McHale was innovative as well, widely credited with inventing a position known as the ruck rover and for teaching his players to work at a faster tempo and improvise. “I did not set out with any specific intention of building a football machine,” he once said. “I never liked the term, because it suggested the side was a combination which worked to a rigid plan and could not think. And if there is one quality we demand at Collingwood, it is the quick-thinking player with a dash of imagination.”
