Nathan Buckley addressed the media on Friday morning ahead of the Pies round 11 match against Geelong.
Adams sidelined
After an impactful return to the field with 29 disposals last weekend, vice-captain Taylor Adams will sit out Saturday’s game due to knee soreness.
- “He was declared fit to play last week and played really well. He had a player fall across his knee similar action to the one that injured it six weeks earlier.”
- “We know that it’s not anywhere near the severity of the initial incident so we’ll have to wait and see how he goes.”
McCreery out with a calf strain
Collingwood draftee, Beau McCreery will also sit out Saturday’s game as scans earlier in the week revealed a low-level calf strain sustained during the match against Port Adelaide. Running out for eight matches this season, the 20-year-old has consistently hit the scoreboard and has applied immense pressure in the forward 50.
- “Unfortunately, Beau’s sustained a calf strain so he’ll be 1 or 2 weeks. That happened really late in the game.”
- “He’s brought some real energy for us in front of the ball, he’s consistently hit scoreboard. It’s his implied pressure and his actual pressure that has been really important for us.”
- “There’s probably not one player that has his attributes that we can bring in to cover it so we need to share the load as a forward group to be able to bring the pressure he brings and has made his trade mark in a very short space of time.”
Bianco gets the call up
Second-year Magpie, Trent Bianco will make is long-awaited debut on Saturday afternoon.
- “A great story. Has been a Collingwood family for his entire life. He’s been a mascot and run out on the MCG with the team but this will be a little different for him.”
- “He’s a very good ball winner and ball user, just a very smart footballer. He can go left to right and understands the game really well.”
- “We were really disappointed that he had a knee complaint at the end of pre-season and was unavailable for selection for the first seven to eight weeks. He’s had a couple of games in the VFL.”
Back to no crowds and back in lockdown
With fans unable to attend games in Victoria this weekend due to lockdown, Bucks said it’s something the players have learnt to adapt to especially after last year.
- “It’s something the boys are used to, it’s something we’re all too familiar given last year. Probably having been there before takes a bit of the unknown away.”
- “Situations like this you really you at your own circumstances and there are others that are doing it far tougher and have more challenging situations than we find ourselves in.”
- “There’s plenty of what ifs and maybes. What we have learned through 2020 is to focus on the things that we know are absolutely true…Whatever happens beyond (round 11), we understand the information will come. We’re scheduled to play Adelaide in round 12 in Adelaide, the likelihood of that would be fairly low I would’ve thought.”
Coming up against the Cats
Bucks reflected on last week's narrow loss to Port Adelaide and looked ahead to Saturday's clash with the Cats.
- “(Last week) we just didn’t turn up. We looked like we were gassed and just out of legs. Fundamentally, we can look at all the x’s and o’s and all the tactics as much as you like, if you don’t bring that energy to your game to impose your style, it doesn’t really matter how good the tactics are.”
- “The Cats are playing remarkable football at the moment, finished the year off really strongly last year and they’re playing a really strong brand. They’re very distinctive, very good in the contest, good defensive team and moving the ball as well as anyone from their back half to their front half.”
Update on Greenwood
Bucks provided an update on Levi Greenwood who has been sidelined with ongoing concussion symptoms.
- “Lev’s status quo at the moment, he’s still not at full fitness from a football perspective and still has concussion symptoms.
- “He’s cleared to do skills work with no contact and until we know any further than that, that’s what he’ll continue to do.”
Still fine-tuning skills
With skill errors proving costly at key moments throughout the season, Bucks touched on the addition of an extra skills session into the weekly training program which he says has been beneficial especially with more younger players brought into the line-up each week.
- “Our endeavour has been good and we’ve been in games for a lot of them. We spoke about a couple of weeks ago that fact that we were dropping away in second halves of games.”
- “Our basics in the game, ball handling, our ground level have been something that have held us back from turning good energy and good competitiveness into wins.”
- “We decided to change up our schedule a month ago and we’ve put an extra session into our week which gives us an extra 40 minutes of ball handling and skills work and we believe that’s starting to come through now.”
- “Things we’ve amended and looked to do. Created opportunities to kick 14 /15 goals but kicked 8 and a lot of that was due to simple basics that weren’t executed.”
- “We weren’t getting results…More young players playing in the senior side than we anticipated due to form and injury of some of our senior players and we wanted to do more.”
