CRAIG MCRAE TOP 25

                                         

Craig McRae has been a breath of fresh air in season 2022.

He's taken a traditionally unwatchable Collingwood team and turned them into a must watch for fans of any team but more importantly, a winning team as well.

Even though I'm a Swans man and we're facing this very same team for a spot on the Grand Final, as a coach he's not afraid to "give" a bit extra in his press conferences, which these 25 gems have been taken from.

I love John Longmire but his pressers are quite repetitive but he's been in the game for over 10 years and has probably had enough of press conferences and gets in and out with minimal fan-fair as much as he can.

Have a read and let me know which one/s resonate the most with you and how you can use/expand on it in your own coaching or playing.

1. Don’t reflect on where it went wrong, reflect on when it was going right and what you were doing to make it so
2. Repeat behaviors
3. On last quarter drop offs - it’s not a fitness thing it’s being able to do our style for long enough when team’s are trying to stop you at the same time
4. We had a lot of long shots and long shots become long points
5. We get caught up in the emotion of going well and the excitement with that and then "oh I forgot to do my job for 2mins, for 30secs at center bounce"
6. On running this game out - it’s not a GPS thing it’s about being a bit more calmer in the chaos, not over-committing to the ball and getting our balance all out of whack
7. Take more risks when we’re down, let’s be braver and be prepared to fail having a crack at it instead of sitting back on our hunches
8. We wanna make mistakes, we wanna bounce back and it's what you do next
9. We’d rather lose by 10 than die wondering
10. Sometimes it takes someone just to be brave enough to say "I see a Richmond jumper but I’m still prepared to go there"
11. You can play with a runny nose and still carry out your role
12. I’ve always been a believer in players and give them everything, and believe in them for as long as you can
13. Believe in people and show faith in people, before they’ve got it
14. We teach our players to spend time over the ball so you’re likely to get some front on contact and we wanna keep the ball in front of us
15. I like to revel in the moment to be honest, quite often you get drawn to somewhere you don’t need to be yet
16. At half time if the game was finished and we had to review ourselves, how’d we go?
17. If you’re processed driven like we are, we don’t talk about winning too often, we talk about winning habits
18. Belief can be powerful
19. Value the little things as games are won by small margins
20. I’ll always focus on the positives but we’ve got work to do
21. Belief is built through evidence
22. We’re learning so many lessons as a group, we win today from lessons learnt from losing to West Coast and we win last week from lessons learnt from the loss to Geelong
23. I like to be really measured when things aren’t going our way and then show the emotion when they are
24. We wanna act like winners, the siren goes and there’s half a dozen of our guys lying on the ground - that’s not a winner - we lost the game, we’re not losers
25. We encourage the players around the kicker to see what they’re doing with their eyes and their feet

EDIT - Added after Collingwood best and fairest speech...
    

    26. "Winners Only" was the mantra and when you walk into the 4 walls you wouldn't know if we                   won or lost
    27. What great fight we had and we rehearsed it. Day 1 of pre-season, 1on1's, pair up, you win you               stay in, you lose you go to the back of the line