Are We Completely Sure Collingwood Can’t Win The Premiership?

It’s exceptionally easy to dismiss Collingwood’s premiership chances. 

They enter the finals as the eighth place team, saddled with an agonisingly dormant attack and sporting the game’s most acute injury list.

To make matters worse, their first-up appointment is a scheduled Elimination Final encounter against the Eagles who just happen to be 55-12 in Perth over the last five years. 

Making any headway against West Coast, let alone any further noise beyond that potential boil-ever would appear to be a mammoth task, however are we taking the easy way out by crossing them out so flippantly?

According to Stats Insider’s futures projections, they’re just a 3.3% chance of wining the flag, yet the case can be made the Pies are anything but your typical eighth seed, heading into an anything but a typical Finals series, off the back of a completely atypical season. 

While the Pies have struggled desperately to score this year, if there’s one season we’re entitled to think differently about scoring it’s this one, where points have become an endangered species, and where 8 goals is the kind of return which can win you a match. 

In fact, the Pies beat Geelong in the Qualifying Final last year with just 61-points and lost the Preliminary Final a couple of weeks later by just 4 off the back of a 52-point effort. 

Collingwood are uniquely qualified to win ugly, while the gap between the attack they’re packing for the Finals, compared with the game’s best (Geelong) is actually only 218 points- a comparatively small number in an albeit reduced season.

We really don’t have to journey that far into our mind’s recesses to remember a time when Collingwood were solid premiership fancies. In fact, in mid-July, and after beating Geelong in Round 7, Collingwood enjoyed premiership favouritism just prior to injuries and unsavoury off-field incidents stalling their progress.

In defence, Jeremy Howe was ripped away from what at the time was an almost impenetrable defence. In midfield, decorated Magpie Steele Sidebottom season ended, Adam Treloar cobbled together just eight games, while Tom Phillips' hamstring remains a major worry heading into Finals. Up forward, the club’s most dangerous player, Jordan De Goey, has also had an interrupted season owing to both injury and some pretty unsettling off-field allegations levelled against him. 

Really, there hasn’t been an area of the park the Pies haven’t had to bandage over, yet credit must go to Nathan Buckley and the playing group for not throwing in the towel. They’ll take one of their healthiest squads in months into the clash with West Coast, and one that will include no less than 4 All-Australians, with Darcy Moore and Taylor Adams its newly minted members, to go along with club legend and former basketballer Scott Pendlebury, as well as Brodie Grundy.

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Along with a better health situation the Pies should also take in a fair bit of confidence owing to how well they’ve faired against the competition’s best all season.

Against both top-4 and top-8 opposition, Collingwood actually grade out as a top-4 team with only the Eagles truly menacing them this year. They of course ran the Tigers to a draw, kept Brisbane and Port Adelaideto within a couple of goals while trouncing Geelong. 

But it’s West Coast who remains Collingwood’s 'white whale', and a club which has continually had its measure over the last few years. 

Of the Magpie’s seven losses in 2020, five have come against team’s with a positive clearance differential, which is an area the Pies have invested most of their chips, tending to struggle when their Grundy's influence has been nullified. 

For Collingwood, the Eagles are the exact kind of team that gives them nightmares, not just because of Nic Natanui’s ability to compete and excel, but because Josh Kennedy and Jack Darling’ssize and talent have continually plagued them, while Jeremy McGovern has usually had a field day picking off often futile forays forward.

It’s a chief reason why the Eagles made minced meat of them when they met in Round 8, and why they’ve knocked them off in 5 of their last 6 clashes including the 2018 Grand Final.

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If the Pies are to make any noise over the coming weeks it’ll obviously have to start with standing up to their schoolyard bully. That recipe will need a big dose of Brodie Grundy excellence, require Moore and Jordan Roughead to curtail the Eagle's twin-towers and also call for De Goey to catch fire.

This is still a talent laden team, and while Buckley hasn’t come close to fashioning a modern, progressive attack, he can’t be questioned for keeping his troops focused and prepared. The Pies are still the game’s second best team when it comes to contested possession, while they are also brilliant out of the gates, boasting a league-best 159.8 first quarter percentage.

While they'll for now have to forget about sending out an ideal 22, they remain tough and accountable, which is the exact kind of fumes the Western Bulldogs were breathing when they stunned the Eagles in 2016, before using that win to fuel their own unforgettable Final's journey. 

Collingwood has 15 premierships in the cupboard back in Melbourne, with all 15 being launched from either first or second on the ladder. Winning a 16th from eighth position would likely qualify as the club’s most famous amidst an absolutely unforgettable year.

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