Collingwood Senior Coach Craig McRae spoke to the media this morning ahead of the Magpies’ Round 11 clash versus Walyalup (Fremantle) at Optus Stadium on Friday night.
Jordan De Goey
“Jordy won’t play. He’s got a fresh injury, he’s got an abdominal strain, he got that in the game and played through that and then pulled up quite sore from it,” McRae said.
“He’s getting scans now to check out what that means.”
Beau McCreery and Brody Mihocek
“It’s likely that Beau and Brody will play, they got through training,” he said.
“That was the plan, if you get through training, you’re more likely to play so we’ll probably pick those two.”
Looking back at the Round 10 win
“We went through the game and looked at the things we did really, really well and the opportunities to improve. Every week presents an opportunity to shine a light on things we’re happy with,” he said.
“I thought our fight and desire to win was there for everyone to see.
“There are other parts of our ball movement and system where we thought ‘we just went in our shell a little bit here’, some credit to the opposition among that too.”
Managing short breaks between games
“Today you would’ve seen half the group didn’t train. You’ve just got to manage players,” he said.
“The loads are one thing and then it’s management, there’s so many layers to it. We have a high-performance team for a reason.”
Coming up against Walyalup
“(They’re) really hard to play against defensively, really well structured around system, own the corridor and they’re number one in the comp right now for clearance, pressure and contest,” he said.
“Those parts of the game are hard to manage, but we’ve got to bring our best version.”
Midfield structure
“There will be some form of re-shuffling, we don’t know what that looks like yet. We’ve got a meeting shortly to finalise a squad,” he said.
Young players stepping up
“We’re proud of players coming in and doing their jobs and that’s a credit to our development team and Josh Fraser and others,” he said.
“Players don’t look out of place, so we’ve got good depth.
“We’re forced to, every team is forced to play players at some stage and we’ve also got good character. The game played on the weekend, maybe a couple of years ago we would’ve lost that game, but there’s that desire and will want to win so a couple of good signs in recent weeks.”
