{"id":77092,"date":"2025-08-18T09:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T09:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/77092\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T09:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T09:32:09","slug":"pies-forward-highly-unlikely-to-return-for-dees-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/77092\/","title":{"rendered":"Pies forward &#8216;highly unlikely&#8217; to return for Dees clash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article__summary\">\n                The Pies are set to be without Bobby Hill for their clash against the Demons\n            <\/p>\n<p>                                Bobby Hill kicks a goal during the R13 match between Collingwood and Melbourne at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on June 9, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n<p>NORM Smith medallist Bobby Hill is &#8220;highly unlikely&#8221; to play in Collingwood&#8217;s crucial clash with Melbourne, says vice-captain Brayden Maynard.<\/p>\n<p>And the defender says the Magpies need to focus on what they can do without their electric small forward.<\/p>\n<p>BROWNLOW PREDICTOR <a title=\"https:\/\/www.afl.com.au\/brownlow-medal\/predictor?page=1&amp;player_type=all&amp;club=0&amp;ShowBettingOdds=1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.afl.com.au\/brownlow-medal\/predictor?page=1&amp;player_type=all&amp;club=0&amp;ShowBettingOdds=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-outlook-id=\"d9493651-d323-4b1e-ae90-518a2b62eb49\">Check out all the votes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hill has played just one half of AFL football of Collingwood&#8217;s past eight games as he deals with personal issues.<\/p>\n<p>He didn&#8217;t train with his teammates on Monday and appears unlikely to be available for Friday night&#8217;s game, when the Magpies have a top-four berth on the line.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think so. It&#8217;s highly unlikely, but we&#8217;ll have to wait and see,&#8221; Maynard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t see him around the club today, but hopefully he&#8217;s in sort of Wednesday and can get the ball rolling.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are a lot better team with him, so hopefully he does turn up and get the ball rolling. It&#8217;s an ongoing process, day-by-day process.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Maynard threw his support behind Hill while stressing Collingwood needed to focus its energy towards an approaching finals campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a day-to-day process with Bob,&#8221; Maynard said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He knows that he&#8217;s got our full support, and we believe that he will get the ball rolling with a few things that he&#8217;s got going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are a better team with him in it, and he knows that and we all know that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But at the same time we&#8217;ve got big things on the horizon, and we need to focus on what we can do, with all due respect, without Bob, if he&#8217;s not turning up.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But he knows that we&#8217;re a much better team with him in it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So yeah, it&#8217;d be good to see him come in as often as he can, because we love him in our team when he&#8217;s playing (and) up and going.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>                    Bobby Hill celebrates a goal during Collingwood&#8217;s clash against Melbourne in round 13, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n<p>Collingwood has licked its wounds after Saturday&#8217;s three-point loss to ladder leader Adelaide, its third loss on the bounce.<\/p>\n<p>Maynard was confident the Magpies were finding their feet again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was a lot of stuff that we took out of it that was quite positive,&#8221; he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So our connection was back, our system was back, and we got back to just competing the way that we want to compete, so I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing what we can do this Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s been a lot of chatter around our connection inside 50, so we&#8217;ve gone to work on that today, and we&#8217;ll get to work on that this week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But we feel as a whole that our game&#8217;s in pretty good stead to lead us going into this week and hopefully moving forward, so I think we&#8217;ll be right.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pies are set to be without Bobby Hill for their clash against the Demons Bobby Hill kicks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-77092","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","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77092","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=77092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}