{"id":562566,"date":"2026-03-25T04:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T04:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/562566\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T04:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T04:18:11","slug":"magpies-stars-make-timely-return-for-giants-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/562566\/","title":{"rendered":"Magpies stars make timely return for Giants clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Collingwood will welcome back big guns, skipper Darcy Moore and veteran Jeremy Howe, against GWS as they look to get their AFL<\/a> season up and running.<\/p>\n

With a win over St Kilda, a loss to Adelaide and then early season bye, the Magpies have produced a “mixed bag” to open their campaign with coach Craig McRae hoping to get the side humming at Marvel Stadium on Friday night.<\/p>\n

Posting less than 80 points in both matches, Collingwood have been criticised for their lack of scoring and McRae wasn’t concerned by those numbers but wanted to see improvement in the forward line.<\/p>\n

Darcy Moore missed the first three rounds of the season.\u00a0Michael Willson\/AFL Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“I thought that our connection inside 50 was really poor last game,” McRae said.<\/p>\n

“We had enough entries, the game before, a long time ago now, but round zero we connected really well, but we didn’t have enough entries.<\/p>\n

“It’s been a bit of a mixed bag for our forwards, and we got to work the last couple of weeks on some connection stuff.”<\/p>\n

While the bye has given them time to fix their forward-line woes it has also allowed star defenders Moore and Howe to recover from calf injuries for their first game of the season.<\/p>\n

McRae said the pair might have their game time managed against the Giants, who have also been inconsistent with a win and two losses.<\/p>\n

“A couple of weeks ago we had a go at getting Darcy to the line and he didn’t quite get there, and then he got through the last two weeks of training and so did Howie so excited to have those guys back,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Howie’s an incredible organiser behind the play, so he’ll see the game and sets others up and Darcy, at his best, he’s a great interceptor and, and he’s our captain … when you bring your best players back in, I think everyone gets excited for that.”<\/p>\n

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McRae said that the disruption of an early season bye had been “challenging” with Hawthorn even more badly affected with 18 days between matches.<\/p>\n

“I’ll tell you Friday night if I’m a fan of the byes or not … I find it’s challenging,” the coach said.<\/p>\n

“We didn’t win our last game, so then you go to a bye with it, wanting to get back on it and get amongst it and the other parts of it too is we’ve got a fit and healthy list now so then there’s a benefit in that, so it’s a bit of give and take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collingwood will welcome back big guns, skipper Darcy Moore and veteran Jeremy Howe, against GWS as they look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-562566","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\/562566","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=562566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}