Notes from the game: 2015 Round 4 Essendon

Collingwood wins the traditional Anzac Day game.

Team                    Q1      Q2      Q3      Q4      Final 
Essendon Bombers        2.0     4.8     5.10    6.13    49
Collingwood Magpies     3.2     4.9     7.12    9.15    69 

Expectations

This year, Collingwood is an unknown quantity to me. I've mentioned before, that I expect Collingwood to do badly - perhaps bottom 5. So I went to this match looking for very little from the Pies. In fact, I almost didn't go. At the last moment, I thought I might just stay at home and watch on TV. Then if things got ugly, I could turn off.

Before the start, I said to the M's (Matt and Mark) that if we lost by 5 goals but at least put up a fight I would be satisfied. Imagine how much more I enjoyed the final result!

How important is scoring?

I mentioned last week that half way through the first quarter I felt like I'd watched a lot of footy. I assumed that was connected to the fact that it was a high-scoring first quarter. In the Anzac Day match, again I thought I'd watched a lot of footy. But at that stage, each team had kicked a single goal. Nevertheless, the game was exciting. There was good play on both sides.

Celebration

How many causes for celebration were there after the game?

• We went into the game as underdogs, yet won.
• We beat one of the arch enemies - Essendon.
• We won the biggest home-and-away match of the year - against Essendon.
• We fielded the eventual Anzac Day medallist, Paul Seedsman.
• We can go into next week and face Carlton with greater confidence.
• Essendon lost (that's a virtue even when they don't play Collingwood).
• Two weeks earlier, our opponents had beaten Hawthorn, the competition yardstick.

We should have stopped for a victory doughnut.

Analysis

Collingwood won much more than the game.

Our defence was awesome. Jack Frost never gets large disposal numbers or Supercoach or AFL Fantasy points, but that just underlines how badly these stats fall short. He left his man to run 30 metres and effect a spoil. Toovey - 7 tackles (only Heppell had more (8)). Goldsack had several important marks in defence in the last quarter (as well as a huge mark under heaps of duress and a long run to spoil in the first quarter). Williams racked up 22 possessions. Brown and Langdon both played a part. Ramsay and Oxley weren't as good as last week, but still fitted in well. Importantly, the defence worked very well together.

With only 9 goals scored, and 15 behinds, we can hardly sing the praises of the forward line. Elliott with 2 was ok. I'm rubbing my eyes. I've checked two different sources and both say Cloke kicked 2.0. Given that the Pies scored 9.15, I find that hard to believe. Apparently 8 behinds were rushed. Seedsman kicked a longer goal than Dwyer's last week. Crisp kicked a nice goal. Adams missed two regulation set shots.

Adams had 10 marks for the match. Grundy was up and about (enthusiastic and effective). I would have thought Bellchambers would have been expected to outperform our young ruckman.

For all the good things Collingwood did, there's still plenty of room for improvement. Pendlebury and Swan know each other's game as if they shared a spinal column (look at the first bounce; and the pass from Swan to Pendlebury for a mark and goal), but many of the new players still have a long way to go (in quarter 1, Varcoe and Seedsman shared a Keystone Cops moment as they handballed back and forth until the moment was lost). Players weren't always clean, possibly because conditions were tough. Even Seedsman overran the ball. In the dominant first quarter, Collingwood should have taken a bigger lead. And allowing Stanton to kick a goal on the siren was not a good look.

For all that, the commentators said both sides applied a lot of pressure. With Collingwood the vastly less experienced side, you'd have to count that as a big win for the Pies. They were tested - and passed.

Perhaps Collingwood was lucky to win. We thought Essendon played pretty dumb footy. It rained before the game and probably during. Conditions were slippery; players slipped over. Yet Essendon played a high-risk, "pretty", possession game when conditions called for crash and bash and move the ball forwards. The Bombers constantly moved the ball laterally around half back. Several times, they came unstuck. Had Collingwood players been further along in their development, they might have exacted an even larger toll.

But arguably, the dumbness was not restricted to one team. The conditions really didn't suit the talls. It might have made more sense to take off Corey Gault rather than Oxley. (Of course, the coaching panel might have felt so confident of a win that they felt there was some lesson for Gault. Me, I would have banked the win.)

Seedsman could have got the gong for several reasons. His 14 I50s (next best, 6) would probably have been enough.

The wrap

We can only hope that the Pies take a lot of heart from this game. Bring on the Blues!

Sources, Notes, References

http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/ft_match_statistics?mid=5993
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-match-centre/live-afl-essendon-v-collingwood-on-anzac-day-20150425-1mt0oc.html