFL team every week? Unsure. Would it kill him to have a few weeks at the lower level to iron out some of his weaknesses? Most definitely not. Dropping players is too often seen as a punishment when in many cases it is an opportunity to work on your game when you otherwise wouldn’t get to in the high-pressure, high-intensity, highly-structured senior team.
I would not at all be opposed to Serong in, Bice out, but I suspect it's more likely that Serong returns for Cootee, which I would also not be opposed to.
Then there is the matter of the talls. If Curnow is fit, who goes out for him? McDonald & McLean both gave performances that would be incredibly stiff to be dropped on the back of, and Amartey, who struggled the most out of the three against North, has been as good as Curnow, if not better, over the course of the season. It leaves us with a real dilemma. I suspect that Dean Cox will end up calling Hayden McLean into his office and singing him the famous children’s nursery rhyme:
“There were four in the bed and the big coach said, “Go back to the VFL and keep doing what you were doing, because it was impressive and you deserved your call-up, but we didn’t think you’d be that good when we signed Curnow and now we’re stuck with the four of you and we can’t play you all at once because the demands of the game with speed and pace probably don’t allow for four talls, but please re-sign with us because it’s been a long time since we’ve had depth good enough where someone like you can’t fit in our best 23, and who wants to go to St Kilda anyway as they are garbage and you’ll never win a premiership with them but you might win one with us although have you seen our grand final record lately?” And McLean fell out.”
Down the other end, McCartin’s absence has been felt so strongly that my heart has never been so fond of him. Things down back have just been in a little bit of disarray since McCartin went down with his mysterious knee injury, like a CD case where every CD doesn’t match the case it’s in.* We’re not quite getting the match-ups we want, and players like Rampe and Edwards are having to play out of their skins at points in their careers when they’re arguably entitled to not have to do so, and it’s because Tom McCartin is the Sun, and Melican, Rampe, Edwards and Mills are Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po. (You thought that was going to be a solar system analogy, didn’t you?)
*Oh, sorry Collingwood! Their players have just asked me what a CD is. Ummmm it’s a round disc that plays music. Very different from the gramophone you guys play music on before your games.
If McCartin returns, then it’s likely Melican who gets the chop, because his last two games – at least to my eye – looked a lot worse than the games that got him dropped in the first place. Will Edwards surely retains his place after a stellar performance on Nick Larkey. Edwards is imposing, brutish and very blonde. One might say he’s the latest bombshell to enter the villa. No word yet on how Isaac Heeney is taking this latest blow to his ego.
Like a road map carpet in a five-year-old kid’s bedroom, we make our way up to the midfield, which has actually been an area of genuine concern for us the last two weeks. Not in a “Hmmm it depends how you look at it” kind of way, but in a, “What the ruddy ‘ell are they doin’ in there?” kind of way. Heeney has been a lone hand in the contest at times, which is not ideal considering he’s being tagged most weeks. Warner lately is spending every possession before he earns them, and there’s a metaphor for his contract in there somewhere. McInerney has been pretty consistent but is not, and likely never will be, the answer to our need for greater clearances and contested ball. Some view Rowbottom’s indifferent form as a sign of our game this year having gone past him, but I’m old enough to remember Ned Long (Ned Long!!!!) giving him a bath twelve months ago, so there is a deeper problem going on with him. And Sheldrick is going from strength to strength, but has actually been flexing his muscles more as a general play/handball receiver type, more so than a first-possession, hard ball-winning bull on the inside.
We may be lucky in the sense that Collingwood aren’t exactly stacked in this regard, either. Nick Daicos is Nick Daicos, Jordan De Goey is effective but not quite the player he was three or four years ago, and players like Beau McCreery and Angus Anderson aren’t major accumulators, though I do enjoy the way they play with complete reckless abandon, something I feel we miss in our midfield.
If we have a third straight week of a team unleashing a can of whoop-ass out of the centre over us, this one would by far be the least dignified of the lot.
The Prediction
I think the scenario is relatively straight-forward for us this week, and will be pretty transferrable to most games we play for the rest of the season. If we bring our best, we will win and win big. If we don't, then there's only gonna be so many games we can eke out "ugly wins" before they turn into "disappointing losses."
I feel there has probably been enough for the group to work on and improve upon over the last two weeks that there should be something of a response this week. We will lose at some point, but I suspect it will come on the back of a ripping performance where we maybe play out of our skins and get ahead of ourselves. After being nowhere near our best against North, I would be flat to see us follow it with a similar or even worse performance. So I am backing the boys in.
Swans by 317 points.
The Addendum
I just want to add a little piece about why I personally really like Marn Grook and the Sir Doug Nicholls Round. I feel like there are portions of society who are what I call "conditionally accepting." They accept people who are different from them, but there's always a "but." They accept a certain group of people, "but why do they have to..." etc. I feel like that is particularly true of society's relationship with the indigenous Australian people and culture. They like watching them play football, but as soon as any of them dare to express themselves, or express pride in their culture, they're "divisive", it's "over the top", it's "unnecessary".
