High performance guru’s masterstroke maximises evergreen Pendlebury

Craig McRae has again lauded his club's high performance boss Jarrod Wade, after the credentialed operator hatched an effective plan to optimise the game of Scott Pendlebury.

The man affectionately known as 'Pendles' registered a career high five goal assists in Collingwood's telling victory over St Kilda, in a thrilling match that ended the first weekend of the season in fitting fashion.

In the wake of the 78-66 victory, McRae was full of praise for his evergreen talisman and the man who planned his summer, thus orchestrating his impactful cameo.

"Jarrod Wade; I repeat myself year after year, but he's the best I've ever worked with. He had a deliberate plan to do that (restrict Pendlebury's minutes)," McRae said.

"He's been studying the prior games and just doing algorithms around the new rotations with five on the bench. We just thought Pendlebury was the guy; he'd come on late in the first quarter, late in the second, and then be fresh for the second half."

As he has so often in his glittering 426-game career, Pendlebury delivered for those of a black and white persuasion, acting as a classy conduit between the Pies midfield and forward line, despite spending much of the summer training as a halfback. 

In just 55% game time, the Sale native had 26 disposals, at 80% efficiency, five goal assists, 10 score involvements, eight marks and four tackles, stuffing the stat sheet. There were plenty of the trademark moments where he seemingly slowed time, and moments where his intuition shone through. His overhead handball while being corralled out of bounds by Marcus Windhager, to send livewire Beau McCreery goalward drew an amazed reaction from the 82,528 who crammed into the MCG to witness the fixture.

With so much being made of the age profile of the Victorian powerhouse, McRae and Wade are seemingly aware of the planning this necessitates. In light of the effectiveness of Pendlebury's managed minutes, McRae offered that this in an approach that will characterise the season's early sledding, with ageing stars like Steele Sidebottom playing against St Kilda, and injured veterans Darcy Moore and Jeremy Howe still to make their season debuts.

"I think early in the year, we'll hold a player back. Again, we're working through it. 'Pendles' did it really well tonight," he said.

Keeping their ageing champion and his contemporaries fresh over the duration of what is an ever-lengthening season is priority 1A on Olympic Boulevard. If the extended bench can be maximised in similar fashion in the weeks and months to come, there's no reason why Collingwood cannot defy the forecasting of pundits, and conventional wisdom, and somehow contend again.

As all teams will have after their first outing of the year, Collingwood were shown some areas of their game that will need addressing, making victory all the more fulfilling. The Pies were smashed in the territory battle, losing the inside 50 count by 23, but showed a maturity in their game by taking the sting out of the contest with uncontested mark chains.

It's an evolution McRae is proud of, after seeing his team play some seriously helter-skelter football during his tenure.

"We felt like part of our progression of our team had to be certain phases of our offence and defence," the premiership coach said.

"Tyson Goldsack's come in and he's running the offence. You defend the scoreboard with the ball in hand. Brisbane do it better than anyone else. There's times that we just took a lot of marks that killed minutes that we didn't have to play later.

"We defended the game differently or defended the time differently early in the quarter."

The challenges keep coming for McRae and co., with finals fancies Adelaide, GWS, Brisbane and Fremantle populating their next month's worth of fixtures.