COLLINGWOOD coach Craig McRae has admitted "time's running out" for his side as it pursues a return to finals after last year's premiership victory.
The Magpies' 20-point loss to Geelong on Friday night was their third-straight defeat, leaving them in the thick of clubs fighting to make the top eight. As it stands, with the remainder of round 18 still to play, the Pies are 10th on the ladder and at risk of slipping further by the end of the weekend.
And with their last four games of the season against Carlton, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, the reigning premier is in a serious fight just to play finals this year.
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Having been hit hard by injury this season and with Josh Carmichael forced to retire this week after Nathan Murphy did the same earlier in the year, McRae said he's been trying to lift the mood of the club.
"I do feel like there's a little bit of a dark cloud at times over us," McRae said after the loss to the Cats.
"I said that to the players this week, but we can't live in that space ... we're not here to make excuses. I think for most major parts of tonight, we looked like ourselves.
"I just want to (be) rid of excuses, like, I just don't want to live in that space. We fight to the last second, we kick the last goal of the game, this is who we are."
A mounting injury list has been a concern for Collingwood all season, with both Brody Mihocek and Jeremy Howe further absences on Friday night, although Jamie Elliott made a strong return from a vascular issue that has seen him miss the last two months.
Lachie Schultz, however, will be an addition to that injury list after he failed a concussion test in the last quarter following a head clash with Cat Tom Stewart.
Determined to add a positive spin to the night, McRae confirmed that Dan McStay will play 40 minutes in Collingwood's VFL match on Saturday just eight months after rupturing his ACL.
"I'll see you down at AIA (Centre), we'll be excited for this young lad who's going to play 40 minutes of footy, and we'll celebrate that," McRae said.
After an important, hard-fought win for Geelong coach Chris Scott, it was some umpiring interpretations that caught the eye.
Throughout the game, umpires were red-hot on calling play on for kicks deemed shorter than the required 15 metres, with the rule adjudicated more stringently than it has been in recent weeks.
Despite the apparent crackdown, the Cats almost doubled Collingwood's mark count for the night (145-75) as they followed Essendon's lead against the Pies last week of playing a high-mark style of game.
Scott said if a shift in the interpretation of the rule had been a directive from the League to umpires, it had not been communicated with clubs during the week.
But he also defended the whistleblowers and added the interpretation change may have been circumstantial and not a directive from the League.
"It was clear, wasn't it? Right from the start. It was like, 'oh, that's the way they're picking that one up'," he said of the 15m ruling.
"It's a really, really difficult one to adjudicate, because in the moment you've got to work out whether the ball's gone 15 metres, you only get a split second to work out whether you're going to blow the whistle or not. And then you've got to work out 'am I watching the ball carrier to see whether he's played on? Or am I watching the guy on the mark to see whether he's abusing the stand rule?'
"When the opposition last week marked the ball a lot and it was clear that we were going to try and mark the ball a lot, it's annoying.
"I'm actually just going to say what I think about this stuff ... don't take it as criticism necessarily. It's just like, we shouldn't cover our eyes and say, 'oh no, it didn't happen'. It did. You saw it, I saw it ... it's a hard game to umpire, we've all got to get used to it. If you expect perfection from them, you will just end up frustrated.
"I don't want to sound like I'm critical of (umpires), I'm actually trying to defend them."
