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The lesson Nathan Buckley must learn from Chairman Mao

Roar Rookie
1st April, 2017
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Have the Magpies turned a corner? (AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)
Roar Rookie
1st April, 2017
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1893 Reads

Since their Round 2 loss to the Tigers, the Magpies poor kicking skills have been blamed for their defeat.

“Richmond revenge over poor-kicking Pies” was the headline on AFL.com.au, while Jon Perik in The Age wrote “poor goal kicking to blame for a 19-point loss to Richmond”.

To improve his club’s on-field fortunes Nathan Buckley must ignore these conclusions and instead address the true root cause of his team’s performance issues. If he doesn’t Buckley will be making the same mistake that Chairman Mao committed in China in 1958.

Mao under the incorrect belief that the sparrow population was to blame for poor farming production, ordered one billion people be put to work killing sparrows for a day. After his orders were successfully carried out, the insect population, with no natural predator, increased dramatically and these insects went on to decimate the country’s farming crop eventually leading to a widespread famine in China.

Yes, missed shots at goal didn’t help their cause, but the Magpies poor skills are the sparrow in this Collingwood problem.

Since the start of the 2012 season, when Buckley took over as Collingwood coach, the Magpies have contested 17 games where they were playing after a six-day break or less between games and, were coming up against an opponent who had a seven day break or more between fixtures. Their clash with the Tigers was one of these games.

In these 17 games the Pies have only posted six victories at a win rate of just 35 per cent. In all other games since Buckley took over, the Pies have recorded 55 wins from 99 matches at a much higher win rate of 56 per cent. That is a huge variance in performance and an indicator of clear problem in player recovery and preparation for the club.

A quick scan of betting markets also demonstrates that this is not some quirk of the draw where the Magpies just happen to have played tougher opponents in these matches. Three of their losses in this games came when the Magpies started as a heavy favourite at a price of $1.20 or less and only one loss occurred when they were considered a significant outsider at a quote greater than $2.50.

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Yet the Pies are not alone in regards to this issue, all up fifteen of the eighteen sides perform worse after a six day break when playing an opponent off a seven day break than they do in all other matches.

Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley

So what can be learned from looking at the clubs who don’t seem to suffer from this same drop off in performance? Three of the clubs, that have only a slight drop off in performance or actually improve, are sides with a very low winning percentage across this period (St Kilda, Melbourne and the Gold Coast) and the increase or negligible variance in performance can be put down to the relative low base from which to compare.

The two best performing sides, in this category, are West Coast and Sydney. Prior to this season their win variances increased by 6.5 per cent and 6.1 per cent respectively off the lessor break.

Without being inside that environment it is impossible to know the reasons as to why but it is clear that the Eagles and Swans have a distinct advantage in the area of recovery and preparation.

What would seem most probable is that after years of having to adjust to fortnightly cycle of flying interstate to play matches, their fitness staff are better at preparing their list for disruptions from a routine schedule.

Or it could be that the players themselves have naturally leant to be more adaptable to change and are subsequently more flexible in their approach to match day preparation than players at other clubs.

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This is not to say this is a trait shared by all non-Victorian clubs. The Dockers and Crows, two sides that have enjoyed solid success over the period, suffer from a large drop off in win percentage, at 28.4 per cent and 9.7 per cent decrease respectively, when disadvantaged by a smaller rest between matches.

So if Nathan Buckley is a smart coach, and we expect he is, he should ignore the flood of media reporting and talk back calls that have focused on the Pies kicking skills. Instead his first stop on Monday morning should be to the office of high the performance manager and conditioning team, as the true problem at Collingwood’s lies here.

Buckley must demand to know why his team continues to falter in this situation when the players of at least some rival clubs do not. Answers to these questions must come quickly, as, with a further four regular season games that fall into this category this season, Buckley’s future may depend on the ability of the Pies to solve this problem.

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