Collingwood Magpies into preliminary final, Brayden Maynard faces days of nerves over clash

“Christian had to play a lot of the time up through the middle of the ground to replace Angus. There’s that domino effect. Using a sub early, shuffling Christian back up into the midfield on the back of that incident, that wasn’t an option we had as much as we would have liked.”

The Magpies under Craig McRae have made their name chasing down leads. Here, they held on for dear life against a fast-finishing Demons team, which made all the running in the final term but lacked a cutting edge in front of goal.

“To be able to hang in there and fight against the masses and the wave of ball in defensive 50, I thought our backs were enormous,” McRae said.

“Keeping them to 28 per cent of scores inside 50 is huge. That’s a huge effort from our backs and as a collective from our team defence.

“We’re really proud. To win your first final and guarantee a home prelim, they don’t…