FOR YEARS he’s heard it. Irate fans, media experts and former greats bombarding newspapers, radio and online chat forums with the same message.
'Mick, scrap your boundary-hugging game plan. It’s boring. It doesn’t work. Tell your boys to kick it up the guts like the Cats do. That’s what will win you games.'
Well, seven rounds into the 2010 season, and Mick Malthouse’s rampaging Collingwood side is building an increasingly strong case to suggest that perhaps their coach has been right all along.
Sitting on top of the AFL ladder with six wins and just one loss - their best start to a season since 1993 - the Magpies are playing high-scoring, free-flowing, exciting football.
In the past four weeks, they’ve averaged over 20 goals per game, with wins by 64, 65, 53 and 66 points.
The key to this has been an extraordinary dominance of the inside 50s stat.
In the last month, Collingwood has averaged a whopping 27.2 more inside 50s per game than their opposition - a differential 11.7 better than any other team.
Their overall average of 61.6 inside 50s per game is more than anyone has managed since 2000.
All this, you might think, would suggest that Malthouse has finally listened to his critics. Surely the only way to get the ball to goal so often is to go straight down the middle?
Not so.
As the Champion Data heat map here shows, Collingwood has used the corridor just 23.1 per cent of the time in 2010.
(*Midfield ball movement measures the location of uncontested possessions received from a teammate’s disposal)
Just as they were in 2009, they remain the lowest corridor user in the competition, a stat that doesn’t change whether they win or lose.
Given the Pies’ round eight opponents, Fremantle, have been the most direct team in the competition this year (using the corridor 41.8 per cent of the time), it’s clear we’ll have two contrasting but highly effective styles of play on show this Friday night.
Picking the winner won’t be as simple as choosing the team that best follows the old 'kick it down the guts' mantra - we know that will be Freo.
It will have more to do with which team can better use their game plan to get the ball inside 50 and find an avenue to goal.
And in this, the boundary-hugging Magpies have been far superior to anyone else so far this year.
