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Opinion

2020 must be Nathan Buckley's last year as Collingwood coach

MarkF new author
Roar Rookie
27th July, 2020
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MarkF new author
Roar Rookie
27th July, 2020
153
3236 Reads

Overreaction following significant defeat or victory are common in sport, especially when your own team is involved.

Sunday’s hammering by the West Coast Eagles of Collingwood could be seen as just an outlier during a season like no other, or perhaps a truer reflection of where the club may actually be.

Following the 2010 premiership, with the likes of Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom, Ben Reid, Dale Thomas and Travis Cloke all in their early to mid twenties, most ‘Pies supporters would have laughed uncontrollably if you had said 2010 would be their only premiership as players.

Nine years into Nathan Buckley’s tenure as coach, that scenario is more likely than not for Pendlebury and Sidebottom. Sunday’s loss was hardly a one-off.

Poor performances against Hawthorn, North Melbourne and GWS last season culminated in a dreadful showing for three quarters in the Preliminary final against a woefully undermanned GWS outfit, diminishing thoughts that 2018 was the opening of a new premiership window.

Last season the team rarely clicked for an entire game, seemingly blowing sides out of the water with one frenzied quarter before struggling to hang on thereafter. In the almost grand final-winning season of 2018, the team kicked 75 points or more on 18 occasions.

In 2019, it was ten times, and in this incomplete season with shorter quarters, it has only been done twice. The more worrying aspect is that in six games this season, the ‘Pies have scored two goals or less in an hour of football during a game.

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This season is obviously different to anything before, yet the same issues remain. The midfield, lauded by some last season as the best in the game, is slow, lacks physicality, skill and a complete inability to take advantage of Brodie Grundy’s ruck dominance.

Given that Pendlebury is past 30 and Sidebottom will be next season, it’s difficult to see them competing against the deeper, more skilled and quicker midfields of West Coast, Essendon, the Bulldogs and Brisbane in the next couple of seasons.

The forward line, a unique combination of tall and small in 2018, is a shadow of its former self. 2018 was driven by out of the box seasons from debutants like Brodie Mihocek and Jaidyn Stephenson, as well as never before seen – or since – seasons from Will Hoskin-Elliott, Josh Thomas and Jordan DeGoey.

Mihocek has been a revelation, a hard-working warhorse with an enormous heart, but he isn’t a key forward.
The defence, obviously, moulded by Justin Longmuir and continuing under his successor in Matthew Boyd, is one of the best in the game, and yet, as shown by the Eagles, can’t hold back the tide when the game plan is unpicked by opposition coaches and the ball floods in.

Nathan Buckley, coach of the Magpies, looks dejected

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

This is Nathan Buckley’s ninth year in charge of Collingwood.

The only premiership coaches of the last 70 years who have taken that long to win a premiership are Michael Malthouse and Malcolm Blight. No coach has won a premiership if they haven’t succeeded by the ninth year.

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History therefore suggests that if Buckley does not coach the club to a grand final win this year, he won’t.

History is made to be rewritten, of course, yet the Collingwood list in a transitory phase. Quality talent such as Pendelbury, Jeremy Howe and Sidebottom are much closer to the end of their careers than the middle.

Adam Treloar, Grundy, Taylor Adams, Moore, DeGoey and Mihocek are somewhere in the middle, and there is the younger talent such as Isaac Quaynor, Josh Daicos, the Brown brothers, Nathan Murphy and Will Kelly that will hopefully form part of the next period of success.

Given that this list is Buckley’s, and the aforementioned unlikelihood of coaching a premiership in the tenth year in charge, the club need to make the bold choice and dispense with a favourite son, in order to plan for the future and ensure a fresh start instead of hanging on and hoping the dream of a Premiership that never materialised as a player happens as coach.

Talent is spread too thinly around the competition, both in playing and coaching ranks, and it would be a travesty were the club to waste talent such as DeGoey, Stephenson and Moore in the same manner as it did with its 2010 players.

There are still a few months left before the 2020 grand final is played, but Collingwood will likely only regain Pendlebury and Sidebottom for he remainder of the season, and two players don’t make an 11-goal difference.

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