Collingwood still winners despite heartbreaking preliminary final loss

What the footy Gods giveth, the footy Gods taketh away. Well, maybe not, but you nonetheless couldn’t escape the irony of Collingwood’s eventual demise in 2022.

The Magpies had won 11 of 12 games this season decided by 11 points or fewer at the start of this finals series. They then lost a qualifying final to Geelong by six points, and on Saturday night at the SCG, came up short in a tension-packed preliminary final to Sydney. This time by a solitary point.

Somehow, though, as painfully as the slenderest of margins burnt a hole in the collective gut of the Magpie army, Collingwood was still a winner.

Because the renaissance of a team which finished second-to-last on the ladder in 2021 has been an incredible and breath-taking ride, and the Pies oh-so-nearly won their way into a Grand Final in exactly the same manner as they have attacked the entirety of this season, refusing to die wondering.

Sydney had the home ground advantage. It had the better-equipped team. And for perhaps 90% of this game, it dominated both the play and the scoreboard. And yet still it nearly went under.

Jack Ginnivan and Nick Daicos of the Magpies embrace after the loss. Mark Kolbe/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

In the end, the Swans needed every last little bit of grit to hang on as Collingwood ran all over a tiring home team in the final term, pegging back a deficit which at one stage had blown out to 36 points, with seven goals to three in the second half, and four to one in a nail-biting last quarter.

Indeed, the gap was still 21 points with only a tick over five minutes to play before goals from Brody Mihocek, Will Hoskin-Elliott and Steele Sidebottom dragged Collingwood to within a breath of the lead.

They still threatened as Sydney attempted to run the clock down in the final 90 seconds. And they were still coming hard as a desperate Swans defence bundled the ball over the defensive goal line to rush a behind in the game’s final play.

It was a victory deserved on the balance of play, but not for the first time this season, the better team nearly learned the harsh lessons of scoreboard profligacy.

A little more accuracy, and Sydney might have definitively shut the gate by halftime.

Not that 11.7 was woeful kicking for goal by any means. But while the Swans had managed 18 scores from 30 inside 50 entries at the long break, and the Pies only eight scores from as many forward forays, 7.1 was enough to keep Collingwood clinging on.

Sydney was leading in virtually every statistical category. Disposals, contested and uncontested ball, the clearance count, marks inside 50. And the Swans’ pressure was red-hot. A key was judiciously-selected on-ball match-ups by Swans coach John Longmire.

Callum Mills took Collingwood running machine Jack Crisp. Both men led their teams’ possession counts at halftime, but Crisp, whilst slamming through one terrific goal straight from a centre bounce, wasn’t able to exert the same level of influence as last week.

Luke Parker of the Swans celebrates the first goal of the preliminary final. Matt King/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

Luke Parker was on Jordan De Goey, who was held to just four disposals by halftime. And Sydney stopper Ryan Clarke was playing shutdown on young Pie star Nick Daicos, 10 disposals a quiet first couple of quarters for the Rising Star winner.

Sydney’s forwards had the normally assured Collingwood defence a little rattled, too, Lance Franklin playing “angry” and having the better of Jeremy Howe, not only kicking two goals in the first half, but creating three more simply by causing spills from a marking contest, and Sam Reid also keeping Darcy Moore accountable until the Swans’ key forward was injured and subbed out just after halftime.

The Swans’ midfield crew were terrific early, not just Mills and Parker, but Chad Warner, quiet in the qualifying final win but right back on song here. Errol Gulden won plenty of ball and tackled ferociously.

Nick Blakey gave away a couple of costly free kicks for indiscriminate blocks, but continued to intercept, run and create. And James Rowbottom continued his outstanding recent form.

A blowout looked possible when Logan McDonald booted the first goal of the second half to make the margin 36 points. And a Moore pass intercepted by Justin McInerney, who ran into an open goal, might have been, in psychological terms, the killer blow.

But this Collingwood outfit simply doesn’t know when or how to quit. And so the Pies continued to ask questions of the Swans, probing, prodding for weaknesses, for chinks in the armour they would eventually find.

Tom Papley of the Swans celebrates a goal in the preliminary final. Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

They were chinks which will have been studied closely by Sydney’s Grand Final opponent, too. Geelong has already been on the wrong end of a super Swans performance this season, all the way back in Round 2, the night Lance Franklin kicked his 1,000th goal.

But that was on the SCG. And that was also a Cats’ line-up playing with only a fraction of the sort of confidence and belief it carries now. Perhaps, against one of the oldest sides modern football has seen, Sydney won’t be run off its legs towards the end of proceedings the way it was by the Pies on Saturday night. But will the Swans still be in the race by then?

It’s an intriguing match-up, notably the first Grand Final clash between the Cats and Swans, despite both having been foundation members of the VFL in 1897. And it’s no less than this wonderful football season deserves.