Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Monday morning. This is your town. This is your station. This is Waitley. Good morning. There's snap judgements far and wide from that weekend of football. Collingwood is right in the crosshairs. Paddy's text through early. When will Pies Radio get a run?
Chapter 2: What insights does Gerard share about Collingwood's current form?
Time to park Blues Radio. Feels about now. And broader still... After what was instantly dubbed the biggest moment in VAR history, saw West Ham's equaliser ruled out protecting Arsenal's lead in the Premier League. The technological encroachment in sport might have just decided the premiership and relegation battle. It's the peak moment for technology's encroachment into sport.
For better or for worse, it will be debated at great length internationally. Snap judgments, 1-300-736-736 and the 40 Wings temper text is 0433 981116. The difference is temper. teenager Ollie Peake is going to be named in an Australian squad for the first time later this morning. That's exciting.
Melbourne Storm overcame so much turmoil to snap a seven-game losing streak after Craig Bellamy gave the first public hint about the uncertainty of his future. That's hugely admirable given all that has engulfed the club in the past couple of weeks. I can't see how Cozzy Pickett would be suspended for his glancing high contact on Jake Waterman yesterday.
To my eye, he slackened his arm rather than bracing in any way. He approached the contest at speed, as he always does, and lowered near the fall of the ball. The contact made was inevitable.
Chapter 3: How is technology influencing outcomes in sports?
and unavoidable. It was a free kick for high contact. Waterman wasn't injured. It's not a reportable offence. Zach Butters did far more wrong on Friday night than Cozzy Pickett did yesterday. Butters' action was high risk. He elected to bump, having run past the ball, but any high contact made was deemed negligible. That was either good judgment or extremely good luck.
But the judgment was a true reflection of what happened. Pickett's action was nothing like what he's been suspended for in the past. He was the first to watch the replay in the stadium and the anxiety he felt seemed to infiltrate his game from there. But judged on what actually transpired, he should be cleared and free to play against Hawthorne next Saturday.
As promised, the best game came first. Fremantle and Hawthorne gave us plenty to digest and analyse. Carlton showed the requisite fight. You wonder if that might be the start of something, just as everyone had given up. Patrick Cripps played in a manner that suggested he was far too easily dismissed and derided last week. Essendon played well, but showed how hard it's going to be to win games.
The Bombers bosses preach stability. We watch to see if their word is oak. Marcus Spontanpelli has enhanced his place as the best player in the competition through three weeks playing hurt. Three weeks battling multiple ailments and polling votes in all three games, I'd say. The 10 makes much more sense to me this week than it did last with the Bulldogs and Adelaide inside.
And there's five into four up top. Geelong is in that mix until it takes the tests over the next two weeks of Brisbane and Sydney. But it's Collingwood who are the biggest query out of round nine, now living on the breadline in 10th place. They're a 50-50 team, even Steven. Four wins and a draw from nine with a percentage of 99.9. 734 points for, 735 points against. Average, bog average.
I've had a tendency to over-index the magpies, despite numerous warnings from Simmo. I'm on the brink of having to concede that I'm wrong here. They certainly don't belong with the contenders. Saturday night was a pretty graphic illustration of that. But are they in the second tier? Or are they just scrapping for the newfangled wildcard places?
There's a pattern in the deficiencies of their clearance game. There's an event in the breakdown of their defensive structure, so they have both pattern and event. They thought they'd resolved the forward connection piece, but that reared again on Saturday night, and it leaves Craig McRae with an awful lot to work on.
They were broadly expected to be the slider, given the age profile and the lack of young talent. I suspect that might have been true on their internal forecasting as well, but it looks like the most accurate of economic forecasting.
They are absolutely doing the right thing with Scott Pendlebury, holding him back from an MCG record breaker, but inevitably that is going to create awkwardness this week. Shane Crawford cast this as a tribute year at Collingwood when we were together for the Holy Thursday game in Brisbane.
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Chapter 4: What recent events have impacted the Melbourne Storm's performance?
It's starting to feel like such a canny observation. They're even, Stephen. They're 50-50. They're bog average, and they're certainly not in any meaningful contention.
You know, we've got work to do on our game. You know, we played those two teams from last year and I know that it's a different season this year, but it's just parts of their game is just challenging us a bit more than some of the other teams in the competition. And we'll get to work on it. What is it, round nine? That's nice to find out this stuff now, isn't it? And we can get to work on it.
We'll do that, you know, got six days to prepare ourselves against the Swans and get to work on the centre bounces and our defensive system. You know, some will be reminders, others will be like, okay, what are we going to do with this face? It's not quite working. No, there's just so many breakdowns.
And again, you know, some of the fundamental stuff that we just take great pride in and in other parts, it's just maybe a bit outplayed in certain parts of that game. It hasn't been a pattern though. So like right now, it's sit here and go, let's get better in that part of our game.
Chapter 5: What are the implications of Cozzy Pickett's recent actions on the field?
But it hasn't been a pattern to this stage. Two weeks ago, we kicked one by 77 points. And then last week, playing one of the better teams in the competition, we kicked over 90 points. So there's parts of our game that we like. We've taken some step forwards with our ability to get the ball inside 50. Again, you get challenged week and week. We'll find some more vision to show. And here we go.
Let's get to work on the fundamentals of this part of our game. And we want to fight it out. We didn't fight it out as good as we thought we could, particularly in the last quarter. We want to show our fans a fair bit more fight than what we did at the end of the game.
So he's got both pattern and event in play at the moment. Adam Simpson will run the full assessment of Collingwood. He's had a pretty canny read on them all the way through. The trick is you wouldn't put it past Collingwood to turn in one of those special efforts on the road against the Swans on Friday night, but it would need to be a special effort.