Collingwood’s tally of 34 inside 50s on Thursday night against Fremantle is the equal second-lowest by any team this year.
It’s the same amount as the Dockers had last week against St Kilda on the way to five goals, eight scoring shots and the scorn of the footy world all week.
That’s 34 chances for a forward line without its best two talls in Brody Mihocek and Daniel McStay, with delivery from someone either than Scott Pendlebury or Jordan De Goey.
Brayden Maynard was also sidelined. Steele Sidebottom was subbed out at three quarter time. Lachie Schultz, the beating hard of the Magpies’ ferocious forward press, was concussed early in the last to leave them a man down on the bench. Nick Daicos hobbled around like a man 15 years his senior, reduced to playing much of the second half as a forward (though still could enough to lead Dockers defenders a merry dance whenever given space).
And the stats losses were even more emphatic than that. The clearances were lost 44-29, including an almost unbelievable 21-7 centre clearance differential. The Dockers had 76 more disposals and eight more marks just for good measure.
To not just claim victory, but kick 15 goals, despite all of that, is the greatest home-and-away coaching performance of Craig McRae’s already illustrious time at the helm … and the most damning possible indictment of Justin Longmuir’s Dockers.
It took some doing to out-awful the Saints nightmare, but the sound of Freo fans booing their own players through an interminable 20 minutes of sideways chipping, glacial ball movement and aimless bombs down the line in the third quarter that resulted in one goal from 16 inside 50s for the term compared to two from five might actually have achieved it.
To add insult to injury, it came against a team which, let’s be honest, had bigger fish to fry. The Pies’ choice to rest a quartet of key players for the trip west, plus the subbing of Sidebottom, screamed of a team prepared to risk losing four points for their absence, in the lead-up if never on the actual field.
For all the stats that Freo dominated to ludicrous proportions, the one that stands out most glaringly is one of the few the Pies managed to win.
It’s a pretty important one, too – marks inside 50.
Collingwood – from 34 entries, remember – had 14 of them. Freo, from 63? Six – half of them in the last quarter when the Dockers, with nothing to lose, effectively threw caution to the wind and started playing with the attack and dare they should have from the start.
It’s hard to know what’s more damning for Freo; their inability to generate set shots inside 50 from anything other than free kicks, or the defensive looseness that allowed the Magpies such a glut of them.
From the Pies’ perspective, their knowledge of how singularly focused Fremantle are in attack was the first step. Only three players are targeted inside 50 more this year than Josh Treacy – 9.4 times per game, on average – and for good reason: only Mitch Georgiades has more marks in the arc this year than his 24.
To my eye, he was targeted another eight times on Thursday night by the Dockers … for zero marks.
Why? Well, partly, the Pies had the freedom to sag off their opponents and help Darcy Moore, who took the responsibility of taking the Dockers’ best forward after he kicked two early goals (one from a mark just outside 50) on Billy Frampton.
Whether it was Jeremy Howe, or Frampton, or Harry Perryman, or Darcy Cameron doing his thing of zoning behind the ball as an extra aerial influence, Treacy was virtually never given a one-on-one shot at the ball.
After his two goals within minutes to get off to a flyer, he was seldom sighted in a dangerous spot – though his marking whenever given a run and jump at the footy showed his class.
But the other issue rests firmly on Freo’s shoulders: Champion Data’s claim this week they are the slowest ball movement team in recorded history by a country mile certainly passed the eye test.
The eye also says this: Freo, when they can chain up handballs and run in a purple wave through the corridor, can move the footy as fast as anyone. But when they switch to uncontested marking, their focus also switches from aggression to incredible timidity.
Both the Saints last week and the Pies this week employed a fierce, frenetic, and most importantly of all, high forward press to deny the Dockers any free territory gains upfield without terrifying risk.
And Freo, for two weeks in a row, played right into their opponents’ hands. With Luke Ryan and Jordan Clark racking up the marks – an uncontested-marking Clark is a far diminished force than the run-and-carry, handball-receive Clark that we saw in the first half on Thursday night – but doing little with it, it was only a matter of time until a turnover, or a kick to a contest which – unless a Freo tall could pull in a contested mark – invariably ended in a Magpies ground-ball win and a speedy forward foray to catch the Dockers out the back.
It happened over and over and over again, bordering on comical in its repetition: slow chip kicks, long ball down the line, turnover, Pies move the ball quickly and precisely, mark inside 50, accurate Jamie Elliott kick, goal.
The result? Eight goals from turnovers, including both of their two in the third quarter in which Freo’s faults were laid barest. Eight combined marks inside 50 from Elliott and Bobby Hill, either running back into space with kicks coming over the top, or leading into free pockets in a nearly vacant forward 50 with the Dockers’ defence scrambling.
It was the Pies’ only path to kicking a competitive score, which makes McRae’s coaching all the more admirable and Freo’s strategy even more head-scratching.
The Magpies eschewed long bombs to the forward line in all but the most trying circumstances, because they knew, with Mason Cox as their only conventional key tall, it wasn’t going to work against a backline of Alex Pearce and Brennan Cox.
Freo, in contrast, blazed and blazed some more, with the result the Pies bringing down 23 marks, the highest of the season by anyone, and some eight more than their usual per-game average.
You know what the alternative was for Fremantle? Basically, this play – which only comes about because Jye Amiss’ first kick to Jeremy Sharp wasn’t 15 metres, actually forcing him to move it on quickly.
With Amiss likewise obligated to come forward to give him someone to pass to, the two handballs actually work a treat: the Magpie duo guarding them are drawn first to Sharp and then to Amiss, freeing up enough space on the edge of 50 for the former to get some momentum up and freely bang through a goal.
The paradox for the Dockers is that their lacklustre, painfully slow ball movement actually had a greater impact on their defence than their attack.
It’s how, in short, you can concede 15 goals from just 34 inside 50s – and for all the head-clutching Longmuir did in the coaches’ box whenever his charges retreated back into their shells, it’s hard to think they are playing this way completely against the wishes of the coach.
Last week, I wrote that Fremantle were officially broken. This week, the fans’ faith in the man in charge may have shattered completely.
I certainly wouldn’t begrudge them.
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