Pre-Match. Pies v. Saints. All comments.

[Donny]

Thursday. MCG. 7.30

Collingwood v. St. Kilda.

In: B.Frampton, T.Mitchell, R.McInnes
Out: C.Dean and A.Johnson (omitted), W.Hoskin-Elliott (managed)

Last week's sub: Fin Macrae

Let's hear ya !!

[What'sinaname]

Pretty much do or die.
Not many teams contend when they start 0-3.

[Jezza]

Important game. Can't afford to be 0-3 or else our season is almost over before it's started or we'll be having to chase all year to make up ground.

In: Frampton, McInnes
Out: Johnson, Dean

Not sure if Mitchell will be available. Fly said he was having issues with his ankle that started after the practice game against Richmond a few weeks back.

[Magpietothemax]

In: Frampton
Out: AJ

In: Tackling pressure, team defence
Out: Turnovers

[Piesnchess]

A must victory, no iffs or butts. We must be totally switched on, from first bounce, run, carry, tackles, ruthless pressure, sling shot footy, real heat on these pricks. Back to basics, what we do best. Line in the sand match, time to get down an get dirty hands, bring our A game. Just win.

[Rd10.1998_11.1#36]

[Clifton Hill-Billy]

50-50 game, just glad it's not at dung heap Marvel where odds of victory would be much lower. We are playing worse than every team bar wet toast at the moment. Lose this and then we are faced with the almost impossible task of trying to save the season by winning up at the Gabba with self doubt at record levels. If we can make it to the end of round 3 with a 2-2 ledger I'll be very happy and have some belief that we are turning a corner and can get to where we need to be over the next 5 games.
Out BH Johnson & Dean
In Frampton, Reef & 2022-2023 effort and skills

[piffdog]

Simply must start MacRae. Beggars belief that he was sub last week... I thought he was good when he came on.

Also wonder if we need a bit bigger beast down back to play on King (Frampton?). We all know that cant be Darcy Moore.

[Harrysz]

Personnel changes are important but right now, the team as a whole is playing very poorly. It's a bad sign that there was no improvement from our first game to our second game.

Getting us out of this slump (and it is a slump) is Craig McRae's job. This week is critical. Our form over the last 2 seasons has been better than anything St Kilda might dish up. But that's irrelevant if we can't recapture that form.

[Pipes1970]

Is anyone else having problems getting their reserved tickets off the Collingwood app?

I just don't have time for another ticket challenge.....

[Take_a_Screamer]

[Dark Beanie]

[RudeBoy]

We need to fix our glaring structural problem - the lack of a genuine big man at both ends of the ground.

Clearly Johnson has demonstrated he is not big/strong/competitive enough to be a KF. I'd bring in Kreuger. He has much less talent than Johnson, but is bigger, stronger and is a competitive beast. That's what we need. Get him to smash the packs and bring the ball to ground, to allow Hill, McCreery, Schultz and Elliott to do their thing.

Dean looks to me like a good VFL player, but not (yet) good enough for the AFL. Billy Frampton is taller and plays tighter.

Finally, it would be good to somehow squeeze McInnes into our side, but I'm not sure who would make way. Macrae showed enough to retain his spot.

Overall, we have to rediscover that manic pressure game we've used over the past 2 seasons. If we bring that, we should win comfortably.

[5:11pm]

[quote="RudeBoy"]We need to fix our glaring structural problem - the lack of a genuine big man at both ends of the ground.

Clearly Johnson has demonstrated he is not big/strong/competitive enough to be a KF. I'd bring in Kreuger. He has much less talent than Johnson, but is bigger, stronger and is a competitive beast. That's what we need. Get him to smash the packs and bring the ball to ground, to allow Hill, McCreery, Schultz and Elliott to do their thing.

Dean looks to me like a good VFL player, but not (yet) good enough for the AFL. Billy Frampton is taller and plays tighter.

Finally, it would be good to somehow squeeze McInnes into our side, but I'm not sure who would make way. Macrae showed enough to retain his spot.


Spot on.
Macrae in the guts , Frampton at FB, Kreuger at FF (when/if he’s fit), and McInnes in for Markov.

[swoop42]

While I don't anticipate the Saints to be as good this season as the two Sydney teams we've just played, it's not hard to see another loss coming unless we see a real improvement.
The Saints pushed us to the line in round 5 last season and that was during a period we had displayed some winning form in the lead up.
A Ross Lyon coached side as we know will always look to make you earn every score while in the bit of the Geelong game I saw they appeared to have a desire to slingshot off half back with speed.

Given how our defence has been sliced open these past 2 weeks I can see that causing us problems unless we see better structure and system in place come Thursday night.
To be honest our problem between the big sticks at each end right now is quite possibly down to what's going on between our ears and you only have to look at the opening round clash between Brisbane and Carlton to see a perfect example of how much the game is played above the shoulders.
Carlton looked a basket case, as good as 8 goals down before the game was flipped on it's head in the space of a quarter.
It was the same 23 players, on the same ground and on the same night so what was the reason for this?

The answer.
Attitude and effort.
Time for the real Collingwood to rise up.