Well whether they win or not the ‘Colliwobbles’ come from another time, long, long ago in the late sixties and early seventies when the Collies used to finish first and then not win, either through some bad luck (64, 66, 70) or through peaking a bit early or going into the finals in a form slump. It was pretty depressing. We’ve lost lots of GFs since then, but we’ve been the worse side in the GF, so it’s not so surprising that we lost. GFs kind of do that. They tend to select the better side.
Anyway, this time we’re the best side, having put on a half of football against Geelong last week that needed to be seen to be believed. (I saw it and believed it). We will win again tomorrow unless:
- something nasty happens. An early injury reduces your chances of winning by around 17%, two injuries is worse etc
- the Sainters close down our forward line. This is quite possible. They choke their enemy pretty effectively. And as I’ve said, there are some things – like intelligent leads, that we pretty much do without on our forward line. If we start kicking lots of points, end up taking our shots from the boundary line and don’t seem to be able to find forwards, St Kilda are in the game and may close us down and then beat us.
- St Kilda’s big forwards, particularly Nick Riewoldt, have a good day. Collingwood’s backline is one of the best in the business, but it has a weakness – subduing big forwards (sigh)
But the most likely outcome is a comfortable win. I can hardly believe I’m saying that. I can certainly say I’ve not expected to win a GF since 1990. And guess what happened then. We won.
All Troppo readers are required to have some slight sympathy for me tomorrow – unless you barrack for the Sainters, like my friend from Harkaway Primary School, John Chandler.
But the name “Barry Breen” may not be mentioned.
I have no sympathy
And your blog site is now hereby banned from my computor for being so silly as not to see the obvious – among others ‘you gotta lose one before you can win one’.
I have now declared war on your site.
Go Saints remember the heroics of BB and nail those CollyWobbles.
PS Peace Talks will resume after 17:00 Saturday!
DMW
What was that word again?
Well folks it worked out exactly as I said it might – which is to say we won around the ground and had such a shambolic forward line that we couldn’t get over the line. Someone can correct me in comments, as I don’t have the figures to hand, but at three quarter time we had something like 50 odd inside fifties to their 38 or something like that. Tell me how many times you saw a Colliwobble in the forward line lead well and get shot a pass. It almost never happens. Why I have no idea. But I did tweet at quarter time that I didn’t like the fact that our goals had mostly been pretty lucky shots from near the boundary line. That kind of luck usually doesn’t last. It lasted us through the game against Geelong, even though we didn’t really need it, but it didn’t last us through this one.
Otherwise we played damn well, quite like we played against Geelong. St Kilda, like Geelong had a much more efficient approach to goal and it was a bit lucky. And unlike in our game against Geelong we weren’t outrageously lucky up forward.
So we go into next week. Maybe we’ll get a bit luckier, because we did have some bad luck today. But you can be sure we won’t fix the problem at a strategic level. It’s a mystery why we don’t lead like other clubs, but there you go. We do it occasionally, but hardly at all. With every other club leading and either passing on the chest or passing to advantage is a staple – the basic routine of their attack. But not us.
Like they say “Go Figure”.
[…] my track record isn’t too flash. I predicted a Collingwood win last year for the first final – and they controlled the game and used their control to […]