West Coast dominated Collingwood at Optus Stadium on Sunday afternoon by 66 points.
The Magpies lost captain Scott Pendlebury minutes before the game with quad tightness and chose to replace him with young forward Atu Bosenavulagi.
The third gamer struggled to make his presence felt after the late call-up, recording just two disposals.
Demons great Garry Lyon has questioned the Pies' decision, believing Brayden Sier, who was also an emergency, was the man who should have gotten the nod.
“Nathan Buckley gets most things right, Collingwood has had a great year,” Lyon told SEN Breakfast
“I think they missed a trick. Pendlebury was the late out, and their may be some extenuating circumstances that we don’t know, Pendlebury does the warmup and in the dying minutes says he’s tight and has to come out, which is totally understandable given we’re jamming games in.
“They went with Atu Bosenavulagi (as his replacement) – where is Brayden Sier in all of this?
“You’ve got your champion midfielder Scott Pendlebury, he plays in the middle of the ground and the most influential player nearly in the team, he goes out of the side and you replace him with a young kid who, if anyone was going to be affected I would imagine being thrown into the heat of battle off a two-minute warmup then he would be, he struggled and that’s absolutely understandable.
“He’s not a midfielder, why wouldn’t that be the opportunity to get Brayden Sier back into the team who has been playing, I’m told, as well as you can in these practice matches.
“He’s ready and waiting for his chance, I just think they missed a trick there. You replace a midfielder with a midfielder and not a third gamer who would probably battle trying to play footy on the back of a two-minute warmup.
“They were a midfielder short and they got smashed in there.”
“I think the answer to the question you have posed is the fact that Sier is not a particularly quick player and they’ve already got Rupert Wills in there,” Watson said.
“I don’t think they want to play Wills and Sier in the same team because they pretty much perform the same role. I think it’s a choice between the two and they thought it was an opportunity to bring some more leg speed into the side and they could shuffle a few players around to cover the midfield losses – which they weren’t able to do.”