Collingwood’s black and white magic finds a way in latest miracle comeback | Jonathan Horn

This week’s column was supposed to be about Richmond. It was supposed to be about their truly ghastly game at Marvel Stadium, a ground they hate, against the sort of team they would have rolled over with absolute contempt a few years ago. It was supposed to be a look at time’s assault on champion players, and on champion teams.

And then Collingwood happened. You’re probably sick of me writing about them. I’m sick of it myself. It’s becoming ridiculous. “Every week is a new adventure,” Craig McRae said a few weeks ago. And every week, they outdo themselves. They’re the team you tune in for. They’re the team you’d pay to watch as a neutral. They’ve won nine of their last dozen games after trailing at three-quarter-time.

If ever they were gettable, it was on Sunday. They were coming off a five-day break. Scott Pendlebury had a bung eye. Steele Sidebottom had been sick all week. Darcy Moore was nearly a late withdrawal. And there was a certain swagger about Adelaide. All through Matthew Nicks’ tenure, the Crows have been hard to play against. But in the last few years, they lacked a bit of class. They lacked an x-factor. And they lacked consistency. They were like most sides rebuilding and figuring themselves out. But they’ve been a terrific team to watch over the past month, with their all-out attack, their sumptuous field kicking and their small forwards running amok.

This was their biggest test however. This was a full house, and the most anticipated game of the round. This was an opponent that would keep swinging, keep pressing, and keep running. The Crows should have put the game to bed by quarter-time. They led by 22 points but it should have been a lot more. They dominated for the best part of three quarters. They worked their backsides off. They had the best of some abysmal umpiring. But they left the door ajar, and you simply can’t do that against this Magpie side.

Collingwood isn’t a team that makes a lot of sense on the stats sheet. They’re a hard team to explain on a chart. But it’s always worth looking at the body language of the players when they’re down at three-quarter-time. They’re always full of energy, full of belief and completely dialled in with the coach. “Be yourself,” McRae tells his players. “Go and play”. And they do. They don’t stew over mistakes. They don’t fold up when they’re four of five goals down. They take risks. But it’s not all one big throw at the stumps. It’s not all voodoo. There’s method to what they do. And as McRae said yesterday, they’re exposed to these scenarios more than any other side.

Magpies players run through their banner before the game at Adelaide Oval. Photograph: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos/Getty Images

With about a minute to go, and scores level, Billy Frampton, who has about as much ruck acumen as Peter Frampton, tapped a ball back into the corridor. Every other ruckman in the competition would have thumped the ball to the boundary line. But this Collingwood side has nerve. They brook no doubt. And with 21 seconds to go, they had the lead – and top position.

At the tail end of the Eddie McGuire-Nathan Buckley era, Collingwood had become an increasingly hard club to warm to. Everything about the club and team was puckered up, distracted and defensive. That all changed in 2022. Still, it was tempting to dismiss the season as a one off, as a series of heists. It was tempting to say it would never be like that again – that coaches like Ross Lyon and Alastair Clarkson would figure them out, and that their luck would run out. But they keep finding a way. They are such a mixed bag. In last quarters like Sunday’s, Jordan De Goey is an almost Rottweilian figure in the middle. Moore can be vomiting 10 minutes before a game, spend the next two hours hurling himself about like a Nordic volleyballer and then reel off a pitch perfect speech about war veterans. John Noble is what Jack Dyer would have called a good, ordinary player, but he keeps competing, and keeps improving.

Mason Cox is out injured right now. On the weekend he was the guest bartender at Australia’s smallest cocktail bar in Federation Square, an extraordinary image to ponder. He was also the subject of a 60 Minutes profile in the United States. Footy, he said, was the most “unique, confusing, and beautiful game in the world”. Sunday certainly provided the full Aussie rules experience – from the tired and the turgid at Docklands, to the utterly compelling in Adelaide.