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So you win the flag in 2010 with a young team and sit on top of the world. Everybody’s thinking that a dynasty is possible. And for three quarters of 2011, everything you do emphasises that.
You pulverise quality opposition, and amass a percentage of 180. Only one club stands in the way of another premiership. But the coach grows vocal about the succession plan designed to replace him and distraction ripples through the club.
Injuries hit. The team tires and limps through the finals, and – carrying injured players – is beaten in the grand final. The coach leaves acrimoniously, and a new coach – a club legend – takes over.
Most expect a brand of football that is an extension of the way the new coach himself played: purposeful, direct, precise.
He talks about the team needing to be bigger and stronger, given how the team were out-bodied in the grand final. But through 2012, injuries are rife.
There are five ACLs and plenty of soft tissue injuries. Often, performances are flat. Despite struggling to ever get going, you finish fourth and make it to a preliminary final – surely a testament that there’s plenty of strength in the playing list, despite older players struggling.
But things remain listless throughout 2013. No real identity emerges from on-field performances.
Injuries hit again. There is a sense of shapelessness to the fans. What are we watching? But we have faith, because you need to believe in your club.
The reality is we’ve invested in this course – invested to the extent that it has to succeed to repay our faith. But you can hear the grumblings now. Finishing sixth, you’re ingloriously bundled out of the finals, and now more people begin to wonder.
The list is turned over under the agenda of cultural change, which is fine in of itself, but it seems some players are exited because of personality conflicts with the coach.
The team races to an 8-3 beginning through 2014. Now the strategy seems frenetic pressure. Tackle. Harass. Create turnovers. The run and carry side of the game is often undone through skill errors.
There are promising wins – there are always promising wins. But good form is unsustainable. Injuries hit. The season unravels. For the first time since 2005, the team misses the finals.
A hiccup maybe. But now worries emerge – worries that deepen through 2015 when the formula is repeated: turn over the list, race to 8-3 with a team built on pressure, pressure, pressure, have some promising wins, be let down by skills, have injuries hit, and again miss the finals.
Come to 2016 and you impress through the NAB, but a week before the home and away begins, a drug scandal rocks the club. This is disheartening because so many players were seemingly moved on as an impetus for cultural transformation, something that now seems a fallacy.
The team’s performances are listless through the early part of the season, and although one of the players claims at a club function the scandal had no effect on the playing group and it was all lies, something seems amiss, and rumours are rife of internal discord.
Again, there’s some promising wins, but again the form is unsustainable – just another tease. Injuries begin to mount – yet again, for the fifth season in a row. Skills still are terrible. And while some young players offer promise, it’s another season squandered.
As this has occurred, apprehension has built through the masses. When this began, the disbelievers were in the minority, but now they’re becoming the majority.
Crowds have steadily dropped. Membership has plummeted from seventy thousand to fifty thousand.
Injuries have been steady for five years. Two – maybe three – years is bad luck, but more than that suggests some common denominator (e.g. overtraining, or poor training surface) and it’s an issue that seems both remarkably unquestioned, and unexamined.
Skills just don’t seem to improve, and even skilled players commonly make errors. Many fans have lost the faith, and cringe almost with an expectation that quality isn’t sustainable.
We’ve been programmed to expect that – one way or another – it’ll inevitably unravel. The message from the club continues to change – e.g. from anticipating a flag in three years to rebuilding.
The ‘brand’ becomes more corporate, and extends into other endeavours such as netball and a woman’s football team, which discourages some, because they infer the club is losing is indulging and distracted while its primary brand is floundering.
The president, once the consummate media performer, makes several controversial gaffes. Others wonder if the environment has become insular, oblivious to concerns.
You used to be about the working class, but that changed with a shift to Southbank, and the way the club grew into this business. That might be necessary in the modernisation of today’s AFL, but you can’t help but wonder whether something important was lost, something that unified and drove the club and connected it to us, its public, its fans, its stakeholders.
Your on-field identity has grown amorphous. Whereas new coaches like Luke Beveridge and Ken Hinkley immediately imprinted identifiable gameplans on their playing list, and coaches like Alan Richardson and Brendon Bolton are taking their young charges upwards, what are you about, Collingwood?
You can cite mitigating circumstances, but you can only trade on encouraging performances, hype, and promise so long.
You have over the last five years finished fourth, sixth, 11th, 12th, and currently sit 12th with issues that have recurred through this time (gameplan, injuries, injury management, player management) remaining prevalent.
At some point, you have to accept that what you’re producing is just not good enough, and there’s no longer room for excuses.
At some point, you have to stop and simply ask yourselves, what do you stand for?
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