Pies grilled after resting stars for pre-season hitout

Kane Cornes couldn’t believe his eyes when Collingwood announced their team for their AAMI Community Series clash against North Melbourne.

Just one week out from their Opening Round clash against St Kilda, the Magpies rested stars Nick Daicos, Jordan De Goey, Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom, Jack Crisp and Jamie Elliott, among others, before ultimately going down 90-89 in wet and windy conditions in Ballarat.

While the Magpies would have been reasonably happy to be in the game against a near full-strength North Melbourne side, the question has been posed whether it was the right decision to take such a different pre-season route than every other club.

Sam Edmund discussed the interesting selection call with Cornes on *SEN's Fireball.

“The way Collingwood would have gone about it would appear to be very, very different to everyone else,” Edmund said.

“Time will tell, but they've chosen a mass-resting, but not exactly a full rest, as they had a full-on training session the day of that game.

“Everyone else is going full dress rehearsal, let's see what we’ve got. Collingwood said, ‘Well, we're getting the bus out to Ballarat, it's wet, windy. We're not going to risk anyone here’.”

Cornes thinks that St Kilda would think Collingwood is ‘ripe for the picking’ this Sunday given the Magpies’ disjointed summer.

He described the decision as dangerous even if Collingwood’s ‘rested’ players were put through their paces with a full training session instead.

“It is extraordinary. I couldn't believe it when I saw it,” Cornes said.

“You'd be a bit flat if you were a Collingwood player that had to play. You’d go, ‘Hang on, am I not important?’.

“It’s how underdone they are going to be. St Kilda would be sitting there going, ‘This is absolutely ripe for the picking’.

“It’s very dangerous to take this route, especially when you’ve only had four or five weeks of proper competitive training after Christmas, and you've already got an aging list and couple of soft tissue injuries.

“Like why is De Goey not playing? De Goey needs to get conditioned. He needs as much work and conditioning into him as possible. It's so different doing 10 km's rolling around than playing.

“I'm just telling you that it's a real concern that they go into the season with a significant lack of conditioning.

“I'm very happy to defer to the high-performance experts, but let's see how they start the year.”

Collingwood open their 2026 season with an Opening Round clash against St Kilda at the MCG on Sunday night.