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Collingwood coach Craig McRae says not in his “wildest dreams” did he think the Pies would go from 17th to top four in the space of a season.
McRae, a three-time premiership winner with the Lions in his playing days, knows what it takes to reach the pinnacle of the sport.
And he’s confident the club’s record 10 wins by less than two goals is the perfect preparation for the “high pressure” football he’s expecting.
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“We have certain plays that we go to and certain scenarios we go to (in the dying minutes),” he said on AFL360.
“We go to execute our ‘save the game model’ if you like and (captain Scott Pendlebury) Pendles is a great leader of that. He knows what to do on the field.
“We practice this all the time.
“The reality of those minutes, we have managed this as good as I’ve ever seen a team do it … and funnily enough we’ve been in that position so many times. No other clubs or teams are having to do it every week like we are.
“The spirited win, you picture like a Jamie Elliott-type moment, that just gives your group so much spirit and so much belief. And we’ve had 10 of them.
“Our group manage the moments as good as anyone.
“There’s no percentage now.”
McRae praised Elliott’s ability to stand up when it matters – as he did in the post-siren win over Essendon in Round 19 and then with the match winner against the Blues last weekend.
“There’s a passage of play Beau McCreery gets the ball and has about four bounces in the third quarter and I was like: ‘You go Beau, you go. Kick the goal’. So there’s a moment where he goes, ‘oh I see a better option’, and then we don’t score. But his intent was to help out,” McRae explained.
“I just love that bit of footage with Jamie (kicking the match-winner) where he has a couple of looks and he goes, ‘nah I’ll take this and take the moment’, and I love that.
“You see it with Beau in the last quarter too, where he probably could have centred it and there comes a time where certain players and Jamie is one of them, that just say: ‘OK if it has to be, it’s up to me’ and he just did it.”
McRae laughed as he explained what was probably going through Elliott’s head when he kicked the match winner – singing Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie.
“Early in the year we were missing a lot of goals and I have this theory from my development days is I reckon your hips don’t lie on goalkicking,” he said.
“You know, line yourself up to the middle of the goals and basically on the point of impact, your hips will tell you where you’re kicking the ball.
“So I showed this series of edits of us where our hips were not in line with the goals and I played Shakira, you know your Hips Don’t Lie.
“I’m not going to sing it but I played it over and over and over again, so the players have a bit of a joke with it. Maybe Jamie has the Hips Don’t Lie in his head, I don’t know.”
Collingwood will take on minor premiers Geelong at the MCG in the first week of the finals, with the winner through to a preliminary final and the loser to face the winner of Fremantle/Western Bulldogs.
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