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Opinion
I appreciate that the bulk of football interviews mean nothing.
What do the players and coaches spout outside of the typical clichés that mean nothing?
Something like Adam Treloar’s passionate honesty is rare. It’s farcical that some media demand greater accessibility, despite the fact we’re not getting anything new or heartfelt or meaningful.
But we understand that’s part of the industry. Coaches and players are obligated to fulfil media commitments, and they’re hardly going to use that time to be brutally honest, or (as much as I’d like to see) cut a pro-wrestling-like promo against the opposition.
Sometimes, though, we do need to break from the script.
Now we get that when a player or coach or president retires, or is sacked. These are occasions where we expect meaning. As they exit the industry (or at least their position in the industry), the individual isn’t beholden to meaningless diplomacy and usually will be open, raw, and emotional.
And the other times we need a break from the script are when we want to see that the individual – or an individual speaking on behalf of a club – is feeling their supporters’ pain, rather than deflecting it, or minimising it, or outright denying it.
Collingwood went all-in on Nathan Buckley, appointing him with just two years’ worth of experience and managing out Mick Malthouse who was beloved by the players. It was a brave decision to stick with the succession given Malthouse had finally coached the team to a flag, as well as successive grand finals.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Even when Collingwood missed the finals in 2015, 2016, and 2017, the club continued to back Buckley.
But throughout 2017, there was genuine supporter unrest. Premiership heroes had been traded out. The team was playing ugly football. List management had made mistakes.
Had Collingwood sacrificed some bright, promising future for this?
We’ll never know.
All we could hold onto was what came next if we persevered with this madness. It certainly didn’t look promising.
As good as 2018 was for Collingwood, it was still just another grand final failure. But it provided hope – a band aid on that unrest. Maybe this is what we’d all been waiting for.
But Collingwood didn’t build on that effort – they clumsily took a step back. In the two years that followed, the club unraveled with bad trade deals, horrible salary cap management, and explosive racial issues.
Check social media and you’ll find that band-aid has been torn off, and taken a fair bit of skin with it.
Supporters verge from restless, to angry to disgusted.
How has the club done it again? How have they gone from a position of strength (2010-11, and 2018) and spiraled into this blundering ineptitude?
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Isn’t anybody else supremely concerned? Or am I the only idiot who sees patterns repeating, a lack of self-awareness, and a potential swan-dive off a cliff? Am I exaggerating the poor shape of Collingwood’s list with ageing champions and a plethora of untried youth?
On Saturday night, an undermanned GWS defeated a Collingwood team who exhibited all their habitual problems: poor decision-making, skill errors, rigid play that lacks any creativity, vulnerability on the counter-attack, a lack of synergy between various facets of the team, and a perseverance with incumbent underperformers who offer nothing new.
Yet the coach comes out and it’s the same rhetoric.
Buckley pioneered the usage of ‘brand’ as an identification of on-field efforts, and is a master of the corporate-speak. Very rarely does he genuflect into actual real emotion.
Even his predecessor, Mick Malthouse, would show surliness or anger at times. Buckley is always relatively composed and says a lot without saying very much.
Meanwhile, we have a football department who is silent and joint presidents who are mute.
Perhaps this is a tactical retreat after having an outspoken president, but the club feels like they’re either oblivious, in denial, or just embarrassed about where they find themselves, and have no real idea how to proceed from here other than to hit the typical Collingwood rah-rah.
These are the people who got the club in this mess.
And this goes back to the succession plan. The same identities are in place.
They’ve tried to catch-up, take shortcuts, find direction, and yet here we are, with the club floundering at 1-3, yet persevering with an ageing list rather than the youth the club recruited with the claim they’d revitalise the list.
In regard to the football itself, Jamie Elliott will miss the bulk of the year with a broken leg. Taylor Adams went down with a medial ligament injury, which is about eight to 16 weeks.
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
Collingwood’s lack of depth and experience is now exposed. They will be forced to play unprepared youth – some of whom Collingwood should’ve pumped games into (last year) rather than persevering with the same-old.
It also shows how much their 2020 trade period debacle has hurt the club. Collingwood claimed they could cover these players. Really? Well, those players seem to have rediscovered their 2018 form at their new clubs, while present-day Collingwood flounders.
And the club itself? What do we get?
Well, some might urge we unequivocally, unquestioningly and unintelligently trust in the club – the club is composed and planning and blah, blah. This is the blind faith that the zealous express. They will shift goal posts on every argument, trying to find validation – or browbeat you into resignation.
Given the way this club has been run in the last decade, and particularly the last couple of years, I cannot trust that any genuine build, rebuild, or refocusing, is occurring. Maybe our off-field non-football endeavours are thriving, but our core and foundational business is not.
Just about every facet of that is a mess. We know there are issues with the list. We have a struggling coach and besieged assistants.
Everybody’s banking on yet another year of injuries. On-field strategies aren’t working. We have no guarantee that the salary cap issues are now fixed. We have damaged our reputation. And we’re actually something of a laughing stock.
Yet, somehow, we’re asked to believe – and have faith – that in the present we’re still a contender, and that the future is fine? We’re expected to accept yet another president who hasn’t been voted in by the members?
Ditto on the board. We’re expected to justify and rationalise and excuse what’s going on? We’re expected to be meek and just shut up while we watch it collapse in front of us?
The club has the distinct aroma of stagnation, and the same people cannot, and must not, be relied on to pull it from the mire.
This is the group who put it there. Twice.
As well as the group who committed a whole series of other blunders.
I’d like to see the club exhibit some genuine empathy for their supporter base, for their situation, and real accountability – not this crap they tried to sell after the trade debacle that it was all part of a strategy, treating the footballing world as if they were idiots who couldn’t recognise salary cap bungling at its worst.
I’m so tired of the lack of public discussion, as well as media scrutiny, on the powerbrokers behind this club.
I cannot believe it’s not the primary discussion in football.
Moving forward, Collingwood needs more than a lazy facelift.
They need to spill every off-field position – from coaches to administrators – and to inject a fresh perspective that will galvanise their outlook and implement long-term planning to rebuild their standing.
Because the current mob give absolutely no confidence of being able to do so.
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