Collingwood Senior Coach Craig McRae has addressed the media ahead of his side’s Round 12 clash with the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium.
Scott Pendlebury to miss
“Pendles won't play. We anticipated he’d get through training and he’d be right, and he didn't get through training,” he said.
“So we're gonna have to explore what that looks like. And at this stage, we're not sure, but he won't play.
“His leadership's critical. He's hard to hard to replace.”
50 games for Billy Frampton
“Yeah, he's been really important. Like this year, we're seeing way more of his his ability to defend really tall and we've missed that in our program since we've had Murph out,” he said.
“He stepped up at that point. And now, he may go forward, he might go back. We've got a flexibility with him, he might even play ruck.
“So we've got someone in our team that has the ability to be a bit of a swing man. And Bill's had a great year for us so far.”
Coming up against the Bulldogs
“I think percentage is a good reader of teams and their percentage is really strong, I think might be second best in the comp so you know they can score really heavily,” he said.
“A couple of outs for them sort of helps us but we've got a couple out too.
“They’re really good clearance team, always have been, really good around the ball contest hands really had a stoppage is really strong.
“There's no easy games, we're gonna have to be on our best, best behaviour to get this job done.”
Finding ways in tough moments
“I think opportunities have presented some really, really good signs for us and young players stepping up,” he said.
“We’re finding ways to score we, haven't relied on someone to kick multiple goals for us.
Week after week, it's been a collective and that won't change.”
Tonight’s mid-season draft
“We’ll wait and see if we use both. We’re going to a meeting just after this funnily. Enough,” he said.
“We'll work through that we're gonna, list the names that we're interested in. But there's a bit more work to be done and then you don't know what other teams do.
“I think we might have a first pick around 11 or 12, we'll go there with the intention to take some picks, what that looks like we don't know.”
