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While every club’s supporters were eyeing the latest draft intensely, there were probably few fans more nervous than Collingwood supporters.
No one likes to see their team miss the finals any year, let alone two in a row. For Magpie fans seeing the back of their third straight year watching other teams play in September, many would have been hoping the draft would produce a miracle.
That miracle would prevent 2017 being the year the club finally had to admit the club’s succession plan was an abject failure. I imagine few would have been as nervous as Craig Lambert after getting an unexpected knock on the front door or phone call.
Since taking over the coaching job from Malthouse in 2012, the Buckley’s Pies have managed a totally one way journey down AFL ladder lane, finally settling this year at 12th, three games and percentage away from North Melbourne who were heading to the bottom faster than a leaking Jacques Cousteau diving bell.
Even the diehards must surely agree the plan has so far been as successful as James Hird’s foray into law.
In 2017, can Bucks, the great one, defy the pundits? Or will Eddie be forced by the increasingly disillusioned masses to sacrifice his love child to the football wilderness and create another succession plan where the current coach takes on the role of Director of Something Away from the Football Department, and a real coach is found?
Unless the recruiting team has spent the last few years looking for lost Pokemon, surely we can now say this is the team Buckley built.
So, to the trade period. Flicking Travis Cloke must be a positive. Although trading out a 29-year-old forward who can’t kick and replacing him with Chris Mayne, a 28-year-old average forward from the lowly Dockers sort of looks like a frying pan to fire strategy.
Defender Marley Williams, having escaped jail in 2014 for breaking a man’s jaw in a one-punch incident also wanted out and had another lucky escape by being traded at the last minute. Seeing it was North Melbourne who picked him up, it’s obvious his luck had well and truly reached its used by date.
Backman Jack Frost requested a trade for more games and should slot into fullback at the Brisbane Lions, which will give him more game time but also a need for regular physiotherapy on his neck watching all those balls sailing past.
Jarrod Witts wanted out and found a new home at the Gold Coast Suns, declaring “I wanted to go somewhere that I think is going to have finals success and I believe that the Suns will.”
Now, assessing that your current team is going nowhere is one thing, but thinking the Suns are going somewhere better shows that either Jarrod’s a sandwich short of a decent picnic hamper, or that the Pies are truly wretched internally.
Will Hoskin-Elliott comes in from the Giants after a forgettable 2016. His great-great grandfather Charlie Norris was a three-time premiership player. I can’t see young Will troubling the scorers trying to match that feat.
Losing two backmen paved the way to bring in Lynden Dunn from Melbourne. Dunn needs little introduction, having played his first AFL game in 2005, back when the Brisbane Lions were a force. (They really were,. Google it.)
Dunn has had interesting journey. Some may remember he was embroiled in controversy in 2008 when he was reported twice within a minute for striking Brent Harvey, so I guess he gets a big hats off from all of us for that. In fact, that may be the sum total of his highlights’ reel after footy.
He has also played the most games of any current AFL player without playing in a final, so you’d think another year on the Pie’s roster should put that record pretty much out of reach of future generations of AFL players, as well as giving him the ability to relate to the current Pies’ roster.
If Dunn is looking for someone to talk with about the good old days, the Pies did him a favour by recruiting Daniel Wells from North Melbourne.
With the Roos already having delisted four of their senior citizens, they must have thought they’d struck gold when Wells decided to move to Collingwood and spend his injury time soaking up someone else’s salary gap and bench space.
Wells is a deeply religious man. His belief in a higher being must have no doubt been even more firmly solidified by being offered a contract of $600,000 a season for three years at an age when even fit footballers are a year to year proposition. If this trade didn’t put Jordan Lewis into therapy, he’s a stronger man than me.
So, on the face of it, it is hard to mount an argument that the Pies are going to be more competitive than any of the 11 teams that finished higher than them this year, which means decision time if they fail to make the eight.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. There were many who thought the succession plan was doomed from the outset. A plan which required a long time, premiership winning coach with a massive ego to simply step aside for a club legend with a similarly massive ego and a mere two years coaching experience as an assistant.
There seems little doubt the coach will fall on his sword should this happen. The interesting question will be whether Eddie, the man who instigated the plan, also accepts responsibility, and follows suit.
Somehow, I think the buck will stop at Bucks.
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