\u201cThe system needed to be changed to reward the extreme games \u2013 and he had an extreme game tonight, didn\u2019t he?\u201d McRae said. \u201cNick\u2019s just maturing so much in front of our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the talking points entering the clash was whether St Kilda\u2019s $2 million man, breakout star Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, was a superior player to Daicos.<\/p>\n
McRae thought highly enough of the silky and slippery Wanganeen-Milera to tap Harry Perryman on the shoulder as early as last Wednesday \u2013 at the club leaders\u2019 urging \u2013 to see if he was interested in attempting to blanket the brilliant Saint. By Friday, the plan went ahead.<\/p>\n
Wanganeen-Milera had his moments, mostly in the first half, but his 19 disposals and one goal \u2013 a brilliant snap in the second term that gave St Kilda the lead \u2013 were modest compared to Daicos\u2019 heroics.<\/p>\n
The Saints tried moving him from the midfield to attack and eventually down back in a desperate bid to get him going, but Perryman never left his side. McRae opted to be versatile and adapt on the fly, including sending Jack Crisp into the midfield when Perryman went down back, whereas Lyon backed in his system.<\/p>\n
\u201cShould we attack Daicos \u2026 maybe, in hindsight,\u201d Lyon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had 41. We did send someone [Garcia] to him for a little bit, and \u2018Nas\u2019 didn\u2019t have his best night, but he never gave up and kept working. He\u2019s got to work through that phase.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many of [Daicos\u2019 disposals] were lateral, uncontested marks? I\u2019m not too sure. I don\u2019t think either one of them, whether it be \u2018Nas\u2019 or Daicos, [were] why they got the points \u2026 I thought [Daicos] played his part. I could be wrong \u2013 I\u2019ve got to go home and review. It\u2019s always dangerous. But no, I wouldn\u2019t have thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ex-Giant Perryman, long known as a versatile Mr Fix-it, was a tad surprised Lyon and co. chose not to give someone a negating job on Daicos.<\/p>\n
He was more than happy to do the same on Wanganeen-Milera, and spent the night admiring his own teammate\u2019s genius.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very grateful to be able to play with him,\u201d Perryman told The Age of Daicos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon one day I\u2019ll sit back and be pretty gobsmacked I got to play with him because he\u2019s one of a kind. He\u2019s the best player I\u2019ve ever played with, by a mile. He\u2019s an awesome teammate, and we love him. He wows you all the time \u2013 he\u2019s a special talent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another pre-match talking point, perhaps a tired one, was Collingwood\u2019s dad\u2019s army list, which was again widely written off and rated as the underdogs against the Saints and their high-priced recruits.<\/p>\n
They fielded four players aged 32 or older \u2013 Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom, Crisp and Jamie Elliott \u2013 and were without captain Darcy Moore and Jeremy Howe in defence, but survived a frenetic final quarter and kicked 11 goals from only 40 inside 50s while conceding 63.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, Collingwood\u2019s high performance manager, Jarrod Wade, devised a plan under the new AFL rules, with five players on the bench, for Pendlebury to play sparingly in the first half.<\/p>\n
The 38-year-old, five-time Copeland Trophy winner, who joined ex-Hawk Michael Tuck in playing his 426th game, bided his time on the pine for most of the first and second quarters before entering late to provide quality over quantity.<\/p>\n
Ten score involvements and 26 disposals were the result. Lyon was mostly unfussed about Pendlebury, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe thought his touches were quality \u2026 [but] he had one kick in the first half. We didn\u2019t talk about him at half-time, with respect to everybody,\u201d Lyon said.<\/p>\n
Perryman said he and his teammates laugh off the criticism about their ageing list. Given two chances post-match to do the same himself, McRae took neither.<\/p>\n
But the 2023 premiership coach clearly values experience, whether it be from Pendlebury and Sidebottom or the only slightly younger Jordan De Goey, Dan Houston, Cameron and Moore. However, McRae insists they are evolving.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know next week we\u2019ll be older [again]. Our experience is enormous, but our list is different,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have Mason [Cox], Tom Mitchell, Oleg Markov and Will Hoskin-Elliott [any more]. We\u2019re going to need our whole list, but we\u2019ve got a team out there that knows what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe system needed to be changed to reward the extreme games \u2013 and he had an extreme game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-527121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527121","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=527121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}