Collingwood: The era that could have been

Whenever I look at Collingwood, it’s about a pattern of behaviour.

In my lifetime of supporting them, they’ve had meltdowns in 1976 (administrative upheaval), 1982 (players ousted the coach, board spill), 1986 (near bankruptcy, banks recommended they close their doors), declined through the 1990s, endured Eddie McGuire’s bloodless coup in 1998–99, lost millions on the Beach Hotel fiasco in the late 2000s, and since their 2010 flag have misstepped so often it looks like a dance chart for the tango.

For a club who prides itself on being one of the biggest, most secure, and stable in the country, they sure do know how to implode with stunning regularity.

Obviously, there have been good times – the 1990 flag and 2010 flag are the most spectacular successes. I walked away from both those grand finals believing they should be launching pads for prolonged contention.

Not to be in either case.

I don’t believe success should come with a scorched Earth policy. Other clubs have built sustained contention.

Collingwood enjoys temporary focus, which then explodes into hyperbole, self-aggrandisement, and self-sabotage – again, the pattern of behaviour.

Since I was a teen, I’ve hungered for this club to become something better than it is, and something more formidable than their litany of runners-ups.

People will point to material accomplishments, like finances, membership numbers, good home-and-away seasons, or even some fantastic finals wins.

I enjoy those in the moment, but I’m not going to hold onto them for posterity.

This is a game about winning premierships, and often I feel like the club (and some of its supporters) either insulate themselves, or comfort themselves, with these accoutrements, and that in itself undermines or distracts or mitigates the focus, desire, and intensity they should stoke – the sort you’re seeing at Richmond, or you saw at Hawthorn, Geelong, and Brisbane.

I’ll write what few have: when Eddie McGuire fell on his sword, and then Nathan Buckley departed, I felt like a breath of fresh air had the potential to waft through the club and reinvigorate them, if not reinvent them.

I thought McGuire should’ve went in 2010–11 – not because he’d done anything wrong, but because change is vital to keep any organisation fresh.

At that time, we also weren’t that far from John Elliott’s demise at Carlton. He was a cautionary tale. A successful president through the 1980s and the 1990s, his reign deteriorated into gaffes and questionable decisions, culminating in Carlton winning their first wooden spoon in 2002, and then being done for salary cap breaches.

The Carlton I grew up with were ruthless, successful, and confident. Since 2002, they’ve largely been irrelevant.

Younger supporters cannot appreciate or reconcile how far they’ve fallen.

Instead of worrying about a coaching succession, McGuire should’ve been overseeing his own succession around 2010 – going out while on top (after 10–12 years in the position, which is a decent tilt), and handing the reins to somebody fresh while the club was humming along.

They could provide an invigorated perspective and oversee the club’s next evolution.

As it is, the last decade (as it relates to football) has been questionable – a result of myopia and stagnancy from a president who outstayed his welcome.

I think it was wrong the way McGuire was pilloried following his demise – everybody had to find some knife to thrust into his back – but I thought his departure also represented a significant opportunity for the club.

I’ve always written how much I rate Nathan Buckley as a player, but his coaching career was unspectacular, 2018 aside. I will qualify that the football department(s) behind him often seemed tumultuous, and/or unlucky, and/or distracting, and that wouldn’t have helped him in his job.

But, somehow, despite missing the finals from 2014 – 2017, and the deterioration of Collingwood’s on-field performances from about the middle of 2019, Buckley was never really held under any genuine scrutiny.

You see David Teague dissected after just two years in the job (and one of those vastly compromised, due to Covid).

With Buckley, that didn’t happen until a series of dreary performances in his tenth year, and even then criticism only came from a handful of media commentators, such as Matthew Lloyd and Kane Cornes, as well as Matt Rendell.

I’m thankful to both McGuire and Buckley for the time, energy, and work they put into Collingwood, even though I didn’t always agree with their decisions. But their love of the club is evident.

If sheer willpower and passion could’ve won flags, then they would’ve overseen a heady era of black and white success. Unfortunately, football doesn’t work like that.

I’ve written articles criticising the Mark Korda administration, as well as Jeff Browne for not offering any vision. Privately, I’m sure both must have a plan – well, I hope so, because the alternative is that they’re just going to make it up as they go along.

If I could choose a president from the limited information I have available, it would be Peter Murphy, who reviewed the club in 2017, and drew up the recommendations that saw Collingwood shoot up the ladder in 2018. Based on that, Murphy not only recognised the club’s issues, but also came up with suggestions to address them when nobody else did, or could.

Korda has been uninspiring in his limited media forays. But, to his credit, he doesn’t seek the limelight, or draw it like his predecessor.

That’s a major plus, given the last thing the club needs is more attention. As a friend pointed out, when Buckley resigned, Korda wasn’t front and centre at the press conference, as McGuire would’ve been – a fundamental shift in how Collingwood approaches such things.

