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Is this 'Guy' the one we should be blaming?

12th November, 2020
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Roar Guru
12th November, 2020
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2020 has been a year to forget for so many reasons but November has brought renewed optimism across the country…unless you are a Collingwood supporter.

Despite the dire end to the season which saw the once flag favourite battered out of the finals (having only just scraped in) it was thought the on-field issues would be our lowest ebb.

Coach Nathan Buckley and his hand-picked crew of yes men in the coaches’ box had devised a game plan so negative it had driven a team on the brink of premiership glory in 2018 to a shell of its former self.

Following the departure of the key to their coaching success, current Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir, Collingwood’s game plan stifled any hope they had in 2020.

Buckley and Brenton Sanderson (in charge of transition), decided despite every blueprint screaming for them to move the ball quickly, that slow and steady movement would win the race.

Perhaps the thought was that turning a squad with pace and x-factor into a plodding, sideways outfit would allow them to strangle teams. In the end it simply made kicking a winning score impossible and they strangled themselves.

Despite Buckley and his assistant’s obvious failings over his decade in charge supporters looked off-field for some hope. Surely after close to a decade without a legitimate key forward Collingwood would finally make a play for one of the many on the market?

Not on Ned Guy’s watch.

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Guy, appointed in 2017, moved into the List Manager role with no experience having previously acted as a player agent on the other side of the fence.

Nathan Buckley, coach of the Magpies, looks dejected

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Having been responsible for ensuring players received their maximum remuneration possible Collingwood seemingly took a punt that his strong relationships with other agents would make it a success.

To label it a disaster would be an understatement.

Since taking over Guy has overseen the recruitment of Dayne Beams, a player they didn’t need, from Brisbane for two first round draft picks (gold dust for those not familiar with AFL picks) who played a grand total of nine games and reportedly cost the club close to $1m in a payout to remove him from the playing list.

Due to the Beams debacle Collingwood missed out on Tom Lynch, the key forward they desperately needed, and someone who would become a key to Richmond’s success in back-to-back premierships.

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Following 2018 Guy proceeded to miss out on several potential targets in 2019 while landing untried Sydney tall Darcy Cameron… hardly the final piece of the puzzle. There was still time that offseason however to orchestrate what can only be described as currently the worst contract in the AFL.

Brodie Grundy’s seven-year, seven-million dollar disaster saw Guy panic at losing one of Collingwood’s seemingly crucial players and proceed to pay massive overs to keep him.

The contract will leave Collingwood bleeding for years as Grundy’s 2020 performances spiralled to new depths being outperformed on a weekly basis by players on a quarter of his salary.

But little did fans know Grundy’s bloated contract was not the only one that would cause the club headaches. In fact, the worst was yet to come.

Guy revealed that once again Collingwood would not be targeting key forwards in Jeremy Cameron and Ben Brown and that somehow the club, who have not won a premiership since 2010, was haemorrhaging money from it’s player salary cap and would need to offload numerous players in a fire sale.

The way star midfielder Adam Treloar has been outcast this off season is disgraceful and the incredible scenes currently unfolding where Collingwood need to pay other clubs to take their players is staggering.

At the time of writing Mason Cox, Jaidyn Stephenson and Tom Phillips were all being offered around in panic cut price deals.

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Stephenson even had to chase the club and Buckley for an answer, apparently being told he was unwanted and to aggressively seek a trade. What a horrible way to treat your young star.

Adam Treloar

Adam Treloar. (Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

It’s like Collingwood are running the most lopsided garage sale of all time with Gran’s fine china out the door for a $20 note. But even that analogy doesn’t do the situation justice as incredibly Collingwood needs to pay hundreds of thousands to other clubs just to take on the contracts.

The fact Treloar will be wearing another jumper and yet being paid by Collingwood is bewildering and shows just how poorly Guy and the team have mismanaged the salary cap. As the full story began to leak this week about how so many players at Collingwood are overpaid, they have quickly become the laughingstock of the competition.

How on earth can this happen?

Managing forty employees on a salary cap could be managed by a teenager who is halfway through year ten accounting.

It appears Collingwood’s salary cap financials are being run like a small South American country.

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Ned Guy will no doubt shoulder the blame and his position will likely become untenable and probably quite rightly, but surely a major review (yes another) is required and changes must be made throughout the entire organisation.

To wake up earlier this week to the headline “Eddie McGuire to step down” was music to the ears of thousands of Collingwood fans who had long agitated for change as they are sick of the status quo.

Shame in the fine print it was revealed he would step away from Triple M duties.

While the most agile businesses in Australia are permanently in a state of change and evolution Collingwood appears stuck in a scene from the 1970s film ‘The Club’ with Eddie refusing to allow anyone else a swing at success as President.

The club has become his personal play toy and the members I talk to are sick of it. They are demanding change.

Former Swimming Australia CEO and current CEO Mark Anderson surely has to ask questions about the handling of the salary cap. Back in 2014 while Anderson was CEO at Swimming Australia (SA), Todd Balym for the Courier Mail reported that SA were forced to call a crisis meeting after it was discovered they could not pay close to $300k in bonuses owed to their swimmers despite an annual revenue of $26m.

This lead to Anderson and Swimming Australia undertaking a complete review of budgets and payments. It would seem something similar must surely now be undertaken at the Magpies.

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Other senior figures and board members need to be held accountable. It seems hard to believe the entire salary cap was left to Guy to manage with no reporting to senior figures and board members?

Eddie McGuire

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Clearly Collingwood are going backwards at a rate of knots and changes are needed. Collingwood have lurched from one off-field disaster to the next in recent times and yet for every fallout nothing changes.

Will a proper review of the organisation from the President and CEO down by an external party ever be commissioned and acted on?

Do Collingwood fans need to keep hearing the same inept excuses from the Magpie boys club?

Or will just one ‘Guy’ be shown the door and once again members will have to endure the same rhetoric and empty promises from a President and coaching staff long past their used by date?

I suspect the latter.

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