An explosive bench-clearing brawl between Collingwood and the Gold Coast Suns at Saturday’s Australian Football League clash has sparked a thoughtful balancing act from Collingwood head coach Craig McRae, who says he wants to bottle the raw ferocity his players displayed – without the costly rule breaches and heavy fines that followed the incident.
The chaotic scuffle broke out on the halftime siren after Gold Coast forward Ben Long delivered a hard gut punch to Collingwood’s veteran leader Brayden Maynard. Maynard responded immediately to the hit, triggering an all-in confrontation that drew every available player from both teams’ benches and left the AFL’s match review panel handing down multiple fines in the aftermath.
Speaking after the game, McRae admitted that the intensity and unity his players showed in the moments after the brawl was exactly the kind of fire most coaches spend the entire season trying to manufacture week in and week out. When his squad walked into the locker room at halftime, the sharp, focused determination in their eyes was something that cannot be easily manufactured through team talks or strategy sessions, he said.
“I think it’s great for the game this growing rivalry between our side and the Suns. Anyone who tuned into watch that match would have been gripped by the energy out there,” McRae told reporters. “Seeing our players walk in at halftime with that real look in their eye and that raw energy, as a coach you just think, ‘How do we get this every single week?’ Sometimes you have to manufacture that intensity, you want your players to be dialled in and hungry – that’s the culture we want to build inside our club. Now, that energy has to stay within the rules, because we don’t want to be coughing up $16,000 in fines every week. That doesn’t make any sense, and that’s not playing the game the right way. If we can walk that fine line, play on the edge without crossing it, we’ll hunt opposition sides every week, and that’s what we’ll aim to do this week within the rules.”
Maynard, the Collingwood captain, ended up copping fines for three separate incidents stemming from the melee, including a brush with an umpire as he moved to join the second cluster of the scuffle. McRae acknowledged there was room for match officials to issue a formal suspension charge over the umpire contact, but said he agreed with the grading that ruled the contact incidental.
“Oh look, I thought it was incidental as it was graded. I can see how you’d make a case for wanting to make a stand of protecting the umpires,” he said. “We want to make sure that’s the case too. I know they changed the positioning rules for contact with umpires in recent weeks, and there’s been a clear mandate from all clubs to make sure we look after them. We want to be a part of that, that’s significant in making sure this game operates well, but I do think it was incidental.”
The incident has shone a light on the growing on-field rivalry between the two AFL clubs, while prompting broader discussion about how the league balances on-field intensity with enforcement of game rules to keep players and officials safe.