Indigenous Australians have contributed an enormous amount to our game, but there is so much more to them than being just good at our sport. I feel like Marn Grook and the Sir Doug Nicholls Round is an occasion where our sport gets to give something back to them - a platform to celebrate their culture, their customs and their history.
No ifs, ands, or "buts."
As it stands, me writing this preview is now like going through the McDonalds drive through at the end of a night out. You really wanted chips from the kebab shop, but you’ve settled for the golden arches because they’re on the Uber drive home and you’ve committed to it now.
Anyway, we play Collingwood this week in the annual Marn Grook game. It is always a special occasion on our calendar each year, but it will be extra special for Collingwood, as most of their players were born before the White Australia Policy was abolished.
The Teams
What makes this game fascinating is that it has the potential to truly crystalise where each team is at. Collingwood are coming off a bit of a thrashing at the hands of Geelong on what was supposed to be a big occasion for them. Under Craig McCrae, the Pies have generally been nothing if not competitive and plucky, but they were neither of those things against Geelong, really. If they back it up with a similar performance against the Swans, it will be very tempting to put a line through their successful 2022-2025 era and mark it as “finished.” Or, they can produce a response that emphatically declares there is still life in them by taking down the ladder-leaders.
By the same token, the form of the Swans has been mildly questionable, if not out-right alarming. We do not look as imperious and as impenetrable as we did when we bullied the Suns into submission, or wore the Bulldogs down to a pulp. Is it a combination of the opposition taking it right up to us and us simply “doing enough” to take care of business, or is it emblematic of something more troubling? This could be the game that answers that question. A third consecutive performance that has Dean Cox looking like someone pinched his parking spot in the post-match press conference could suggest things are not all they seem atop the ladder. But a return to our absolute best will suggest that the previous two weeks were a small storm we successfully weathered.
The Game Plan
Collingwood have a fascinating team make-up at the moment, as it is mostly older players who aren’t quite what they were in their primes, and younger players who don’t quite look like taking Collingwood to the promised land. That is interesting because it leaves them wide open and vulnerable to a team that is faster than their veterans, and more skilful than their rookies. Now who on Earth is a team that plays a fast and skilful brand of footy?
This does create the potential for us to do a bit of a number on Collingwood. The problem is that of late, it feels like our brand has become so fast and skilful that the wheels are starting to fall off it a bit more than we’d like. It feels like sometimes we can be less Fast & Furious, and more like one of the stunt cars in The Naked Gun.
So eager are we to handball that we’re handballing to players who aren’t yet in place to receive it. So keen are we to showcase our skills that we’re attempting cute things like lookaway handballs and dinky side-steps and ankle-breakers. It’s a style of play that is ultra-damaging, yes, but is also just begging for pressure to clamp it down and punish it. One wrong step, one handball too many, one second of over-possessing too long, and it can be Turnover City.
In that sense – and I mean this as no disrespect to Collingwood – there is a possibility that we could become our own worst enemies at some point.
The Players
We already know Scott Pendlebury won’t be playing. I believe he’s presenting to the United Nations General Assembly.* Knowing Collingwood's track record on the values front, my bet is he is presenting evidence of WMDs in Iraq.
*Or at least that’s what the AFL media think his record is the equivalent of.
Darcy Moore will be out with concussion, which is a major blow and I think it has the potential to dramatically change the result of the game. Collingwood are now in this up to their eyeballs.
It’s hard to know who else will be available or unavailable to them, because I don’t have access to Collingwood’s aged care facility logs. But last I heard, Steele Sidebottom didn’t know if he was Arthur or Martha, and Jeremy Howe hurt his back jumping up and yelling “BINGO.”
On our end, selection has been like a revolving door this year, with players constantly being managed with injuries that are kiiiiinda injuries but also kiiiiinda not, and we never really know for sure until they're randomly confirmed as in one day, or randomly confirmed as returning the next. Peter Ladhams, Caiden Cleary and Corey Warner are the guys who get stuck in the revolving door when it jams – putting in performances that are too good for the VFL, but evidently not being perceived as in Cox & co’s best 23.
I think there is a chance Warner Jr. gets another opportunity at senior level this week. 30+ and four goals is a stat-line that is bloody difficult to ignore. But then again, so was Ladhams’ 40+ disposal game a few weeks ago. Hell, if Lachie Rankin couldn’t get a senior promotion after his 12 disposal game against Coburg in round 9, 2022, then it really shows how difficult it is to break out from the lower level.
If you’ll all allow me to get a bit fancy (see: w***er-ish), I have made no secret of the fact that I think dropping players can be a positive thing, particularly if they are players who we see as having a meaningful role to play in the best 23 and we need to get them to their best footy when it matters most. It brings me to Riley Bice, who I think has not been awful, and has certainly been good enough that seeing “Bice (omitted)” at selection would rightfully raise some eyebrows from his friends and family. But it’s a question of can he be better? Yes. Will he get better by being in the AFL team every week? Unsure. Would it kill him to have a few weeks at the lower level to iron out some of his weaknesses? Most definitely not. Dropping players is too often seen as a punishment when in many cases it is an opportunity to work on your game when you otherwise wouldn’t get to in the high-pressure, high-intensity, highly-structured senior team.
