Why Friday night will shine Sun-light on the question about Collingwood's defence
For Collingwood, it holds no such weight, as finals are assured. But Craig McRae will be uneasy about the opponents they confront.
It was unsurprising that Jeremy Howe was the player subbed out of Collingwood's Friday night romp over Carlton. McRae could not take his only tall defender, Darcy Moore, from the ground and risk a Charlie Curnow cameo. So he removed his next most important key defender, the undersized Howe.
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This was not a concession to age, to rest the veteran Howe. It was a concession to Gold Coast. Suns coach Damien Hardwick played Ben King, Jed Walter and Ethan Read in the forward line that stretched and beat Essendon. While Walter and Read are still only kids, they are fast improving. This was Read's best game yet for the Suns – he knocked one ball down early in a marking contest for a front and centre goal and then booted the next Suns goal himself – and Walter is the player you can tell is just a season or so away from tearing games apart.
Against three genuine tall forwards, Collingwood have system but not personnel. With Billy Frampton out and the fringe option Charlie Dean dropped, they have just Moore as a player of comparable height, then Howe as a player who jumps to great height to play as a defacto tall. Collingwood will have to rely on the league's most effective defensive system to beat the Suns at home, where they remain a vastly better team than at any other ground.
Gold Coast will stretch the Pies in the same way Adelaide and Geelong will stretch them in finals.
The top team's talented first-choice defenders are Moore, Howe, Brayden Maynard, Dan Houston, Josh Daicos, Harry Perryman and Isaac Quaynor. Only Moore is tall.
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