Side By Side They Stick Together

The Age

Saturday August 9, 2008

Chloe Saltau

Upholding the Magpie name was all that fans and coach alike could ask of a besieged Collingwood ahead of tonight's critical match against St Kilda.

Chloe Saltau reports.

DALE Thomas and Scott Pendlebury led the Collingwood players over the rise to Gosch's Paddock about 11.30 yesterday morning, while first-gamer Chris Dawes, a powerful lad from Sandringham Dragons, trotted behind them.

An image of renewal - a couple of young guns and a debutant - was as close as Collingwood came to making a statement ahead of tonight's season-breaking game against St Kilda.

Certainly, Mick Malthouse was in no mood to talk about the lies that came back to incriminate Heath Shaw and Alan Didak this week, and was certain that all in the football world would be delighting in the Magpies' misadventures. If that was not enough to galvanise the Magpies, nothing would be."

I don't think the end of World War II copped as much (coverage)," Malthouse said."

Under those circumstances, of course we're galvanised because no one wants to see Collingwood succeed except Collingwood people."

The most omnipresent of Collingwood people, Eddie McGuire, appeared on The Footy Show the previous night, and spoke of pain and redemption, but he was nowhere to be seen yesterday. Nor, as it turned out, were Heath Shaw, his passenger Didak and his older brother Rhyce. Only the 22 men whose job it is to save Collingwood's flatlining season at the MCG tonight were required."

Do you think the terrible trio aren't coming?" asked one supporter of another, as they craned to see the players arriving in a steady trickle from the Lexus Centre. The three miscreants trained with Collingwood's VFL side last night at Gosch's Paddock.

Among the hundreds of Magpie fans who turned up to show support in a crisis, Leslie Benham stood out. Unlike Malthouse, unlike the players who made a concerted effort to show they had dealt with the events of the week and moved on, Benham desperately wanted to make a statement.

A devoted cheer squad member, she came emblazoned with Alan Didak badges, and attached the extraneous ones to her dog. It was a show of support, but not an unconditional one."

I'd like a return on my money, my $54 that I've spent on Alan Didak badges, from his Collingwood contract next year.

What I'm saying is, I want it to be a Collingwood contract," Benham said.

Heath Shaw's drink-driving accident, the players' attempt to leave Didak out of it and the club's reaction were enough to ruin her appetite. "It's been a terribly distressing week. I've lived on one bowl of rice bubbles and a couple of Vegemite rolls."

I think whatever culture there is at this club starts at the top. I also think the boys initially panicked, and there was no devious plot as it's been portrayed in the media. This is a time to stand together, not eat our own.

These things can be worked out.

Keep the egos out of it."

Disconcertingly for Didak, the 2006 Copeland medallist's latest drive of shame appears to have made him an endangered species, a rare bird to be saved from extinction. Sheriden Webb, a young Collingwood member with a clipboard and a banner, embarked on a Save Alan Didak campaign and by the end of training had two pages of signatures on her petition."

I'm going to take it around at the game tomorrow, and then we're going to send it to Eddie and Mick," she said softly. "He's my favourite player. Being suspended was a good punishment.

Definitely what they (the players) did was wrong, but we don't want him to be traded."

Whatever happens to Didak and his fellow offenders when their penance is served, the club must beat St Kilda, a club determined to give champion Robert Harvey one last crack at September, to keep its own finals ambitions alive, and everyone at Collingwood knows it.

It was written on the stoic face of the most solid of football citizens, Scott Burns, who was cold with anger on Monday but focused on the job when he arrived at yesterday's training session swinging a boot in either hand.

At Monday's press conference, Burns could not say he would fly the flag for the footballer sitting next to him if St Kilda players picked a fight, but bristled when Shaw's version of Didak's involvement was questioned.

According to Malthouse, the captain and his troops have put the whole messy business behind them.

"It's been a difficult week but the boys have handled it very well," he said. "People are very resilient. We don't want to lose sight of what we're here for. We're here to play football, which we are doing tomorrow evening. The player group got themselves very focused on that very early in the week."

While the president was typically forthcoming on Thursday night about his emotions when the Didak cover was blown and it emerged he and everyone else in the Collingwood hierarchy had been deceived - "It feels like a sword going through your heart when these things happen" - the coach wasn't interested in dwelling on the events of the week, or how he had handled them. "It's irrelevant how I (feel). It's not about me, this is about the football club."

He preferred to look ahead, further ahead even than a season that has come to a grinding halt with three losses in as many weeks. Pendlebury, a possible future captain, will play his 50th game against the Saints. The Magpies will blood two more youngsters, a marking forward capable of striking a productive partnership with Travis Cloke, in Dawes, and a midfielder who could bring some much-needed pace to the midfield, in 18-year-old John McCarthy.

Dawes, 20, said in an interview with Collingwood TV: "I understand it's a big game for the club. There's been a bit going on and our season is, I suppose, in the balance, so I'm really hoping I can come in and contribute." That will take the number of Collingwood debutants in 2008 to five.

Malthouse said: "I hope they can stay in the side the next four weeks and if they can do that and play good enough football, who knows, they may be in the side for the rest of the year, if we manage to make the finals."

It is, Collingwood people know, a big if. As the players went through their paces at Gosch's Paddock, supporters yelled out, "C'mon boys, be strong." There was no self-conscious show of solidarity, but if Collingwood's season is to chug into September that must come against St Kilda tonight.

© 2008 The Age

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