It’s hard to know what was more impressive today at the MCG – Private Hettie Adams’ rendition of the New Zealand national anthem, or Collingwood’s Big Five. Pte Adams is flown in every Anzac Day and she never fails to stir the pulse. Collingwood’s Big Five are just as reliable.
Yes, Collingwood have some excellent players who don’t qualify, so apologies to Dan Houston, Jordan De Goey, Bobby Hill and Jack Crisp, who today equalled Jim Stynes’ record for consecutive games. But for the purposes of this exercise, with Darcy Moore absent, let’s call their Big Five Nick and Josh Daicos, Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom and Jamie Elliott. All were outstanding today, all provided something different and all emphasised the class differences between Collingwood and a willing but limited Essendon.
Sidebottom always seems to save his best for the Bombers and he was a worthy Anzac Medallist. At various stages last year, it looked like time may have got the better of him. But he’s been excellent this year. He’s running as hard as ever, he’s covering enormous distances and he clearly hadn’t lost his footy marbles. Few footballers are better at reading the ball off a boundary ruck contest and few are better at utilising space – in his case the MCC wing. But it was his defensive work that stood out – his pressure, his half smothers, his willingness to push back and help out his defenders.
The Daicos brothers were equally prolific, with 68 possessions between them. There were shades and reminders of their dad in nearly everything they did today – the swerves, the bow legs, the lateral vision, the way they almost never went to ground. Josh’s 36 touches were gathered a little more unobtrusively than his brother. And Nick, coming off what was probably the best game of his career last Thursday, set the tone for the afternoon with a long-range goal in the opening minutes. Like his dad, he’s so good at seeing, or sensing, players coming at him from behind. He’ll shimmy and shake them off. And he’s tough. He absorbs some big hits. The more they target him, the harder he runs and the better he plays.
Elliott, as always, played with a stern countenance. But he’s a beautifully balanced footballer, a player at home on the big stage and like Sidebottom, an excellent handler of a wet ball and a player who seems to reserve his best for Essendon. He finished with five goals, an impressive haul in challenging conditions.
And then there’s Pendlebury, who’s like one of those ageless Silicon Valley bros who receives regular blood transfusions. There’s an entire generation of sports TV directors who seem determined to zoom in on the action. It can make it impossible to ascertain what is going on. But with Pendlebury, it burnishes our appreciation of him. When the ball is bobbling or in the air, he will swivel his head and compute and plot. He did so many clever, crafty things today – a dinky little banana kick to extricate his team from deep in the backline, a tunnel ball that led directly to a goal and an entire afternoon of pointing, directing, and conducting – sometimes right in the middle of a possession chain with a squadron of Bombers bearing down on him. He’s like the Smooth operator in the Sade song – moving in space with minimum waste.
The Bombers were far from disgraced but they were definitely outclassed. Halfway through the second term, the contest was trundling along, the rain was teeming and the game was headed for a rout. But the Bombers woke up. They started winning the clearances and they amped the pressure up, personified by a gang tackle on Nick Daicos. Crucially, they defended well, especially in the air, with Zach Reid and Jordan Ridley pulling down a number of goal-saving marks. The Dons booted four goals in about half a dozen minutes, including a brace to Sam Durham, and we had a live one. But a sumptuous goal in the Dom Sheed pocket to Bobby Hill, who’d been towelled up by Andy McGrath in the opening half, snuffed out their chances.
When the Pies travelled to western Sydney in the first week of March, it was no country for old men and they were swiftly written off. But increasingly, this is a competition for older bodies and wiser heads. In sports all around the world, improvements in sports science and knowledge of recovery has meant the true greats just keep going. Listening to Scott Pendlebury’s daily routine, if he doesn’t drop dead of boredom or from over-exposure to ice, the impression is of a footballer who could keep playing forever. The same goes for his team. Like Hettie Adams, they front up year after year, they feed off a bumper crowd, and they thrive on the big stage.