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Collingwood admit they’re trying to address Nick Daicos ‘contested mark’ issue

The young superstar’s teammate let it all slip out during a live interview at half-time.
Nick Daicos is yet to take a contested mark in his short AFL career. Credit: Getty Images

Collingwood admit they’re trying to address Nick Daicos ‘contested mark’ issue

The young superstar’s teammate let it all slip out during a live interview at half-time.

Young superstar Nick Daicos has very few chinks in his AFL armour but fans and teammates are certainly aware of one unflattering stat that is haunting the Collingwood son-of-a-gun.

At 22 years of age, Daicos has already achieved many things in his short career, but he is yet to take a contested mark in his 79 games so far.

While contested marks is clearly not the job of this brilliant All-Australian midfielder, he was deployed forward in Thursday night’s statement win over Fremantle and would have loved to have jagged one at some point during the game.

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He nearly did take a contested mark in the second quarter, but spilled the ball as opponent Corey Wagner dragged him to the ground for an obvious free kick.

At half-time, Collingwood defender Isaac Quaynor addressed the issue on Channel 7.

“You want Nick Daicos wherever you can get him and it’s good to have him up forward,” Quaynor said told Daisy Pearce.

“He almost took his (first ever) contested mark.

“We’ve been trying to get him a contested mark all year so it was close.”

Daicos was down on his usual output during the game.

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He appeared to be in a little discomfort, and was copping a hard tag from Wagner.

He finished the match with just 18 disposals and a goal, well down on his 29.1 disposal average this year.

And, of course, once again he scored a duck in the contested mark category.

It is possible Daicos entered the game with a little bit of a niggle.

“Pre-game Nick Daicos had a little bit of a tight spot in the lower back and we just saw him getting some work done on the boundary,” gun Channel 7 reporter Ryan Daniels said during the game.

“He’s been off for a few minutes so we’ll keep a close eye on it but he might be carrying something.”

Meanwhile, a parody account on social media has fired up specifically to haunt Daicos about the contested marks.

The name of the account is simply called ‘Has Daicos taken a Contested Mark?’, with a picture of Nick in the avatar ... to not confuse it with his older brother, Josh.

As for Josh, he thinks it’s all a bit of laugh.

In fact, after the Anzac Day game against Essendon, Josh was pretty happy to talk about it following his own electric performance that included 36 touches and, yes, two contested marks.

“We get into Nick sometimes trying to get him a contested mark,” Josh said on Fox Footy.

“When they saw me have two back-to-back (contested marks) they got around me which made me feel good.”

So how many days has it been since Nick took a contested mark?

According to the account Has Daicos taken a Contested Mark, it is (at the time of writing) 1,148.

It is worth noting that contested marks are not really the go for a superstar midfielder like Daicos, and it took fellow gun Matt Rowell 84 games to take his first contested mark and only has one in his entire career.

Daicos is already a dual All-Australian and a premiership player. And last year he polled a whopping 38 Brownlow Medal votes which was a league record.

Unfortunately for Daicos, Patrick Cripps also bettered the record and won the medal with a staggering 45 votes.

Needless to say, Daicos is at short odds to win a Brownlow (or possibly two or more) at some point in his career.

And there is no doubt a contested mark or two is also around the corner.

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