It’s five days since the best win of the season, better even than the victory over Melbourne. Enough columns have been filed to hold up the Parthenon. On Jamie Elliott; on Jack Ginnivan; on third-game medical substitute Ross Carmichael; on whether these Pies might just be a smoky flag chance, and — going back to last week — on Billy Picken, my favourite player when I was a boy, ahead of even Peter Daicos.
So unlikely was the win (one look at the stats will have football historians pondering forever how Collingwood pinched it) that comparatively little attention has been paid to Josh Daicos’s goal late in the first quarter. It has inevitably been nominated for Goal of the Year, which he may well win for the second time, but equally inevitably it has been overshadowed by the pure theatre of Jamie Elliott’s last-gasp heroics.
Josh Daicos was never going to be the instant star that his father was, or his younger brother is. His draft position (#57 father-son, Collingwood’s final pick in 2016) attests to that. It took him until Round 22 of 2017 to debut. He has since played 70 games and is now one of the better wingmen in the competition. Nick clearly relishes the spotlight. Josh seems happier under the radar, but his kicking inside 50 is lethal.
A footballer can live or die on the wing, as they can in the graveyard otherwise known as the forward pocket. You have to be selfless, and it can be thankless. On a good day the play, and the ball will come to you. Other games you’ll run your guts out, unrewarded by statisticians, umpires and commentators. The Lions’ Mitch Robinson wrote an illuminating piece on the role of the modern winger for Fox a few years ago.
Josh is smaller at 178cm than Peter and Nick, both listed as 184cm. I’ve not seen him use his left foot as his father regularly did, but dual-sidedness is not as important when every player can checkside the ball. And more and more often, we’re seeing some of the same uncanny Daicos traits — the coiled, fluid movements, the deceptive acceleration and especially, the one-touch ball handling and eye of a needle delivery.
On Sunday afternoon we got all of that in one scintillating burst of play. Daicos was playing “skinny side” wing (refer back to Robinson’s piece above) and had the rails run to thread his way past direct opponent Sam Durham and defender Nick Hind. Durham left Daicos out the back, probably thinking his height advantage would allow him to intercept, with Hind as cover, but Darcy Moore’s kick was too well weighted.
With Durham’s attempt to spoil ineffective, Daicos swooped. He still had to beat his opponent, who had quickly made up ground. Here he pulled a trick Dad must have taught him, handballing in front of himself as Durham lunged and came up with air. Durham fell, Daicos kept his feet: well outside the boundary, but with the ball still alive. As Hind came at him, the ball sat up between them.
It was then that Josh showed the deft touch of his genius. As Hind reached for the ball, Daicos slapped it down as surely as if he had bounced it back to himself at full tilt on the run. Hind, too, was left grasping at air. Now Daicos was away, sprinting past the 50 towards goal, only a fatigued Zach Merrett trailing him. He took one bounce, then two, with no thought to look inside: only to finish what he’d started.
Modern football is rarely as pure as this. Only the most gifted players have a licence to such audacity. Even watching on replay later, the feeling of uplift was incredible. In a week where Collingwood had lost one of its most beloved sons, another was rising and evoking dearly held childhood memories of an era that, for Billy Picken, had never quite delivered what he deserved.
I’ve had my Dad staying with me all week, up from country Victoria. For obvious reasons, it’s the most I’ve seen of him in several years. I took him to see the Lions play the Suns at the Gabba last Saturday. When I was a kid, he’d occasionally take me to Victoria Park or we’d brave a freezing afternoon at Waverley. I still have an image of Picken flying for one of his classic hangers in my mind, though I can’t recall the game.
Watching Nick and Josh Daicos running around this year and playing, at times, as though they are still kids — reminding us that this is, in the end, just a game, full of magic tricks and illusions — has been one of the most joyful things I can remember as a Collingwood person. Sport is big-dollar corporate entertainment and an absurd abstraction, but it also a site for communities and families and collective memories.
Of course, I also watched replay after replay of Jamie “Billy” Elliott splitting the goals from the boundary. I loved how, as soon as the ball left his boot, he walked straight to the crowd, knowing it was home, hand cupped to his ear. Nick Daicos was the first to get to him, beyond ecstatic, pumping the crowd up. Josh wasn’t — and isn’t — far behind him.