Collingwood star Jamie Elliott says the Magpies \u201cdefinitely\u201d have the forward depth to cover Bobby Hill\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
Hill, the 2023 Norm Smith Medallist, has taken indefinite personal leave from Collingwood after a difficult finish to last season.<\/p>\n
The Magpies will have a new-look forward line without Hill and Brody Mihocek, who opted to finish his career at Melbourne.<\/p>\n
But Elliott, fresh off a career-best season, says it\u2019s \u201can exciting time\u201d for the lesser-known small forwards fighting for senior opportunity. <\/p>\n
\u201cHarvey Harrison, Will Hayes, there\u2019s guys who can step into that role, \u2018Sull\u2019 (Lachie Sullivan) when he gets back from injury and full training,\u201d Elliott said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s guys that can definitely come into that role \u2013 everyone adds a little bit different.<\/p>\n
\u201cBobby is really dynamic, he\u2019s a skilful player, he\u2019s got a lot of X-factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo hopefully these guys who come into the team, we\u2019ll get a little bit more match sim coming up, and guys will get opportunities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting time for those guys as well. It\u2019s not a set team, there\u2019s plenty of guys with opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill did not return after the Christmas holiday break, prioritising his wellbeing over football.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think from our standpoint, his health and wellbeing is the main thing,\u201d Elliott said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo as long as he needs to stay away from the club, get his health right, we\u2019re here to support him, but at the end of the day, football is second.<\/p>\n
\u201cNah (he hasn\u2019t been at the club), he took personal leave when we came back from the Chrissy break, so that\u2019s where it stands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Magpies will deploy an \u201cunpredictable\u201d forward line this season, knowing they can trust the stability of the Darcy Moore-led backline.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery team is trying to look for an edge on other teams,\u201d Elliott said.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably our offence looking to be unpredictable, but in saying that, when you are unpredictable, it\u2019s hard to set up behind the ball and the defence gets tested out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I feel like our group, we\u2019ve got a really good defence, we can do that. We want to play an exciting brand of football as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s about how can we maximise that going forward and actually punish teams.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collingwood star Jamie Elliott says the Magpies \u201cdefinitely\u201d have the forward depth to cover Bobby Hill\u2019s absence. Hill,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,689,55,639,14349,31213,3499,10989,232603,2105,133782,232602,36878,14362,222615,647,12002,43961,677,217705,232604,85,232605,64414,660],"class_list":["post-449656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-bobby-hill","tag-career-best-season","tag-daniel-pockett","tag-darcy-moore","tag-exciting-time","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-harvey-harrison","tag-holiday-break","tag-jamie-elliott","tag-lachie-sullivan","tag-match-sim","tag-melbourne","tag-newcastle-united-football-club","tag-newswire-sport","tag-oceania","tag-personal-leave","tag-set-team","tag-sports","tag-stand-point","tag-tyler-lewis","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}