Steele Sidebottom has personified Collingwood’s current assault on the premiership. At 34, when most footballers would be done or running around in the bush with his brothers, Sidebottom is playing close to his career peak.
If the All-Australian team was picked after this round, Sidebottom would have serious claims to be selected – and not in his customary position on the wing; his career revival, which came after he was assigned tagging roles, has come in his return as a bona fide midfielder.
Sidebottom with wife Alisha and their children in the rooms.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
Sidebottom’s history would have a W affixed to his name, signalling his outlandish proficiency with a wet ball, and on that score, he had several teammates with similarly safe hands in the drizzle – old teammates Scott Pendlebury, Jack Crisp and Jamie Elliott (five goals) – among them.
Sidebottom is winning more balls in the clinches than ever – his 15 clearances represented an equal career-high, and his 22 contested balls was eight more than the next best player of either side (Nick Daicos).
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Collingwood, thus, are fulfilling two lines from their club song: they’re good and old, and – watching well-drilled cohesion with and especially without the ball – they know how to play the game.
Their premiership challenge seems likely to hinge on whether their large cohort of players in the career twilight zones can sustain their bodies and intensity for the marathon of 25 or 26 weeks.
At seven rounds, they’ve decisively outstripped the market expectations, which worried (as scribes such as this one did) about the risk of investing so heavily in players aged 30 and over.
But 34 is the new 30. Pendlebury and Jeremy Howe (34) are more than holding their own, too, and Elliott, at 32, isn’t losing spring or much speed.
Collingwood, like Geelong of 2022, are re-defining what’s possible in terms of age profile, as Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic did in men’s tennis and Tom Brady and LeBron James have in American professional team sports.
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For Essendon, Zach Merrett’s excellence is a given, as is Sam Durham’s effort. Talented Nic Martin only shone really when the Bombers had momentum in the second quarter, ramming through four goals in six minutes to close within a kick (they took the lead, fleetingly, early in the third term).
From a big-picture vantage, the most encouraging portent for the Bombers was Zach Reid’s display in defence. He wasn’t among the best afield, but his nine intercepts suggested that, finally after a horrendous run of injury, the 202-centimetre key defender, is discovering the abilities that prompted Essendon to invest a top 10 pick in him in the draft of 2020.
This 30th anniversary Anzac Day contained far fewer highlights than the fabled game of 1995, in which Sav Rocca booted nine and 10,000 or more were locked out in a spontaneous mass turnout.
It was, on many scores, a day for veterans.
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