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Live sport on SN this weekendCollingwood assistant Skipworth on De Goey’s health, impact of recruits, tagging Daicos and more
Lachlan Geleit • February 27th, 2025 12:01 pm
Collingwood senior assistant coach Hayden Skipworth has offered an update on several key Magpies ahead of the 2025 season proper.
Speaking to Kane Cornes and Gerard Healy on SEN Sportsday before Collingwood’s 49-132 win over Richmond in Wednesday’s AAMI Community Series clash, Skipworth answered some big questions that linger over the club ahead of Opening Round.
Check out Skipworth’s takes on some key points here.
How is Jordan De Goey’s health ahead of Opening Round?
“Jordy's actually right to play, but he probably just hasn't done the match play minutes, so the jump's probably a bit too much at the moment.
“He's in a really hard training block. We're trying to not take the short-term approach with him, we're trying to set him up for the year.
“He carried a groin injury for a lot of last year, and he did pretty well to roll himself out there and contribute in the best way he could, but we don't want him to do that.
He's powerful and he's too good a player for us to do that. So we’re taking a long-term approach.
We're trying to put a really good load into him, trying to set him up for the year, and he'll play in our early rounds. I’m not sure exactly when, but he’ll definitely feature in the first few weeks.
Where will free agent recruit Harry Perryman play?
“We expect him to play through the midfield.
“We know what he can do down back but we feel like we've got some real strength down there… so we’re keen to get him through the midfield.
“He obviously can go back, we’ve got lots of flexibility throughout our team. But most of his time will be spent through the middle.
“He's been awesome for us. He's a really honest player. He keeps turning up to contests. He’s hard. He tackles well. He transitions well defensively.
“He couldn't have done any better this pre-season.”
On Lachie Schultz’s first season and how he sets up for 2025
“He won our defensive player of the year award at the best and fairest. So we were really happy with his defensive output,” Skipworth told SEN Sportsday.
“I think in the back end of the year he started to have more score involvements and was hitting the scoreboard.
“Some guys can jump straight in and fit in but we’re very much a system with certain roles, he was becoming accustomed to that and I think in the back end of the year he really started to show what he’s got.
“He’s had an awesome pre-season, so I expect him to have a really good year this year.”
If you were coaching an opposition club, would you tag Nick Daicos?
“That is a good question. Teams have had some success, I guess, in tagging and limiting him.
“Like I said before, we've got flexibility. We can drop him to half-back, put half-backs in the midfield and even forward.
“But he's a great player, so I definitely would tag him, but there are ways you can manipulate things, and we're as good as anyone at sort of doing that.
“We've got lots of different strategies to help him out.”
What’s the plan with Beau McCreery and Isaac Quaynor?
“He (McCreery) will probably spend most of his time forward, but we’ve been building his centre bounce work over the last two years.
“He's done a lot of queue reading programs and centre bounces programs. We’ve started to put him up around the stoppages as a high forward.
“I think long term, he'll be sort of a 50/50 sort of forward/mid. But at the moment, he's probably about an 80/20 forward/mid.
“He (Quaynor) has had a really great pre-season. He's as fit as anyone we've got on the list.
“There's a few guys that had a bit of a down year last year for their high standards, and there's a few guys that are very proud and I want to get back to that form that they know they can produce. He’s certainly in that boat.
“We see him playing half-back and a bit on the wing.”
On Darcy Moore’s 2025 prospects
“He's probably one that was in that same boat as Quaynor.
“But he's a fantastic player and I got no doubt he's had a really good pre-season, he has done a lot of work in the off-season, and a lot of people don't know that last year he carried an injury through most of the pre-season, which he missed a lot of.
“(In 2024) we found that teams were picking taller forward lines to negate his aerial stuff because he’s taken a lot of intercept marks historically.
“Teams were playing the two rucks against us and playing negating roles on him as well which was new for him.
“He’s had to work through all that, but we’ve got some really good plans this year and hopefully he can have a great season for us.”
