Daicos appeals to the umpire.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
“That’s something we spoke about throughout the week. He’s gonna probably get tagged every week,” Crisp said.
“He’s gonna work through parts of it, and we’ll help him out with a lot of it as well. We’re not going to leave Nick out on an island to get through the battle. We make sure we support him.
“If he’s getting close attention, we’ll give it all back. Make sure he knows that we’re supporting our teammate.
“We’ve got to support our young players, especially Nick. If they’re going to follow him around mid, back, forward, wherever he goes – even to the bench – we will make sure we help him out.”
Collingwood coach Craig McRae said it was up to the umpires to decide whether Windhager had crossed the line.
“The job of the tagger is to disrupt, isn’t it? That’s his job. He’s doing it within the rules I suppose if they don’t pick it up,” McRae told Fox Footy.
Daicos breaks free of the tag. Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images
“I’m not going to comment on the kneeing and things like that; that’s obviously up to others to decide if that’s a bit too far.
“I just loved how Nick got on with it tonight … some weeks they [taggers] can run with you, some weeks they can’t. Again tonight, I think Nick won that battle.”
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon had a different view of the Daicos-Windhager duel.
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“Daicos had a fair bit of ball … I think we handled that,” Lyon told reporters after the match.
“We’ll probably go early and look at some of those free kicks. I am not sure they’re free kicks, but I think we’ll take that in and ask the question … Are there two sets of rules going around? I am not sure, am I allowed to say that?
“I think he’s a great player, we know that, a great young player – at the end they get the points and go, ‘It didn’t work’.”
Crisp said the Magpie had not done enough to help Daicos during the King’s Birthday clash with Melbourne, when he received a close tag from Ed Langdon.
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“We normally do that stuff. We probably didn’t do it as much to help out Nick last week, especially in the first half,” Crisp said.
“But teams are going to try and take away people’s strengths, and if it’s a close-attention tag, then we’ll try and support him as best we can.”
Asked whether McRae had raised the need to support Daicos after the Melbourne game, Crisp said: “We probably left him out to dry a little bit, maybe in the first half we didn’t support him as much, but in the second half, we did our best.”
