Before the season started, Collingwood coach Craig McRae dared to be bold.
He didn’t want the club to recapture the form that led them to the 2023 flag. He wanted something different.
“I’m keen to create a whole new version of us, a whole different feel and a whole different energy from different players,” McRae said.
Each year the league shifts and evolves — sometimes in subtle ways and sometimes in large. For some, like McRae, it’s about staying ahead of the curve before you are bringing up the rear.
“Somewhat of our system may remain the same, but what’s going forward won’t be on the basis of recapturing anything. We’re excited for what’s coming,” McRae said in February.
At the halfway point of the season the reborn Magpies sit in first on the ladder. Just like 2023, seventeen teams are looking up at the Pies and working out how to beat them.
Five new Pies, added since their 2023 flag, are having a big impact this year alongside some other positional shifts. It has revitalised a side that missed finals last year, and added to their depth.
As McRae alluded to before the season started, this new and improved version of the Pies might be a slightly different — and harder to beat — beast.
Forward half trap
Each flag tends to have a hallmark associated with it — a stamp with which the team made their mark.
For Collingwood in 2023 it was their defence that was the bedrock, and their ability to attack from the back.
This year has been a bit different.
In 2025, the Pies have reinvigorated not only the attacking side of their forwardline, but also their ability to trap the ball up forward. Part of this has been their new charges, but a solid portion can be attributed a rededication to the importance of territory.
Opposition sides have noticed this evolution.
“They’re a really front half team, so we’re going to make sure that we’re composed out of our back half and can try to get some ascendancy when we go forward,” Sydney Swans coach Dean Cox said before their match-up with the Pies in Gather Round.
That ability to press and trap sides can get even the most composed teams into trouble. The Pies are deadly when the ball is spilled on the deck, especially through the middle of the ground.
They are the fourth best team at scoring from the front half this year. They also concede fewer points from their back half than almost any side.
That Pies trap becomes perpetual — with teams struggling to move the ball up the ground and Collingwood slowly capitalising. McRae’s side leads the league in turnover scoring differential, with their +22 points per game almost a goal higher than Adelaide in second.
Some sides have tried to be extra cautious when moving the ball against the Pies from the backline, with some success at times. North tried this last weekend, dropping their speed on transition to prioritise retaining the ball.
It worked well — for a half.
“We’re really proud to be able to hang in there when the game wasn’t quite looking how we wanted to play,” McRae said post match.
“Particularly our pressure was important and then take away some of their uncontested marks”
After halftime the Pies upped their pressure on the ball and focused on their structure. This forced North to play catch up — exactly where the Pies wanted them.
Even with several players out, the system can hold up strongly.
“They had a lot of their important players out of their side too — which is (a) testament to them as a club in terms of the way they play their system and their game plan,” Kangaroos coach Alastair Clarkson told the media after their loss.
The personnel change has also paid dividends in both improving the share of the ball in the front half but also their efficiency when scoring.
“You know the system gets the goal. That’s what we always talk about,” McRae said.
Lachie Schultz and Tim Membrey have added an extra dimension to a deadly — if slightly undersized — forward line. Space, pace and pressure are the key elements in play for the Pies’ ability to score.
Schultz is leading the league in forward 50 tackles per game, sitting easily at a career best mark for this measure.
He has converted to a pressure role that he only hinted at when he played at Fremantle. Schultz and a quartet of pacey medium-sized targets also are able to find the space to take at least one mark on the lead per game.
The redesigned forwardline is front and centre of the “new” Collingwood, but it’s far from the only improved part.
In the middle of a dream
Usually there’s a balance between the intercept game and the clearance game. When one improves, the other tends to dip a little.
In 2023, the Pies were the second most deadly team from clearances, scoring an extra 7.5 points per game than their opponents from stoppages.
So with the Pies increased focus on front half you would expect them to win less of the ball in the clinches.
But you would be wrong.
This year Collingwood is winning an extra clearance per game relative to their opponents than they did in 2023. Their potency from stoppages has dropped a tiny bit (going from +7.5 to +4.6 in scoring differential per game) but the indications are that their clearance game has held up.
They’ve also done so with a pretty different group from two years ago.
In 2023, the five Pies with the most clearances were Jordan De Goey, Tom Mitchell, Scott Pendlebury, Nick Daicos and Taylor Adams.
Only two of those five are in the top five for Collingwood this year. Adams is now in Sydney, while Mitchell hasn’t played yet. De Goey has yet to find his groove in the middle, and Pendlebury is a smaller part of the mix.
The mix has been supplanted by a veteran — Steele Sidebottom — and one of the most unlikely finds this year, Ned Long.
McRae has been quick and willing to sing the praises of Long, who came to the Pies after being delisted from the Hawthorn rookie list. Week by week he’s becoming more important to the Collingwood midfield mix.
The broad principles are the same — running in patterns down the ground, and looking for territory rather than just clean possession. But the new group seems better balanced — better able to maximise the strengths of Nick Daicos, and better able to defend opposition clearances.
A solid backline
This might all be for nought if their biggest strength from 2023 had faded.
But their defence is still as rock solid as ever.
“You know, defensively, they’re the top two or three in the competition,” Cox said.
Led by captain Darcy Moore, the Collingwood defence is still the backbone of their operation and what affords the players ahead the freedom to operate.
They’ve even bolstered their ball movement with the recruitment of Dan Houston and Harry Perryman, allowing the rest of the defence more latitude to focus on the defensive side of their game.
Perryman sits second for score launches at Collingwood — behind just Darcy Cameron.
Schultz, Long and Houston all sit in the top 10 in this measure as well. All four have significantly contributed to an improved sense of attack from defence and freed up others to play their roles more effectively to limit scoring.
While their midfield and forward line is getting a lot of the attention, McRae acknowledges the importance of their backline.
“Our backs have been enormous to stop scoring. (If) they don’t score when they go in there that’s a big part of the game,” McRae said after their win over Adelaide.
McRae also alluded to the value of the defence in opening up the rest of their game.
“Then you go to the other end and we’re scoring quite efficiently. You know — nearly 50 per cent of the time we go inside 50. So it’s a good formula,” he said.
This completeness and cohesiveness is what is pushing this version of the Pies to being the team to beat halfway through the year — and maybe even better than the 2023 version.
“Their depth and understanding and the spirit that they drive from that has been first class. That’s why they’ve been premiers a couple of years ago and they’re going to be pretty hard to stop this year.” Clarkson said last week.
“They’re the benchmark of the comp. “
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