It’s a familiar scenario. A Collingwood team, seemingly no match for one of the top premiership contenders, comes out hard and turns the game into a high pressure, intense battle. They force their opponent to play the game on their terms with hard tackling and defensive pressure. It’s clear to everyone that Mick Malthouse has sold his players on exactly what is required of them to win, and they’re all playing their roles.
Sometimes this might end with a Collingwood upset, or even break open for a big win, as in 2008 when they gave Geelong their only loss of the season. Sometimes they get closer than anyone expected them to and earn respect even in defeat. And sometimes it comes unstuck as the class of the opposition eventually overwhelms the Magpie battlers. Friday night versus St. Kilda was definitely in the third category.
You could see it from the start that Mick had coached them up for a big effort against the Saints. They were hard at every contest, smothering the Saints with their pressure all around the ground. They managed to keep it a low scoring contest, a style that suited them much more than it did St. Kilda. Then fate dealt them what seemed to be a fantastic opportunity when Riewoldt went down injured. Collingwood were undoubtedly in a position to win.
So how did they lose? Put simply, St. Kilda are better than Collingwood. Collingwood tried to pretend this wasn’t the case, but could only pretend for so long.
Isn’t this typical of the Malthouse years at Collingwood? For ten seasons now Mick has had basically the same team. The players may have changed but the personality is the same: Mick’s Battlers. Like when they lost the 2002 Grand Final to the Brisbane Lions, the story was that Mick had gotten them so close to toppling the Brisbane machine (still the only case I can remember of the losing team pushing the winners from the front page of the Herald-Sun). No one would deny that Mick consistently does an amazing job of getting the best out of the talent he has.
The question is, why don’t they have better talent? This is Malthouse’s team. He has recruited players, drafted them, developed them, so why hasn’t he been able to build anything better than a team of scrappers over ten years? And why haven’t others at Collingwood been asking these questions?
Mick has always had free reign with the Pies. When Eddie McGuire lured him away from West Coast, he’d coached them to ten straight finals series and two premierships, arguably the best team of the ’90s.
Mick was trusted to bring that level of success back to a rock bottom Collingwood team. Whatever Mick needed, Eddie would stand by him. There is no mistaking that this team is Mick Malthouse’s creation, for better or worse.
If I were a Collingwood supporter, I’d be jamming the switchboards at the Lexus Centre with “We want Bucks now, not later” phone calls. Why has Mick been allowed to build a team that needs to be coached up every week? Where players never seem to reach that next level to become genuine stars? The media have a tendency to overhype Collingwood players as soon as they play one decent game, but Mick seems to hang on to these guys for longer than other clubs would bother. Has he ever had any kind of return on these investments? (Please don’t try and tell me Leon Davis has paid off, I watched the prelim)
Collingwood’s faith in Mick is misguided. He has led them to a few almosts, sure, but since when is that enough? The Malthouse model has ultimately been unsuccessful for a decade now. He’s surviving on reputation and the ability to sell fans on a preliminary final appearance as a successful season.
We’ve become accustomed to Mick’s arrogance in dealing with the media and the general football public (highlighted again by his absurd denial that he spoke to any St. Kilda players in the quarter time sledging incident on Friday night). Refusing to make the necessary changes to his style to lift the Magpies that one significant step higher might be his most arrogant act of all. Collingwood need the fresh start that Buckley will surely bring.
When Eddie McGuire became president of Collingwood, he said his job was to return Collingwood to being the most hated team in the league, the logic being that we’d hate them because we feared them, which we certainly didn’t at the time. They were a laughing stock when he inherited them, so you’d have to say Eddie has succeeded for the most part.
But, as Bob Dylan said, “Failure’s no success at all”. Is it, Mick?
P.S. I did vomit in my mouth a little when I wrote “If I were a Collingwood supporter”. Oh, no! I’ve done it again! (*runs to bathroom*)
