{"id":831951,"date":"2026-07-29T20:13:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:13:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/831951\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T20:13:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T20:13:17","slug":"afl-2026-how-the-collingwood-magpies-and-geelong-cats-just-keep-hanging-around-and-compete-for-premierships-season-after-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/831951\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL 2026: How the Collingwood Magpies and Geelong Cats just keep hanging around and compete for premierships season after season"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Collingwood went into their round 14 bye well outside the top 10, with only five wins, seven losses and a draw.<\/p>\n

They had lost three players to season-ending knees, including their most productive match-winning forward Jamie Elliott and promising spring-heeled ruck Oscar Steene.<\/p>\n

Bobby Hill had not played, his AFL future in significant doubt<\/a>. Soon, skipper Darcy Moore\u2019s season would be over, too, having endured an injury-wracked season.<\/p>\n

\"TwoTwo of modern footy\u2019s great warriors: Collingwood champion Scott Pendlebury and Geelong star Tom Stewart.AFL Photos<\/p>\n

Scoring was laboured. Brody Mihocek\u2019s exit to Melbourne had deprived the Magpies of a reliable target. Ball movement wasn\u2019t sharp. The Pies were playing with a grim resolve, without the verve that characterised their rise under Craig McRae in 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n

Within the playing group, however, there remained belief that they could make a fist of a season that then held little hope of a meaningful finals action.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Geelong<\/a><\/p>\n

They had Nick Daicos, arguably the competition\u2019s most influential player, who would express confidence that his team was far from done. In mid-July, after they hung on against the sinking Suns and North Melbourne, Daicos asserted that the Pies could still win the flag.<\/p>\n

Yep, in 2026.<\/p>\n

Often, leaders of teams are simply parroting a party line in that scenario.<\/p>\n

Daicos wasn\u2019t. His team\u2019s inner belief \u2013 based in-part on the fact that Collingwood had pushed Fremantle and Sydney to the line (losing by a kick), had drawn with Hawthorn and then lost in the final two minutes to the Demons on King\u2019s Birthday \u2013 was genuine.<\/p>\n

Today, Collingwood is inside the top 10, placed eighth and if they can surmount the other team that has been written off more than old Ford Falcons (Geelong), they will be an outside chance to challenge for the top six despite a nasty run home.<\/p>\n

Geelong, like Collingwood the night before, was beset with issues when they met Melbourne last Friday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Jeremy Cameron, one of the game\u2019s greatest forwards, was out with a busted collarbone and potentially done for the season. Max Holmes was gone with a fractured ankle for at least the home and away remains. As Chris Scott observed after their thumping of St Kilda, if there were two players they didn\u2019t want to lose, Cameron and Holmes would be the first nominated.<\/p>\n

The Cats trailed Melbourne in the first quarter. No \u201cJezza\u201d, Holmes-less and Patrick Dangerfield was soon hobbling.<\/p>\n

Yet, like the Magpies the previous evening in Adelaide, who had turned a 27-point deficit into a resounding 34-point triumph, the Cats found a way. At half-time, they\u2019d galloped to a 20-point advantage. Shannon Neale was playing like the mountainous Tom Hawkins.<\/p>\n

\"ShannonShannon Neale is one of the competition\u2019s most imposing key forwards.AFL Photos<\/p>\n

Tom Stewart was intercepting and launching counter-attacks, and at his side, Connor O\u2019Sullivan was reiterating that he would be one of the competition\u2019s best defenders soon.<\/p>\n

Having lost five from six before they met the Saints, the Cats have a reasonable shot at the top six \u2013 yet again \u2013 if they can continue their winning run against the Magpies.<\/p>\n

Collingwood and Geelong have proven unkillable, the competition\u2019s cockroach clubs. Each have been labelled too old. Lacking midfield star power (Geelong), rucks (Geelong), potent forwards (Collingwood) and top-end youth (Collingwood).<\/p>\n

Both have had to deal with untimely injuries and the distraction of losing highly talented small forwards (Hill and Tyson Stengle<\/a>) to personal travails.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Tanner<\/a><\/p>\n

