Collingwood Senior Coach Craig McRae has addressed the media ahead of his side’s first home game of the 2026 season this Saturday night.

The Pies will take on the Adelaide Crows in a return bout from last year’s Qualifying Final win at the Adelaide Oval.

McRae touched on the fitness of the Pies’ skipper Darcy Moore, last Sunday’s positives from a 12-point win against St Kilda, and the prospect in front of them this weekend.

Moore ruled out

“Darcy won’t play. He had to get through a fitness test and unfortunately he’s pulled up a bit sore,” McRae said.

“I’m not sure exactly what that means at the moment, but he won’t play. He left the track a bit late and I haven’t had a medical update yet, but he won’t play.

“We’d planned that this was the game (for Moore to return) and he’d done all the work and five or six weeks of pre-season now and we set that up and there’s some reason he’s not there and we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

How Moore’s absence impacts the defensive structure

“There’s a lot of threats down there, they’ve (Adelaide) got three big targets, and we’ll have to plan accordingly,” he said.

“We survived last week without him and we’ll have to do the same this week.”

Dan McStay’s 200th game

“Dan’s quite a quiet and unassuming guy and I’m big on celebrating all the milestones and he’s come to me early in the week and says he doesn’t want that, so I’ll have to find a way to celebrate him,” he said.

“200 games, I think there’s only a low percentage of players in the history of the game who have played 200 games, so we want to make sure we acknowledge that.

“Dan’s had his troubles in terms of injuries and stuff, he’s had a bit of a bumpy road with us but hopefully this week we can see the best in him.”

Using the fifth player on the bench

“We found last week our formula works and keeping a guy on the bench, again Pendles makes most things work,” he said.

“I think we’ll have a similar formula this week, I’m just not sure if it’ll be him (Pendlebury).

“I think we’ll have a scenario where one player might sit out a bit of the first quarter and then inject him into the game and see what that looks like.”

Praise for Harry Perryman’s role as a tagger last week

“I said to the playing group on Tuesday when we got back for the first time as a group, we’ll find whatever it takes to get the job done against that opposition,” he said.

“Against the Saints, we thought young Nas (Wanganeen-Millera) was such a weapon and we wanted to make his influence not so much.

“We have a players’ player award internally and I knew he’d (Perryman) get a lot of votes, and he won that resoundingly.”

Getting the ball to Dan Houston more frequently

“We want the ball in Dan's hands, there was clear instruction for Dan takes all the kick ins, let’s get the ball in his hands,” he said.

“He’s such a weapon, probably the best kick in our team … probably line ball with Nick (Daicos) I’d say.

“The tactic to keep the ball off the opposition, we’ll just use what we need.”

Coming up against Adelaide’s unknown rucks

“I haven’t seen much of (Lachlan) McAndrew, he’s from Sydney, I think he’s got a rugby union background,” he said.

“Really tall, can jump in the ruck and I heard Matty Nicks say that they think they can get a bit of an advantage with his first hands on hit outs and things.

“We’re going to have to be aware of that but they’re going to have to watch out for Darcy Cameron too.”