Collingwood coach Craig McRae expects both Nick Daicos and Scott Pendlebury to return but says there are bigger issues staring them in the face after a 54-point humbling in Brisbane.
The Magpies were dealt a late blow before the Easter Thursday Gabba clash when Daicos, who had struggled all week with a corked calf, was unable to complete the warm-up and scratched.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Craig McRae explains Nick Daicos corkie issue
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The Lions, dealing with a raft of their own key injuries, then ran rampant in a 17.17 (119) to 10.5 (65) win that could have been larger if not for some missed opportunities through the middle two quarters.
The Lions collected 131 contested possessions to the Magpies’ 93 and had 20 marks inside 50 compared to the visitors’ five.
Nick Daicos tries to run before the game. Credit: SevenHe was in out of the rooms three times in a bid to get his calf moving. Credit: 7AFL
Young Lions forward Logan Morris (three goals) took nine marks alone while Oscar Allen (three goals) and Kai Lohmann (four goals) profited.
“Honestly, I felt like we got outplayed for most of the night,” McRae said.
“There’s a lot of stuff right in front of us we can fix really quickly and we need to get to work on that.
“The aerials, normally one of our great strengths … we got exposed.
“And they were just swarming to the next contest. You win the ball you’re out, you’re gone. You don’t? Good luck.”
McRae expects a three-day break will help Daicos loosen up his corked calf, while his latest conversations with Pendlebury indicated that, after battling a “grumbly” Achilles, he’d be fit to face Fremantle on Friday at Adelaide Oval during Gather Round.
“He had a corky in his calf,” McRae said of Daicos as he explained the dramatic scenes before the game.
“Tuesday training he sort of just wanted to get moving. That was the instruction. Didn’t train, sort of hobbling around.
“Nick’s an ultra-positive guy, one of the best professionals in the game, let alone at our club. And we gave him every chance to improve and then he gets out here and we thought he’d start improving and he just didn’t.
“So then the race against the clock … then it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. So, yeah, that’s where it landed.”
Asked if there was concern beyond this game, McRae was unsure.
“Well, we’re hoping it improves. We do have three days off, we’re back in on Monday. So, like I said, he’s such a pro. It’s a corky. You’d think it starts to move (but) I don’t know, unless it starts to express something else, but we’ll see how it goes,” he said.
He said before the game he and the team had every reason to belive that Daicos was going to play.
“It wasn’t a fitness test either (before the game). We just thought it was improving and (would) improve in time,” he said.
“But, yeah, we bring our emergencies for a reason and we tell them, they come to all our meetings, you go, ‘alright, prepare to play, because if there’s a late out, you have to be ready.’”
7NEWS chief AFL reporter Mitch Cleary said they brought Daicos in and out of the rooms three times ahead of the game in a bid to get him going.
“He had the corky coming out of the Giants game, the six-day break. They brought him in and out of the rooms three times. They tried strapping. That didn’t work. He just couldn’t get going. Then he was in the runners (trying to run),” Cleary said.
“They made the call to bring Ed Allan out of the emergencies and Daicos was officially out of the game with 20, 25 minutes left (before the start).
“There’s still no guarantee for next week, as McRae said. So he’s got the corked calf. They’re going to have to see improvement in the midpoint part of next week. They’ve got Fremantle in Gather Round on the Friday night. So it’s an eight-day break. It does help, but still no guarantee.”
Craig McRae said everything that happened before the game should not have had an impact when that first stoppage occurred.
McRae said the Daicos drama should not have affected the very first stoppage of the game. Credit: Seven
“But clearly, it was so hard to take your best player out of the game and try to manoeuvre things around stoppage,” Cleary said.
AFL great Nick Riewoldt said Daicos’s teammates would have been emotionally flat when they saw the superstar limp off the field.
“There’s also what it does to the playing group when they’re hopeful that their best player is going to be out there with them,” Riewoldt said.
“I think emotionally there would be some sort of letdown … it’s just human nature when you see one of your stars not get up.”
McRae acknowledged some people would make a case that taking “your best player” out the team is “probably going to disrupt” it.
“But you’d like to think not,” McRae said.
Meanwhile, it is better for news for Pendlebury with veteran champ telling his coach he’s feeling read ot play.
“If his word’s are anything, he’d be hard to leave out (for the clash with Fremantle),” McRae said.
– With 7NEWS.com.au
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