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?
Tricky
Guest
Disagree - you don't have 20 wins and the highest ever percentage through "luck"
Bretto
Guest
The fact they beat Geelong and GWS shows they can actually play. The fact they can also be truly inept points to a couple of factors. The most important being the coach is unable to get the best out of the players on a consistent basis. The second being the skill levels vary wildly (see point 1). Key points from the article: - Disbelievers are now the majority. - Skills are woeful. - 5 years of constant injuries is not bad luck. Let's get over this favorite son malarkey and get someone who can coach (and inspire!). And it's time Eddie moved on too.
Pope Paul VII
Guest
Got a fair squad and playing well at present. I think they'll make the 8 next year.
John Spehr
Guest
Hawthorn, Geelong, Sydney have dominated the Success ladder since 2007. And that's OFF the field. You never hear or read anything about these clubs, that is not strictly football. A few years ago, a Collingwood mantra was: "In Hine we trust". We had a good run and kept our guys on the field. For a few seasons the wheel of fortune has turned. All teams get their turn. My memory of 2010 is that I didn't think we were going to be Premiers until we won the Prelim! And I never thought it would be a dynasty. Several of the comments have mentioned ACL's/Injuries etc. Definitely worth someone doing a proper analysis of that as it does seem weird. But the other 3 teams are better at the whole package than we are. Look at the way Hawthorn have hand picked and filled specific gaps. And let's face it,they are the best kicking side that has EVER been.Geelong did a full CLUB analysis in late 2006 and fixed their weaknesses. Granted, they had a cracking good squad of young guys coming through at the right time.Sydney have been totally professional since the early 00's. The most successful on field are the best managed off field. Hawthorn let Gary Abblett Snr go after 6 games because he didn't fit in with their club. Ego's don't come anywhere in these clubs; they go elsewhere. Buckley knows a great deal about football and loves Collingwood. I guarantee he'll fall on his sword if he thinks it's game over for him. And who will replace him? Floreat Pica.
pauly
Guest
They'd have to maintain the stadium, provide corporate facilities and the capacity is limited. All means less $$$. They're an AFL club not a charity. Though the way the club is going, the capacity may not be an issue soon.
Kieran Butler
Guest
Someone once said "If you don't stand for something, you stand for nothing". Who was that? Ah, doesn't matter. The inexorable downfall of Buckley over the next 12 months will be far more damaging than a lot of people seem to realise, simply because it has been such a long time since the membership have had to engage in a critical assessment of the club administration. These skills have been lost over a generation, and it will make the process of picking up the pieces painstakingly slow.
I hate pies
Guest
Yeah it's a funny coincidence isn't it; the best skilled teams are the best teams. Makes you wonder why they recruit athletes over footballers.
Mike Huber
Roar Pro
IHP very, very true !
rusty
Roar Rookie
This is probably off the issue a little bit so please forgive me. One of the defining features of Australian rules footy is it's tribalism, particularly in Melbourne. Really, the amount of teams and passion, not to mention members, from inner suburban teams in the one city is not matched anywhere else in the world. London maybe. But I think many fans long for that suburban tribalism and feel that it is long gone. The main reason it is gone though is because it was best represented by the suburban venue. Your Victoria parks, Princess parks, Windy Hill etc. Instead, everyone plays at etihad or the mcg, both fairly soulless venues. Yet these suburban venues still stand and could be easily made ready for footy. The gist of my point is this. Why don't a club like Collingwood play a couple of games a year at Victoria Park? It would be enormously popular. The club could reconnect with it's past. Obviously they would have to play a freo or west coast or someone similar but not everyone needs to have a perfect seat for every game. Standing for a game is not going to kill anyone. Sometimes money isn't everything.
Reservoir Animal
Guest
I've often felt that Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon have all spent too much of the last 20-odd years trying to live off their inheritance, and for this reason they haven't kept up with the Hawthorns and the Geelongs. Players who walk into those clubs are consistently reminded that they're playing for a team that dominated the VFL era and that therefore they can just expect to become superstars. Club greats are too often revered beyond justification and just assume players will take their word as gospel (read James Hird), and fans keep assuming that pre-1950 success will somehow guarantee 21st-century success. Hawthorn and Geelong partly owe their modern success to a willingness to reinvent but the "big three" have often not wanted to reinvent (read Carlton prior to 2015) or reinvented the wrong way (read Essendon, who lost their "people's club" status when they left the MCG and who mistakenly believed Stephen Dank was a symbol of 2010's sport science). In a way Collingwood's move to Southbank was a reinvention that recognised 21st-century necessities and didn't exactly cost them any working-class fans, but I do think that Eddie's constant media ranting and hyping-up of the club can confuse a lot of the players and distract from what the club's goals should really be.
michael RVC
Roar Pro
Suggest you hang in there until 2030. Buckley might still be coach. Eddie?
BigAl
Guest
love precise kicking - when will the othe teams learn ? - possibly after Hawthorn have won 10 - 11 on the trot !
Pumping Dougie
Roar Guru
Les, I think there is a typo in the 9th paragraph. "The reality is we’ve invested in this course", should read, "The reality is we’ve invested in this curse".
footyfact
Guest
Agreed. The 2010 flag was won with a game plan that was all about the forward press, and at the time, opposition teams were all about taking no risks in the backline, i.e. St kilda under Ross Lyon. By the end of 2011 and certainly 2012, the best teams had worked this out. Enter Hawthorn, (bloody Clarkson) with a game plan based on precise kicking that cut through the press. Even today, the best teams are the best and most precise kicking teams, something the Pies have always struggled with, and continue with to this day.
I hate pies
Guest
The "dynasty" was never going to happen. The pies got lucky that they peaked in between the usual Hawthorn/Geelong/Sydney dominance. The truth is that their flag was based on unrelenting pressure; it was won between the ears, not with out and out talent. That sort of game style is not sustainable, particularly with the cultural issues they had. There was never going to be a dynasty.
Mike Huber
Roar Pro
Great article Les One of the best on Collingwood to date ! I put together a sustained comment but it has not appeared - think my Wifi dropped out.
Ads
Guest
great article. I was a buckley believer but I have my doubts. Can't understand how he has been extended for another year. They are so up and down that I question the passion sometimes. Don't like the corporate face and the women's teams. Feel rather blah and I guess so do the other supporters with membership and crowd dropping. The fitness staff should be cleaned out, 5 years of major injuries. Change the assistant coaches, time for the president to hand over the reigns to someone else? maybe. I'd say Bucks has one more chance to right the ship in 2017 or it's definitely over. Another year of no finals. boring. Hope Hawks don't win again. boring. Congested rugby packs. boring game
Gecko
Guest
Is it true that throughout the underperforming recent years, Buckley has kept the same underperforming coaching assistants and not brought in any new coaching blood?