AFL 2016: Port Adelaide thrash Collingwood Magpies by 67 points

PORT ADELAIDE  5.2      10.5      15.9      19.11     (125)
COLLINGWOOD  3.3      5.10      6.13      7.16     (58)
GOALS
Port Adelaide: Young 4,  Neade 4, Wingard 3,  Hartlett, Impey,  Polec,  Trengove,  Westhoff, R Gray, S Gray,  Boak. 
Collingwood:  Cox 2, Sidebottom 2, Grundy,  de Goey,  Pendlebury.
BEST
Port Adelaide: Impey, Young, Boak, Dixon, Hartlet, R Gray
Collingwood: Reid, Pendelbury, Treloar, Howe, Cox, Sidebottom
UMPIRES
Schmitt, Meredith, Fisher.
CROWD
28,567 at the MCG.

Would the real Collingwood stand up? Would that the real Collingwood even turned up at the MCG on Sunday.

Three weeks of solid remedial work came spectacularly undone as Port Adelaide annihilated the Magpies by 67 points. Of the Collingwood that thrashed Brisbane, beat Geelong and were brave when decimated against the Bulldogs, there was no sign. Instead, there was by match's end only the rabble that represented in the first two months of the season.

Coach Nathan Buckley could quantify the scale of the defeat. "We were minus 25 in ground balls, contested possessions on the ground," he said. "Three blokes at the contest, five Port Adelaide players. Fifty metres away, four or five seconds later, where you'd think our extras must be, three of our blokes at the contest, five or six Port Adelaide players. It looked like we struggled to cover the ground compared to our last couple of weeks.". But he couldn't explain it. It defied explanation.

We'll concentrate on one fundamental: goal-kicking. Collingwood had 53 forward entries and kicked seven goals. Port Adelaide had 59 forward entries and kicked 19. In the second quarter, when the Magpies were beginning to fade but the match was still there to be won, Collingwood kicked seven behinds in a row. Port kicked five goals in a row. Collingwood went into half-time flat, and came out flatter.

That was big picture. Here is snapshot. In the third quarter, Travis cloke outbodied Logan Austin, then dropped the mark. Within seconds, at the other end, while Collingwood's defenders all rushed to spoil Charlie Dixon, the ball fell into the smartly positioned arms of Jarman Impey, 20 metres out. You can guess the rest.

Somehow or other, this was always going to come back to the repatriated Cloke. He was not the sole reason the Magpies were so abject; it wouldn't do to make him the scapegoat. But he was the elephant in the room, perhaps the woolly mammoth, from a time gone by. He toiled away, but that is the least expected of an AFL footballer. He took one contested mark. He kicked one behind, a right-foot snap. His one set shot, from 50 metres, missed altogether. You probably guessed that. Mason Cox, the American project, kicked two goals and looked at least twice as likely.

Austin, Cloke's opponent, was playing his first game of football. Until Sunday, he was a Port Adelaide Magpie. In Adelaide, Magpie means not quite at AFL standard. So it did in Melbourne, too, on Sunday.

But the fact is that Port outsmarted the Magpies as well as outplaying them. When you concede one goal out the back, so to speak, you might think your opposition were cheating. Two, you might still delude yourself. Half-a-dozen times and you have have to start to think it is a plan. When it happens in the last minute of the game as easily as it happened in the first quarter, you have to admit it was a plan that worked.

While Collingwood fiddled around, taking too long to kick the ball and kicking it poorly when they did, Port roosted the ball long into the skiddy open spaces of the wet MCG, and economy-sized Jake Neade, Aaron Young and Chad Wingard had a feast. But special mention must be made of Jarman Impey, the fizziest, flitting-est player on the ground. Was a footballer ever better named?

Coach Ken Hinkley made even more special mention of Dixon, who didn't kick a goal, but whose rollicking efforts made space for the goalkickers. "Outstanding," Said Hinkley. "His best game for the club."

Port showed themselves to be nothing if not versatile. With no recognised ruckman, and missing at least two other talls, they went small and played a small game, and won it comprehensively. Their midfield bullocked Collingwood's out of the game. Here, the stats lie. None of Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom and Adam Treloar had their usual impact. But Travis Boak was brilliant. Between the Travises Boak and Cloke, there was nothing, and everything.

In a stuttering season in which they have struggled to string wins together and failed to beat top eight opposition at all, this was the Power's best performance. Hinkley put it this way: "We're at the corner. We're having a little look around the corner at the moment. We've got to be convinced that we're going to keep going around the corner."

We'll put it this way: was that the real Port Adelaide standing up on Sunday? For Power's sake, they'd better hope that was them out there on Sunday.