Overreaction? Daicos responds after Cornes’ Magpies mentions light up

Much has been made of the demographic of Collingwood’s playing list.

Kane Cornes in particular has often raised concerns about the age of the Magpies and an apparent reliance on older players, often wondering where the talented kids are.

But across the past few weeks, the next generation of Pies have been performing well for Craig McRae.

The likes of Sam Swadling, Ed Allan and Roan Steele played key roles in Saturday night’s draw with top-four hopeful Hawthorn, lighting up Cornes’ social media mentions.

“My mentions on social media absolutely lit up and it was all about these young players,” Cornes said on SEN’s Fireball.

“Obviously Nick Daicos is young, Ned Long, Sam Swadling, Roan Steele, Ed Allan, Liam Puncher, Charlie West and Angus Anderson were important.

“Is the dire state of their list, according to me, has that been an overreaction?”

David King doesn’t necessarily see it as an overreaction, before identifying a few emerging Pies who stood out to him.

“I don’t think it’s an overreaction, they’re just opinions,” King said.

“Ed Allan has had a really good four to six weeks. He’s playing on the best and getting off them.

“Swadling is the one. You look for an action or a moment where you go, ‘Yeah, that’s clever or that’s smart or that’s at the high end of the footy IQ chart’.

“He did a couple of things with ball in hand, changing direction, bringing the ball back into the corridor or taking a greater risk.

“There were times where he slowed the game down. Sometimes you counterpunch at speed, you’ve got nothing to go to and you really can’t just blast the ball forward. He hit the pause button a couple of times and I thought, ‘There’s a player’.

“They’ve got a few. We know it’s about how healthy their list is going to be in the next couple of weeks.

“The draw opens up for them with the Wildcard and the potential to stay in Melbourne right the way through to a prelim, that’s pretty nice way of looking at the finals series if they can get the job done early.”

All the list talk prompted established Maggies star Josh Daicos to praise his less experienced colleagues.

The premiership star admits the criticism of the aging list had been warranted at one point, but not anymore with the emergence of such players as Will Hayes, Swadling and Charlie West.

“It was the youngest team we’ve put out for a while. A lot of the younger boys really stood up in a finals-like game and the atmosphere was well and truly buzzing,” Daicos told Kane and Kingy.

“A lot gets spoken about our list and the age demographic and lack of youth. To be honest, fair enough, because a lot of those younger boys hadn’t had too much of an opportunity.

“But I feel like now that everyone is starting to see them… we see behind the scenes the amount of work they put in and the skill they’ve got. I’m just so happy they’re getting their opportunity because they can play.

“I feel like I can go through so many of them, whether it’s Will Hayes, Sammy Swadling has been given a big rap this week, I think Charlie West is going to be a big-time player for us - he kind of reminds me of Tom Hawkins a little bit.

“I can just see with all of them just how much they’re relishing playing the level and how quickly they’re developing. So it’s super exciting.”

The draw with the Hawks has the Pies sitting in eighth position with a Wildcard Finals Round slot locked in.

They take on the Brisbane Lions at the MCG this Friday night in the final home and away round of the season and will unlikely move from eighth spot.