Browne’s launched a couple of media salvos across the incumbent’s bow, but effectively they have only amounted to good PR.

Collingwood now stands on the edge of a precipice. Given their stature, their financial security should be assured. But I worry more about them as an entity.

The political machinations could threaten to tear them apart. I’ve seen many advocate for stability (backing the incumbents) while others have endorsed change (backing Browne).

What I want, what I desire, what I hope for, is that (all the) powerbrokers involved examine Collingwood with some modesty and humility, and learn from the past – not just the last decade, but the last six, because many of the problems, responses, attitudes, decisions, and excuses we see, we’ve seen before, and before that again and again.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, I often heard Richmond referred to as “the sleeping giant”. In the couple of years they did enjoy some success (preliminary finalists in 1995 and 2001), the clamour of their fans was zealous and deafening.

Many speculated what would happen if the giant were awakened.

I’ve always disagreed with that label.

Ever since I was a kid in the 1970s wistfully going through the finals’ results in the AFL COURAGE BOOK OF FINALS, I’ve always thought of Collingwood as the sleeping giant. Eleven flags from 1902–1936 and then just four flags from 1937 to today, despite the plethora of opportunities.

While we can bandy around rhetoric about the competition being different back then, flags being hard to win, that there are grand finals Collingwood was lucky to make, etc., it’s all relative.

Winning isn’t just about talent. We see supremely talented teams and individuals regularly fail. Winning is also a mentality that becomes ingrained and drives that individual or team. That’s why good teams keep finding a way to win, even when everything seems lost.

(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

With football, that mentality is generational. Some people might want to deny or depreciate culture, but why do we so often see the same clubs come back up to contention and win flags, while the same clubs keep losing them, or keep missing out? Are we expected to believe that the same clubs just keep getting lucky or unlucky?

Clubs have a collective psyche that permeates the organisation and everybody involved. I have no doubt that it can influence and predispose – or perhaps it simply burdens and asphyxiates. Maybe it amounts to the same thing. While some (few) players might become self-made regardless of where they end up, others are products of environment.

Culture can prejudice the way a player thinks and develops.

It becomes sliding doors: if Player X went to Team A, he might’ve played 200 games, and become recognised as a champion of the game, but if he’d gone to Team B, he might never have realised his potential.

Now apply this equation to groups – not just the players, but the staff and administrators. Some may scoff. But there are examples, e.g. what Paul Roos did at the Sydney Swans with the “Bloods” culture. He recognised the need to forge something new and longstanding, rather than perpetuate what was.

That collective psyche can shape a club’s path, or empower them once they find their way. It can be reinvented, too – just as we saw Carlton plummet from greatness to mediocrity following a succession of low finishes, while Geelong found it in themselves from 2007 to become something greater than they’d known. In the modern era, we all fear Hawthorn whenever they get up there, because we know they’ll make it count.

And, as far as Collingwood goes, the question now is easy: who do you want to be?

Collingwood face a juncture – it’s one they’ve often faced: the course between right and wrong, and hard and easy.

Despite McGuire’s seeming success as an administrator, under his presidency Collingwood played in five grand finals (excluding the draw) for one flag, which is pretty much the way the average has rounded out for the club since 1937.

But this is about more than a single person, but a dream in which they (as an organisation) could dare to grasp greatness, but only at the cost of unlearning everything they know, and avoiding the cultural pitfalls, the egocentric timebombs, and the habitual foibles they unwittingly but commonly embrace.

Too often in my time following Collingwood, I think they’ve taken the easy course because it’s seductive.

Take Dayne Beams back? No problem. Sign Brodie Grundy to seven years? Well, if that’s the way it has to be. The succession plan? Yup! McGuire staying in perpetuity? Of course!

What would Collingwood look like if they hadn’t made these decisions? If they’d overlooked Beams? Or insisted Grundy sign to five years or offered to trade him out?

Or if Malthouse had coached until 2014, and Buckley had taken an opportunity elsewhere, and the timing was never right for him to return to the Pies? And what if McGuire had decided to leave ten years ago?

These are just a handful of basic examples. There are plenty of them scattered throughout Collingwood’s history, each with repercussions that have, in some way, ultimately impacted the club.

The hard decision might be scary, but it’s scary because it’s something different to everything they’ve known.

Moving forward now, what is the decision that seems easy and the most attractive? And what lies on the other side? Something frightening, and wrought with uncertainty? A path untrodden?

What is that hard, difficult decision? What can emerge from this new era, post-Eddie McGuire and post-Nathan Buckley? Or, as we so often do, will we flock to what’s seductive and only invite more of the same?

For everybody involved at Collingwood, it’s time to work out the differences between the easy and hard decisions, and plot a course into uncharted territory.