Ben Reid: an All-Australian defender or a match-winning key forward?

For the moment, the Collingwood coaching staff appears happy to play him as a swingman, shifting him from end to end in accordance with the mood of each match.

But if the Magpie Army ran the team, they’d have him lining up in attack alongside Travis Cloke each and every week.

In the hours after the Magpies’ 79-point win over Essendon, @CollingwoodFC put the question to our 50,000 Twitter followers, asking them to decide where they’d prefer to see Reid line up.

Those who want him up forward were asked to retweet, and those who are adamant that he should stay predominantly in defence were asked to favourite the tweet.

The result was overwhelmingly in favour of Reid playing in attack.

As of 9am on Tuesday, a total of 158 fans had retweeted and just 21 had opted to click favourite.

One user, @drewy4, asked “what do we do for both?”

Only the coaching staff has the answers.

For the record, Reid has kicked 14 goals in his past eight matches with a high of four against Carlton in round 15.

Although he arrived at the club as a key forward, he had only kicked five goals in his first 82 games before moving into attack against the Lions in round 10.

He kicked 3.3 against Essendon from eight marks against Bomber veteran Dustin Fletcher.