The AFL’s ‘unkillable’ sides: How the Pies and Cats keep hanging around

July 30, 2026 — 5:00am

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Collingwood went into their round 14 bye well outside the top 10, with only five wins, seven losses and a draw.

They had lost three players to season-ending knees, including their most productive match-winning forward Jamie Elliott and promising spring-heeled ruck Oscar Steene.

Bobby Hill had not played, his AFL future in significant doubt. Soon, skipper Darcy Moore’s season would be over, too, having endured an injury-wracked season.

Scoring was laboured. Brody Mihocek’s exit to Melbourne had deprived the Magpies of a reliable target. Ball movement wasn’t sharp. The Pies were playing with a grim resolve, without the verve that characterised their rise under Craig McRae in 2022 and 2023.

Within the playing group, however, there remained belief that they could make a fist of a season that then held little hope of a meaningful finals action.

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They had Nick Daicos, arguably the competition’s most influential player, who would express confidence that his team was far from done. In mid-July, after they hung on against the sinking Suns and North Melbourne, Daicos asserted that the Pies could still win the flag.

Often, leaders of teams are simply parroting a party line in that scenario.

Daicos wasn’t. His team’s inner belief – based in-part on the fact that Collingwood had pushed Fremantle and Sydney to the line (losing by a kick), had drawn with Hawthorn and then lost in the final two minutes to the Demons on King’s Birthday – was genuine.

Today, Collingwood is inside the top 10, placed eighth and if they can surmount the other team that has been written off more than old Ford Falcons (Geelong), they will be an........

© The Sydney Morning Herald