WE WILL BE BACK

Pies can reload after loss, Howe declares

COLLINGWOOD has “the formula to be great” in its arsenal and will reload in an effort to avenge its grand final defeat, defender Jeremy Howe has declared.

The Magpies back said the team knew what it could do worked, and would not back away from the approach that saw it contest the premiership decider.

But the five-point loss to West Coast “still hurts”, with Howe con- fident that defeat will only serve as fuel. “Looking back, and you probably have the opportunity to reflect now, it is a long year,” he said.

“You play 26 games, get to the granny and you don’t quite get to the ultimate.

“We’ve made unbelievable inroads going forward. We feel like we have the formula to be great.

“It still hurts. We’ll tip in, come back in the pre-season and only improve on where we think we’ve been good this year.

“We fell short … but clearly West Coast deserved to win.”

Howe joined his teammates at a Collingwood family day where thousands of supporters gathered less than 24 hours after the heartbreaking defeat.

He said the clearly shattered team had chosen to focus on the strengths that spurred its season and would maintain its path.

“The trust and belief in the group is so strong and, when I speak about having the formula, we’ve got the guys around — the players, the coaches, admin staff, the whole club,” Howe said.

“We’re not going to come in and try any harder, because I felt like we let it all out in the pre-season and in the season, so we’ll come back and clearly there’s going to be RFIs [room for improvement] that we can work on, but we feel like we’re good enough.”

Coach Nathan Buckley played in two losing grand finals for Collingwood, and Howe admitted that not being able to finally give their coach a premiership had stung the group deeply.

“It probably ripped our hearts out for him more so … he couldn’t quite get there as a player and there would have been nothing better to be able to get the result for him as a coach,” Howe said.

“What we’ve been able to do and achieve so far in the season has been super. It would have been nice to cap it off with the result. But at the same time, we’re not going to shy away from the fact that what we have done works.”

Howe, 28, had suffered an ankle injury in the team’s preliminary final win and yesterday admitted that while it was “numb” during the game, the aftermath was “a different story”. He said he would not need surgery on the injury but would undergo a shoulder “tighten-up” instead.