I would not at all be opposed to Serong in, Bice out, but I suspect it's more likely that Serong returns for Cootee, which I would also not be opposed to.
Then there is the matter of the talls. If Curnow is fit, who goes out for him? McDonald & McLean both gave performances that would be incredibly stiff to be dropped on the back of, and Amartey, who struggled the most out of the three against North, has been as good as Curnow, if not better, over the course of the season. It leaves us with a real dilemma. I suspect that Dean Cox will end up calling Hayden McLean into his office and singing him the famous children’s nursery rhyme:
“There were four in the bed and the big coach said, “Go back to the VFL and keep doing what you were doing, because it was impressive and you deserved your call-up, but we didn’t think you’d be that good when we signed Curnow and now we’re stuck with the four of you and we can’t play you all at once because the demands of the game with speed and pace probably don’t allow for four talls, but please re-sign with us because it’s been a long time since we’ve had depth good enough where someone like you can’t fit in our best 23, and who wants to go to St Kilda anyway as they are garbage and you’ll never win a premiership with them but you might win one with us although have you seen our grand final record lately?” And McLean fell out.”
Down the other end, McCartin’s absence has been felt so strongly that my heart has never been so fond of him. Things down back have just been in a little bit of disarray since McCartin went down with his mysterious knee injury, like a CD case where every CD doesn’t match the case it’s in.* We’re not quite getting the match-ups we want, and players like Rampe and Edwards are having to play out of their skins at points in their careers when they’re arguably entitled to not have to do so, and it’s because Tom McCartin is the Sun, and Melican, Rampe, Edwards and Mills are Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po. (You thought that was going to be a solar system analogy, didn’t you?)
*Oh, sorry Collingwood! Their players have just asked me what a CD is. Ummmm it’s a round disc that plays music. Very different from the gramophone you guys play music on before your games.
If McCartin returns, then it’s likely Melican who gets the chop, because his last two games – at least to my eye – looked a lot worse than the games that got him dropped in the first place. Will Edwards surely retains his place after a stellar performance on Nick Larkey. Edwards is imposing, brutish and very blonde. One might say he’s the latest bombshell to enter the villa. No word yet on how Isaac Heeney is taking this latest blow to his ego.
Like a road map carpet in a five-year-old kid’s bedroom, we make our way up to the midfield, which has actually been an area of genuine concern for us the last two weeks. Not in a “Hmmm it depends how you look at it” kind of way, but in a, “What the ruddy ‘ell are they doin’ in there?” kind of way. Heeney has been a lone hand in the contest at times, which is not ideal considering he’s being tagged most weeks. Warner lately is spending every possession before he earns them, and there’s a metaphor for his contract in there somewhere. McInerney has been pretty consistent but is not, and likely never will be, the answer to our need for greater clearances and contested ball. Some view Rowbottom’s indifferent form as a sign of our game this year having gone past him, but I’m old enough to remember Ned Long (Ned Long!!!!) giving him a bath twelve months ago, so there is a deeper problem going on with him. And Sheldrick is going from strength to strength, but has actually been flexing his muscles more as a general play/handball receiver type, more so than a first-possession, hard ball-winning bull on the inside.
We may be lucky in the sense that Collingwood aren’t exactly stacked in this regard, either. Nick Daicos is Nick Daicos, Jordan De Goey is effective but not quite the player he was three or four years ago, and players like Beau McCreery and Angus Anderson aren’t major accumulators, though I do enjoy the way they play with complete reckless abandon, something I feel we miss in our midfield.
If we have a third straight week of a team unleashing a can of whoop-ass out of the centre over us, this one would by far be the least dignified of the lot.
The Prediction
I think the scenario is relatively straight-forward for us this week, and will be pretty transferrable to most games we play for the rest of the season. If we bring our best, we will win and win big. If we don't, then there's only gonna be so many games we can eke out "ugly wins" before they turn into "disappointing losses."
I feel there has probably been enough for the group to work on and improve upon over the last two weeks that there should be something of a response this week. We will lose at some point, but I suspect it will come on the back of a ripping performance where we maybe play out of our skins and get ahead of ourselves. After being nowhere near our best against North, I would be flat to see us follow it with a similar or even worse performance. So I am backing the boys in.
Swans by 317 points.
The Addendum
I just want to add a little piece about why I personally really like Marn Grook and the Sir Doug Nicholls Round. I feel like there are portions of society who are what I call "conditionally accepting." They accept people who are different from them, but there's always a "but." They accept a certain group of people, "but why do they have to..." etc. I feel like that is particularly true of society's relationship with the indigenous Australian people and culture. They like watching them play football, but as soon as any of them dare to express themselves, or express pride in their culture, they're "divisive", it's "over the top", it's "unnecessary".
Indigenous Australians have contributed an enormous amount to our game, but there is so much more to them than being just good at our sport. I feel like Marn Grook and the Sir Doug Nicholls Round is an occasion where our sport gets to give something back to them - a platform to celebrate their culture, their customs and their history.
No ifs, ands, or "buts."
