It was not pretty, but Collingwood left South Australia on Tuesday night with the four points, beating the winless Adelaide after trailing at half-time.
The Magpies came into 2020 as one of the premiership favourites, but injuries to key personnel have left them depleted across all three lines.
Are they still among the teams that can win the flag? Tim Watson believes their depth is good enough to get them into the top eight.
“The first thing is they have to qualify and that’s how I think they’ll be looking at it,” he told SEN Breakfast.
“You have to win enough games to be a part of the finals series and they know they’re not going to be at their best for the next four or five weeks, but if they get a little bit of luck along the way they can slowly insert these players.
“I don’t think all of them, I don’t know if Jeremy Howe is coming back and I don’t think Jordan de Goey is coming back this year either so they’re going to have to do it without those two guys and that’s what coaching is all about.
“They’ll get Adam Treloar back, Scott Pendlebury will come back into that side and they’ve got talent, they’ve got some depth and they’re showing at the minute they have that depth.”
Garry Lyon is a little more pessimistic, believing they’re not a premiership contender without the likes of Adam Treloar, Scott Pendlebury, Jordan de Goey and Jeremy Howe.
“Is the depth going to be able to take them where I thought they were going to go? This is not a criticism, this is just the cruel hand of fate that’s been dealt them, the quality out of that group, I’m not sure there’s depth there that’s going to be able to keep them still contending,” Lyon said.
“If they don’t get some of that back, then it’s going to be difficult to compete.”
Watson agreed there, but believes the Magpies must take a page out of the Richmond playbook.
“You’re talking about the pointy end of the season, you’re talking about them making the finals, qualifying for finals and then being able to go all the way. I think that’s highly unlikely given what they’ve lost, but I said the same thing about Richmond last year when they lost Alex Rance and had all those other injuries,” he said.
“With coaching and with clever manipulation and engineering of their team they were able to do it. This is what coaching is all about – being able to extract the most you can from the players you’ve got at your disposal, even if it means modifying the way you have to play.”