EAGLES AIM TO STOP STEELE
West Coast’s No.1 priority if it wants to win flag
WEST Coast must stop Collingwood ball-winning machine Steele Sidebottom or it is handing him the Norm Smith Medal, according to premiership coach Paul Roos.
Sidebottom has stamped himself as this year’s Mr September, with a blazing finals series that has him sitting atop the voting for the Gary Ayres Medal as best fi- nals player. The Collingwood midfielder is coming off a clinical 41-disposal and 545 metresgained preliminary final game against Richmond, having amassed 31 touches in the semifinal and 27 in the qualifying final against the Eagles.
Roos said, if he was coaching West Coast, he would have no hesitation putting a hard tag on Sidebottom, something he regularly did when at Melbourne.
“He just has the capacity, like Scott Pendlebury, to change the game. He can change the game with a handball, change the game with a kick and he does things that other players simply can’t do,” Roos said.
“When you’re planning against a team [you consider] how you take away the opposition strengths and what Steele does is give Collingwood the strength that no other player apart from Pendlebury can give. He’s such a critical player for them that he can create a goal out of nothing.
“For me, he will certainly be top of the match committee board for [Eagles coach Adam] Simpson, whether [Mark] Hutchings goes to him or someone else.”
Simpson may already have the message, having sent Hutchings to Sidebottom in the sides’ two meetings this year.
Hutchings kept Sidebottom to 12 disposals in 68 minutes in Round 17 and 10 in 56 minutes of the qualifying final, but the Pies onballer has got better with every finals match.
He has been involved with a direct match-up of 40 minutes or more in only four other games this year.
“He’s got the natural ability to find the ball, the ability to use the ball and ability to hit the scoreboard. He’s an allround player that just makes Collingwood better when he has the footy,” Roos said.
“If [Levi] Greenwood is tagging one of the Eagles midfielders it seems to have pushed Steele out to a wing.”
Roos said Sidebottom’s outside priorities were at the centre of a transition game that shredded Richmond and posed a real danger for West Coast.
“There’s going to be this inside battle going on — Greenwood, [Taylor] Adams, [Adam] Treloar, Pendlebury, [Elliot] Yeo, [Dom] Sheed, [Luke] Shuey, [Jack] Redden.
“That’s going to have a huge impact obviously, but that outside connection the Pies had last week was crucial in demolishing the Tigers on the outside.”