BY 10.15pm on Saturday, Collingwood should have just completed another big win – against last-placed West Coast at Marvel Stadium – to move 10 premiership points clear of all rivals in the 2025 home and away season.
It has been an extraordinary season to date for so many reasons, not least that it has unfolded without meaningful contribution from a player once considered the Magpies' best player and most crucial to success.
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Jordan De Goey is both the forgotten man of Collingwood and its biggest wildcard in the pursuit of the 2025 premiership.
It was immediately after the Pies' second and last loss of the season, against Geelong by three points in round eight, that detailed conversations chaired by the Magpies' high performance staff were held to thrash out a complex program to fix De Goey, all with the simple aim of getting his broken body right for a minimum six-match crack at the back end of the 2025 season.
De Goey had tallied just 37 kicks in the five matches he had played before that fitness project was launched. He managed just 13 matches in 2024. Over the two seasons since Collingwood's 2023 premiership, he has been smashed by problems with a groin, an Achilles, his abdomen, both knees and a lower leg.
Slowly, he is healing. There is still no timeframe on a return. But he's smiling, kicking footies, tracking nicely, and now confident that, after a possible return through the VFL, that he will be back causing damage in the senior team just before the finals.
De Goey's physical rehabilitation has been aided, according to those who have closely observed him this year, by a maturity that hadn't always been apparent in a career which began as the No.5 selection in the 2014 national draft. Even his approach to being told of the plans for the extensive rehab program, which indefinitely took him out of match-day consideration, was said to be impressive.
Where a previous Collingwood bye weekend, in 2022, saw De Goey hit with a suspended $25,000 fine and a requirement to attend a behavioural education course as well as continue with an already-instigated counselling program after an incident in Bali, the corresponding period of 2025 saw De Goey become even more immersed in life on a farming property about a 75-minute drive out of Melbourne. There's sheep and cattle and lots of maintenance, and De Goey loves it.
In late 2018 and the opening six matches of 2019, De Goey's brilliance had his name mentioned in the same sentences at Dusty Martin, Paddy Dangerfield and Nat Fyfe. The last six home-and-away matches of 2018 saw him boot 19 goals, and he then booted 12 goals in four finals, including two in a losing Grand Final. His was an all-time great finals campaign. He then booted 16 goals in the opening six matches of 2019.
De Goey was again brilliant in qualifying and semi-finals in 2022, and his 2023 preliminary final performance in a one-point win against GWS was up there with the finest of a 176-match career.
Winning matches in 2025 has provided Collingwood the luxury of this all-in De Goey project. Had the club been stuck in a battle to make the top four, or even make the eight, it would have probably rushed his return, as it had done in the past.
What a luxury for coach Craig McRae as he enters the final nine-game stretch into finals. Because if Dusty Martin was the standout No.1 finals performer of the modern era, De Goey is well-entrenched among the next best.
