Collingwood players look dejected after their loss to Hawthorn in round 22, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos

COLLINGWOOD coach Craig McRae has apologised to Magpies fans after his side’s disappointing 64-point loss to Hawthorn at the MCG on Thursday night.

The Magpies trailed throughout, eventually suffering a heavy defeat to mark their fourth loss in five games.

HAWKS v MAGPIES Full match coverage and stats

“I apologise to our Magpie Army, that’s a disappointing performance, you can’t sugarcoat that,” McRae said.

“We’re hurting, that one really hurt. Just a lack of system and then a lack of fight, a lack of effort, sometimes at the same time, which leaves us really vulnerable.”

Collingwood laid just 42 tackles, down by more than 20 on its season average, while also allowing Hawthorn to take 18 marks inside 50.

When questioned about his side’s pressure, McRae put the disparity down to effort.

“Well that comes with the effort thing. You’re 114,000 members, you expect a certain amount of effort, and we didn’t have it. So you get disappointed with that,” he said.

“There’s more than just one layer to pressure, but that’s certainly something we’ll dial into … when you put that jumper on there’s an expectation that we represent it better than what we did tonight.”

Veteran defender Jeremy Howe was subbed out of the match early with concussion after colliding with Hawks midfielder Jai Newcombe.

Though McRae conceded it did unsettle his side, he didn’t want to use the incident as an excuse for their performance.

“It rocked us, it did, it was right in front of us, it rocked us and it rocked some of our staff,” McRae said.

“I don’t want to make excuses, but we hope he’s OK, I hope his family’s OK too, those things aren’t great when you’re watching live.”

Howe, 35, was sent for scans after the huge collision in his first game back since round 18.

Surprisingly against the Hawks, Pies star Nick Daicos started on the bench. The midfielder had been absent from main training during the week, leading to speculation that he might be carrying an injury.

However, McRae said there was nothing to read into arguably the club’s, and the League’s, best player starting on the interchange.

“Everyone starts on the bench in our team, and no one’s bigger than the individual, and he’s one of our leaders … it’s nothing major at all,” he said.

For Hawthorn’s Sam Mitchell, he was pleased with his side’s efforts, particularly his tall forwards who kicked nine of the team’s 17 goals.

It’s the second week in a row Hawthorn has run with the four talls in Mabior Chol, Calsher Dear, Mitch Lewis and Jack Gunston, with Mitchell believing that this week they performed much better as a unit.

“The way our forwards operated I thought was really in sync,” he said.

“They’re probably more prone this week to flying together, which I thought was better. Last week they probably were trying to be a bit too respectful of each other.

“So this week I thought our contest in front of the ball was significant and we were able to put more pressure on them, which we knew would be important from the last time we played them.”

Mitchell praised Newcombe, who bounced back from the incident in the first two minutes to finish the game as one of his side’s best players.

“I think Jai’s leadership can’t be understated. I think he has that massive moment early in the game which sets the tone for us and again, I just want to reiterate that thoughts go out to Jeremy Howe and his family, making sure that he’s, you know, hope he’s fine,” Mitchell said. 

“But then, you know, ‘Newc’ goes through his HIA, he passes his test and he comes back on. It wasn’t too much longer later, there was a sky ball right in front of the bench that he just took a contested mark and it was like one of those genuine, easy to get out of the contest if you want to and he just stood under it and he marked it.

“It was like, ‘Man, this is a guy you want to play fully with’ and I think all of our players, you know, walk pretty tall when ‘Newc’ is running out there next to them.”

Hawthorn sits in fifth position on the ladder with two games remaining. For Mitchell, he knows its season is on the line.

“We’re playing for our season right now, aren’t we? So, our focus is as great as the game was and as exciting as that was, we haven’t qualified for finals. We need to continue to win,” he said.

“We play another game next week that we’re going to have to put another side away and we understand the position. We’ve made it a little bit hard for ourselves.

“For a lot of the year, we’ve been a bit higher on the ladder than where we are right now and we’ve run out of chances pretty much. So, we know we’re going to have to play our best footy from here on in and tonight was much closer to that.”