Collingwood’s defensive frailties and not the absence of Nick Daicos have left its midfield looking “slow” in recent weeks according to coach Craig McRae, who confirmed backman Nathan Murphy would miss Friday‘s clash with Essendon.
But Jordan de Goey and Bobby Hill will return as the ladder leaders look to turn around a run of three losses from four games heading into finals.
McRae conceded the run of losses, to Hawthorn, Carlton and Brisbane with a win over Geelong in between had “exposed” some deficiencies, but the loss of Daicos to injury was only part of the problem as the side struggles to defend the full ground.
“You look slow when you’re chasing tail … we’re not defending the ground well enough, and there’s parts of your game that are maybe exposed,” McRae said.
“When we get our system right, those things won’t show up as much, if that’s an issue.”
McRae said he hadn’t seen commentary from Garry Lyon and Jonathan Brown on Fox Footy’s On the Couch, who said the Magpies would need to “defy history” to claim the premiership following their significant drop in form.
“I don’t listen to any of this, I think we’re well and truly entrenched in knowing what we need to work on – you only have to watch our games in recent times to know we need to defend better,” he said.
“Expert commentators are paid to do expert things, so we’ll let them do that and we’ll just work on what we need to work on.”
Murphy completed the Magpies’ full training session at Olympic Park on Wednesday, but coach McRae said he would be put on ice until the first week of finals.
The key defender landed heavily on his back following a marking contest in the third quarter of last week’s loss to Brisbane.
“Murph won’t play, we’ve been in a position where there’s a risk-reward attached to players and their fitness levels, but this one – he’s just not right to play,” McRae said.
“He’s trying to get through, he’s just got a hip pointer that’s not going to see him get up this week.”
“(De Goey) has trained all week, and Bobby (Hill) is the same, so we’re excited to have both of them back.”
The absences of Murphy and captain Darcy Moore will likely force a key position reshuffle against the Bombers, with Jeremy Howe set to be shifted into defence after playing as a forward last week.
McRae said Moore, who trained on Wednesday, would have been fine to play if there was a game next week during the pre-finals bye.
Potential replacement Ash Johnson was helped from the track after appearing to suffer an ankle injury midway through Wednesday’s training, but McRae expected him to be available to play on the weekend.
“It was just a contact injury – he got stomped on, so it’s reasonably sore but those things tend to settle pretty quickly, so we’re not concerned,” McRae said.
He said Mason Cox and Darcy Cameron rucking in tandem looked to be the Pies’ ideal combination heading into finals, after Cox’s excellent performance against Brisbane when he came on in the second quarter as the sub.
“We’ll work through that – I think that our best mix right now is Darcy and Mason – what it might look like in two weeks’ time, I’m not sure, but I think it’s a good combination for us,” he said.
