Full match coverage and stats<\/a><\/p>\n“I think he’s a mile ahead of where I thought he would be at this time,” McRae said.<\/p>\n
“I still thought he’d be playing sub or subbed out. I think he had eight score involvements. His clearance work is back to his beast mode … he’s an important player for us.”<\/p>\n
De Goey finished the match with 26 disposals, six clearances and a goal to his name in a match that had huge ramifications over where the Magpies finish on the ladder.<\/p>\n
After Gold Coast was upset by Port Adelaide, the Pies are all but assured of a top-four finish ahead of the finals, a stage on which De Goey has impressed before.<\/p>\n
“Historically, finals have been his time to shine, so he’s probably one of the freshest players we have. Excited for what could be,” McRae said.<\/p>\n
But it wasn’t all good news coming out of the Collingwood camp, with key defender Jeremy Howe subbed out of the game before half-time with a groin injury.<\/p>\n
McRae said he’d spoken with the veteran post-match and wasn’t sure of the severity, but played down the possibility of his defender missing finals.<\/p>\n
“I just had a brief chat to him (Howe),” McRae said.<\/p>\n
“The adductor injury can be somewhat on the minor end at times. They tend to heal quickly, I think, but we won’t know until we get a scan.<\/p>\n
“It may be a sneaky chance for the first final. I’m not sure. We’ll find out. If it’s a bit more than that, I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
Other Magpies who looked to be wounded in Friday night’s game were spearhead forward Brody Mihocek and the speedy Beau McCreery, who hurt his foot.<\/p>\n
“‘Checkers’ (Mihocek) has got a hand. Something with his hand, I’m not sure,” McRae said.<\/p>\n
“Beau got stomped on his foot, so that was pretty sore for a while. Again, we won’t really know until maybe early next week or as early as the weekend, but I don’t think that’s of concern at the moment.”<\/p>\n
The Pies now have a week off before they head into finals. For McRae, he’s keen to use the break as an opportunity to reset before September.<\/p>\n
“We’ve had a big run of playing the top teams week after week, which, again, gives you feedback, and this has been a qualifying phase,” McRae said.<\/p>\n
“We’ll reset ourselves. Wednesday, we’ll relaunch to a new season, because it is a new season. You have a whole of different outcomes at the end of it now.<\/p>\n
“You lose, you’re out for some, and you win, if you finish top four, you win one, you’re in a prelim. You win two, you’re in a Grand Final. That’s how close we are right now.”<\/p>\n
It’s the opposite for the Demons, whose season is now over. Melbourne missed out on finals for the second year in a row.<\/p>\n
But interim coach Troy Chaplin said there were plenty of positives to take away from Friday’s game that will please their new coach next season.<\/p>\n
“They are a proud group, and they’ve shown up … every day they’ve come in with real purpose. They challenged a team tonight who are a top-four team,” Chaplin said.<\/p>\n
“What we have to probably get better as a group is winning these games. I think this year we’re 1-6 in games under 10 points, so we have to go away as a group and win, learn to win.<\/p>\n
“But the performance of some of the guys tonight, you could reel them off. ‘Gawny’ (Max Gawn), again had a great battle. I thought ‘Trac’ (Christian Petracca) and ‘Clarry’ (Clayton Oliver) had fantastic games. Trent Rivers, he showed again he can play midfield.<\/p>\n
“So we’ve got guys who are really, we’ve got great players. The new coach will find a way to inspire them and galvanise that group and take them forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jordan De Goey celebrates a goal during Collingwood’s clash against Melbourne in round 24, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":["post-88207","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\/88207","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=88207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}