Collingwood and Brisbane are built for one another.
Last year, Collingwood surprised everyone by popping up in a preliminary final. Such Cinderella runs can often be one-off affairs, but this season the Magpies were more meat-and-potatoes in building an 18-5 record to finish on top.
Despite finishing only a game behind the Pies, Brisbane did not shake off concerns about a flaky forward line until the final weeks of the season.
To get here, Collingwood had to weather an inaccurate Melbourne, before the collective anxiety of Pies’ fans reached a trembling peak as a Toby Greene snap fell centimetres short in the shadows of full-time in their preliminary final.
They come up against a team that, last week’s first quarter against Carlton aside, are playing the best football anyone has played at this particular accelerated moment.
Who wins at a packed MCG on Saturday will come down to pressure, ball movement and making the most of the critical moments. There are several players though, who due to matchups or because of who they are, will likely impact the result.
For Collingwood, a lot of words have been spilled on Jordan De Goey and his 93 kilograms of midfield burst and power. But if history has taught us anything (and in football it can be an unreliable guide) it’s that much of Collingwood’s drive comes off half-back.
Enter Isaac Quaynor, whose career-best season embodies the Craig McCrae footballing philosophy of “belief and excitement”, merging an attacking mindset and an ability to lock down the opposition’s best forward into a joint venture. Quaynor’s ability to intercept mark is augmented by his strength in one-on-one contests, conceding less than one in five across the season. Given Brisbane’s multiple forward threats, he may be required to do more than one job over the course of the afternoon.
At the other end of the ground, much of Brisbane’s energy will come from Keidean Coleman.
Last week, it was Coleman and Harris Andrews who turned the game for the Lions. Coleman’s intercepting, hard running and clean ball use saw him involved in nearly half of all Brisbane scores.
“I do try to play composed,” he said at Brisbane’s Springfield training facility early this week. “I don’t really think about the game too much, I just back myself and I know what I’m capable of and happy that it paid off.”
If he can maintain that mindset in front of 100,000 screaming people at the MCG, he’ll go some way towards setting up a Lions win.
Another player critical to Brisbane’s success is Hugh McCluggage. Since arriving from South Warrnambool (the same footballing alma mater as Jonathan Brown) in the 2016 draft, McCluggage’s astute and creative ball use can impact a game in ways often missed by those who simply read stats sheets. While most of the Lions’ midfield plaudits go to dual Brownlow medallist, Lachie Neale, McCluggage has reliably shown his capacity to provide the crucial link between a defensive rebound and a dangerous ball inside 50.
In this, he is not unlike Collingwood veteran, Steele Sidebottom. In the qualifying and preliminary finals, Sidebottom has wound back the clock to enhance his reputation as a player made for the big occasion.
“I knew Steele had this unbelievable running capability, he is our best runner – we’ve got Nick Daicos who has slightly gone past him now – but he’s an incredible match-day runner,” McRae told SEN earlier this year.
“I remember this, I thought, ‘Steele let’s get back to work, we’ll play you on the wing train you as a wingman and get to work on that and your fundamentals’. Then all of a sudden, the growth within the group and him have come along for the ride and it looks like he’s at the top of his game.”
Alongside Scott Pendlebury, Sidebottom is the most experienced member of this Collingwood team, and the level head he will be able to bring to his fifth grand final will be an important point of difference between these two sides.
Ultimately though, the concerns for Collingwood lie primarily in their forward half, having lost Dan McStay with a knee ligament injury during the win over the Giants. The consensus is that the Pies will need to rack up a score significantly more than the 60 and 58 points they’ve put up this final series. If they are to do this, Brody Mihocek will need to play an outsized role, or at the very least, he’ll need to perform better than he has so far this September.
The inclusion of Billy Frampton aside, Mihocek will need the help of either Darcy Cameron or Mason Cox pushing forward to be a forward target – much in the way Oscar McInerney was able to do for Brisbane last week. Not only was he able to kick two goals but was crucial on bringing his side’s midfield back into the game with 38 decisive hit outs against Carlton’s Marc Pittonet and Tom De Koning.
Collectively, Brisbane will need to overcome an MCG hoodoo, whereas Collingwood carry a neurosis that has bubbled below a euphoric surface all week. In the 16 grand finals the Pies have featured in the past 65 years, they have won … two.
It all adds up to potentially the best grand final we’ve seen in a while.
Follow the buildup and every minute of the grand final itself on Saturday with Guardian Australia’s live blog from 11.30am AEST