The Cats and Pies have played in the most preliminary finals of any clubs this century (15 and 13 respectively); if both have been blessed with freakish father-sons \u2013 struck on the arse by a rainbow, as Paul Keating put it, given the various sons including N. Daicos and G. Ablett jnr \u2013 they nonetheless managed to extract more from their players, to develop the iffy into average and the average into above average, than most rivals.<\/p>\n

The Magpies have unashamedly adopted a list management model that the Cats pioneered in the 2020s, if not earlier.<\/p>\n

Observing Geelong and Collingwood\u2019s capacity to hang around despite setbacks, Geelong\u2019s long serving ex-chief executive Brian Cook said that both clubs were committed to using all the available levers, not just the draft, but free agency, trades, category B rookies, Ireland (Geelong more so) and placed a heavy emphasis on development.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth clubs now have practises and systems in their footy departments … where they won\u2019t go to the bottom,\u201d said Cook.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Magpies aren\u2019t worried about the date on Lachie Neale\u2019s birth certificate.AFL Photos<\/p>\n

Both have consistently fielded teams that are among the most experienced \u2013 Geelong\u2019s 2022 and Collingwood\u2019s 2023 flag sides were the oldest then on record. And they have refused to yield to the notion, as Richmond did (however reluctantly), that clubs eventually need extensive youth policies\/rebuilds, to compete for the premiership.<\/p>\n

The attitude of these unkillable teams is defined by a couple of factors:<\/p>\n

1. The list management model, which Collingwood has more recently adopted, of retaining their first pick \u2013 except for a difference-maker (eg. Bailey Smith) and using free agency, and especially taking unrestricted free agents who bring no draft cost.<\/p>\n

Collingwood\u2019s pursuit of Lachie Neale is an echo of Geelong\u2019s chase for Toby Greene. Neither club is as worried by birthdates as many rivals, who pay greater heed to a perceived premiership window. The Cats\u2019 recruitment of Norm Smith medallist Isaac Smith in 2020 was a template.<\/p>\n

2. Retaining experienced players, especially team leaders, for longer than the competition convention.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people think the biggest decisions are made in the boardroom,\u201d said Cook who just completed a period as Melbourne\u2019s interim CEO. \u201cBut they\u2019re made in the change rooms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geelong and Collingwood have never wanted for leadership within their playing groups over two decades.<\/p>\n

The Cats just committed to Dangerfield for 2027, securing him on a contract despite his chequered year with injury and struggle to come up every week. Collingwood, meanwhile, has set records by retaining the troika of Scott Pendlebury (38), Steele Sidebottom (35) and Jeremy Howe (36).<\/p>\n

While the Pies are expected to shuffle off at least one of their three tenors, there\u2019s a fair chance that they will be bringing in Neale, and potentially others.<\/p>\n

\"ThoughThough he\u2019s nearing the end of his career, Steele Sidebottom still has a huge role to play for the Pies.AFL Photos<\/p>\n

Their turnaround since the bye has been marked by 31-year-old Daniel McStay\u2019s career zenith as a key forward (ranked among the AFL\u2019s best forwards over that stretch) and the steady productivity and safe boot of ex-Saint Tim Membrey, 32, who had been brought in as a restricted free agent and is now, as McRae suggested, a strong prospect to be re-contracted for 2027.<\/p>\n

The most critical factor in the unkillable Cats and Pies has been their sheer unwillingness to accept that they must have a stint in the cellar. Collingwood\u2019s 17th placing in 2021, sandwiched between periods of contention, is the outlier.<\/p>\n

As Cook notes, teams that are mired down in the ladder\u2019s lowest reaches find that the climb takes a long time. The advent of free agency \u2013 and quality players\u2019 preference for contenders \u2013 has made the uphill trek harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe it\u2019s on their radar at all,\u201d he said of Geelong\u2019s aversion to bottoming out. Ditto for the diehard team they meet under lights tonight.<\/p>\n

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\"JakeJake Niall<\/a> is a Walkley award-winning sports journalist and chief AFL writer for The Age.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":831952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-831951","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\/831951","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=831951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/831952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}