‘Go after him’: Inside Pies’ Nasiah plan as McRae reveals meeting that sparked AFL ambush

Collingwood coach Craig McRae has opened up on the Pies plan to stop St Kilda star Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera

It was the team’s senior core who wanted a target on the $2 million man and they assigned Harry Perryman with the job in their thrilling 12-point win.

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Perryman was up to the challenge in both word and work rate, backing an excited response by holding ‘Nas’ to just 19 disposals.

The negating role, a stark contrast to how the Saints handled Nick Daicos, played a heavy hand in the Magpies’ 12-point win on Sunday night.

Collingwood coach Craig McRae said the leaders wanted to “go after” Wanganeen-Milera.

“I went to Pez on Wednesday and the leadership group really pushed it, I am not taking ownership of that,” McRae said.

“The leaders really pushed it, to set a bit of a target and go after him. I went to Pez and I won’t share exactly what he said but he was pretty excited about doing the job.

“What maybe you do or don’t understand in our game is that if you tag, it becomes a whole system thing, the whole team needs to be involved in it.

“He played forward, he played back, he played mid – you need to evolve – we wanted Pez to go all the way.

“But that’s chemistry to Pez, come out then push Jack Crisp into the midfield, there’s all those layers.

“We’re really proud of the group to support Pez in getting that job done, he’s an outstanding player that young man and I don’t think we’ll be the first or last to tag him.”

Scott Pendlebury was another of the Magpies’ needle-movers, dishing off a career-best five goal assists despite limited minutes on the ground.

McRae avoided the credit for another crucial strategy and instead praised high performance manager Jarrod Wade for Pendlebury’s influence.

“I repeat myself year after year, but (Wade) is the best I’ve ever worked with,” McRae said.

“He had a deliberate plan to do that, he’s been studying the games and doing algorithms around the new rotations with five on the bench.

“We just thought Pendles was the guy, he’d come on late in the first and late (quarter) in the second and then be fresh for the second half.

“I think he had his career high score involvements for the game … Pendles is brilliant around those things, whatever the team needs.

“He’s just so calm on the bench, it’s like having an extra coach on the bench. He received it really well.”

McRae stopped short of confirming whether Pendlebury was sore or if he would be managed in the same way against Adelaide next week.

“Early in the year we’ll hold a player back. We’re working through it. Pendles did it really well tonight, it’ll depend. We’ve got a six-day break into Adelaide. We can’t sit here and pat ourselves on the back too much, we’ve got a pretty quality opposition coming.

“But it’s really pleasing to get the season off to the right note.”

While Collingwood again enters 2026 with the oldest list in the competition and a narrative that it could be approaching a cliff, McRae highlighted the Pies’ list is “different” after losing a key chunk of experience.

“We just live what we’ve got. Our experience is enormous, it is,” he said.

“But our list is different. The players not playing today, we don’t have Mason (Cox), Tom Mitchell, Oleg Markov and Will Hoskin-Elliott, we’re different. If you come watch us train, you’ll see that.

“We’re going to need our whole list, we’ve got a team that knows what to do.

“But you just never know, you tune your car up like the Grand Prix and you just don’t know what he race is going to look like … you don’t know what’s in front of you, you can’t control a lot of stuff.

“We came here tonight not knowing, but we found out a bit that our system is pretty good.”

The Collingwood coach also confirmed they’d changed their Copeland Trophy best and fairest voting system to reward “extreme games,” following Darcy Cameron’s surprise win over Nick Daicos.

“We changed the system. The system was needing to be changed to reward the extreme games,” McRae added.

“He had an extreme game tonight, 40-odd touches.

“Nick is just maturing so much in front of our eyes, he trains harder than anyone else. Same with Josh, he had an amazing game.

“We want to have a game plan that brings the best in our players.

“Josh and Nick are certainly players we want to give the ball to.”