The lead was misleading,though,given that Max Gawn was afflicted with a sore back and ankle injury,while Steven May and Tom McDonald - pillars at both ends - weren’t playing;this reduced the Demons’ capacity to both defend and score.
From this point,there were many outstanding contributors to the Collingwood cause - Jack Crisp and Jamie Elliott,Brody Mihocek (4.0),wunderkind Nick Daicos,and really most of their defence,which made it awfully hard for the 2021 premiers in the air and especially on the deck.
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But the individual story of the match,which enthralled the bulk of the 76,000,belonged to Cox,who took advantage of Melbourne’s indiscriminate bomb entries to take telling marks behind the ball in the third quarter,as if he was a seven-foot Gary Dempsey.
Peak Cox was seen,however,not in his aerial work - which has been vastly improved since he was sent into the ruck - but in two pieces of crucial ground level work in the third quarter.
In the first,he received a handball from Crisp and,with that lumbering gait,booted a critical goal that closed the gap to eight points.
Act two was what Americans call an assist. Cox gathered a ground ball about 20 metres from the Ponsford Stand goal,amid a frenetic scramble,and handballed to an open Elliott,whose conversion reduced the margin to under a kick.
Cox’s size and unconventional skill set also makes for comedic value and at one stage in the last term,as the Demons tired and were no longer able to contain their opponents’ running game,Cox completed an ungainly,yet effective baulk before hoofing the footy forward,prompting a roar tinged with laughter.
Cox again was the beneficiary of opposition misfortune,as he had been against the decimated Blues. Gawn’s influence waned in accordance with his injury.
But on this day of reckoning - in which Melbourne’s premiership defence took another hit - it was Cox who landed the heaviest blows when it counted.
His performance,in tandem with Darcy Cameron,creates a selection poser for Collingwood when Brodie Grundy returns. Grundy is a pure ruck and ground level specialist. Cox and Cameron are ruck-forwards. “I’m really proud of him,” the coach said of his one-time project player.
His career is out of the sick bay and he will surely be rewarded with a contract,if not at Collingwood,then elsewhere. As this Monday demonstrated,Cox might not be a consistent key forward,but he can really make his mark as a ruckman.
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