Never-say-die Collingwood out-run Essendon in Anzac Day classic

You’ve never got this Collingwood team beaten. No lead is enough. You know they’ll keep coming. They’ll close like the Grim Reaper, as per Gerard Whateley’s superb call last year. They’ll mow you down with cold relish, as Essendon found out yet again today.

The Bombers were 28 points the better at the final break. But it was still too close for comfort. There were more than 95,000 people at the MCG today, and every one of them knew what was coming. For Essendon people, it was that sense of impending doom. For Collingwood players and supporters, it was that now very familiar feeling: We’ll be right. We’ve seen this movie before. Like Chautauqua at Randwick, we’ll pin the ears back and steam home over the top of them.

Yesterday will go down as one of the great Anzac Day clashes. It felt bigger than Anzac Day games of recent years. It felt like the last sip of summer in Melbourne. It felt, and proved to be, one of the biggest home and away crowds in the history of the game. It felt like Essendon’s most acid test in years: Had they matured? Did they have the cattle? An did they have the mettle?

The third term felt like the making of this Essendon side. They’d been challenged in the previous quarter, but unlike last year, they were able to stem the flow and reset. Now they were suddenly the more efficient team. Now they were the ones running on top of the ground. They played a controlled, patient game. They denied Collingwood the corridor. And when Nathan Krueger was subbed out, it was the Bombers who had ruck dominance and all the ascendancy.

But like I said, this was Collingwood. “You’ve got to play the minutes to beat us” coach Craig McRae said afterwards. “Swing from the hip”, is another one of his. They ran the Bombers