Team Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Final Collingwood 1.4 4.6 7.9 7.14 56 West Coast 2.6 4.10 7.16 11.21 87
Overview
In truth, we should never have been in this game. The Eagles should simply have delivered a one-two punch in the first quarter and put the Collingwood supporters out of their misery. Instead, they went to school on our kicking (which has been a problem going back at least to 2010).
For this game, we were marginally less accurate than the Eagles. Had they kicked an extra behind we would both have kicked goals once out of 3 scoring shots. Of course no one wants to examine shots that didn't register on the scoreboard.
We actually won the second quarter, but still managed to be behind at half time. There were 7 points in it at the last break. On a positive note, each team kicked 5 behinds in the final quarter, but they also kicked 4 goals.
So, not much to salvage from this game.
Before the game
Things looked bad when it emerged that Jamie Elliott had back problems and would not be part of the team. He will miss a few weeks at least. This was on top of the loss of another forward, Tim Broomhead, subbed out of last week's game with a shoulder. The Collingwood website characterises it as "long-term".
One is not supposed to use injuries as an excuse, but there is a particular relevance here. This season is doing a passable job of mirroring last year, especially the bit about turning at the half-way point of the season 8-3. Last year we finished the season pretty much unable to field a side we had so many injuries. Examples like those mentioned above take on a more ominous cast when seen in this light.
The game
And so it proved. Early in the first quarter, Cloke was subbed out with a calf. He had not troubled the statisticians. "Travis has had scans and they have revealed that he has a [strain] to the soleus. It's not terrible but it is certainly bad enough to keep him out for this week... short-to-medium term..."
We played the rest of the game missing our two top goal scorers for the year. Where would our goals come from? That was easy: they wouldn't.
Supporters might hope that Jesse White would step up, but I suspect that that just isn't going to happen. During the week, Wayne Carey wrote a piece calling White a "tease". I think he hit the nail on the head. The Footy Bogan laments the loss of Chris Dawes to Melbourne, but that's one of the facts of life now.
Fasolo produced 2 of Collingwood's 7 goals but that was never going to be enough; Grundy and Witts 1 each. In Adams's absence, Sidebottom racked up 38 touches, Williams 33, Crisp 31. Oxley hauled in 11 marks. Can he kick accurately? Should we try him up forward?
Needless to say, NicNat had most of the hitouts. Nevertheless, clearances were just about equal (30, 31).
West Coast kicked a goal 22 seconds into the second half and 61 seconds into the last quarter. In a game that saw a total of 18 goals kicked (7, 11), you can't expect to gift the opposition such a start to quarters and still expect to be competitive.
To my mind, that we were able to stay a credible (though improbable) chance for three quarters speaks volumes about how bad the Eagles were. Turn that sentence around and one might want to say we are a couple of players short of being contenders. Perhaps we just need the current equivalent of Luke Ball and Darren Jolly and we'll be in a position to repeat 2010. Perhaps not.
The wrap
What we definitely are not is Hawthorn. They managed to lose Franklin (permanently) and Roughead (for a couple) and still beat us and barely noticed his absence. This has shown us that we are carrying passengers up forward, we lack forward depth, we are too dependent on too few scorers - which is pretty much saying the same thing in several different ways. What we don't have is what we had in 2011: enough tall players down back (Reid, Tarrant), that we can afford the luxury of sending one or another up forward to mix things up a bit. Nor do we have a Leigh Brown up forward who can pinch-hit in defence.
As I've said before, our defence has been remarkably good; our midfield has discovered some surprisingly good new soldiers (Crisp, Adams - but he's on holiday, Greenwood, de Goey - though not so much in this game); we just have major problems in the forward line. I don't know for sure, and it won't matter for a while, but the forward problem may have been exacerbated by Elliott playing more of a midfield role recently. Was that his idea or the coaches'?
What can we look forward to? Well, maybe this: Ben Reid "should be a certainty to play this week." We might also regain Ben Sinclair, Tyson Goldsack, Corey Gault (though I wouldn't expect a lot from him).
At the end of the round, as previously predicted, Collingwood had quietly slipped out of the 8, no doubt for the rest of the year.
Sources, Notes, Footnotes, References
http://www.footywire.com/afl/footy/ft_match_statistics?mid=6093
http://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/season/injury-list
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