Roar Guru
Joined July 2015
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Les Zig is a Melbourne-based author, screenwriter, and speaker. He is the author of "This" (MidnightSun Publishing 2023), "Prudence" (2023), "Song of the Curlew" (Pinion Press 2019), "August Falling" (Pantera Press 2018), "Just Another Week in Suburbia" (Pantera Press 2017), and "Pride" (Busybird Publishing 2017). He is also the co-host of "The Collingwood Rant", a weekly show about Collingwood, that can be found on YouTube and iTunes.
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What an appallingly run competition the AFL is. Nobody really talks about it. We all love footy, so the AFL must be doing great.…
The funniest thing about Collingwood’s 0-3 start to the 2024 season is that, apparently, they’re immune to criticism. They won a flag, you see.…
I unwittingly caught part of Eddie McGuire and Jimmy Bartel’s podcast last week. Fifteen minutes in, McGuire, yet again, went into defending Collingwood’s infamous…
One week on has given me time to reflect on such an improbable flag for the Pies. “Improbable?” I’m sure some would scoff, before…
Dear AFL, As we leave another season behind and club begin to enter into list management for next year, we yet again face the…
Back before the internet, people had to line up outside ticketing agencies to get their seats for big games. That’s what we did for…
It always shocks me whenever anybody tries to use precedent as a defence in the AFL. If the league has proven anything in the…
Years ago when the then-VFL was just 12 teams, the competition employed the McIntyre Final 5 system for the finals. The breakdown was simple:…
Kane Cornes is fast developing one of the most bombastic reputations in journalism. Last year, following Collingwood’s Round 1 win over St Kilda, he…
Dear Brian, You came to Collingwood as part of the recruiting wars with Richmond in the 1980s, a genuine star and our first real…
I’m sick of watching the treatment of Jack Ginnivan. We’re now two years into this malfeasance. I’ll pause briefly to let the flogs counter…
I am so sick of watching deplorably umpired games. The footballing fraternity has always qualified umpiring as such a hard job, that a few…
The Collingwood juggernaut rocks on.Unfortunately, it’s the Collingwood hype juggernaut.Within a single quarter of the grand final being played, people began texting me that…
Watching that Sydney versus Collingwood preliminary final unfold for three quarters, I could only think what I’ve thought so often before: we’re just not…
Collingwood’s Nick Daicos has now officially requested that he be allowed to keep wearing the number 35 – the number his father, Peter, made…
Collingwood’s commitment to securing Brisbane’s Daniel McStay baffles me. McStay is a solid but unspectacular contributor playing third fiddle behind Eric Hipwood and Joe…
Sydney Swans fans booed Jack Ginnivan on Sunday. Ginnivan had been subbed out with a hamstring injury. When the coverage crossed to him sitting…
The media’s vilification of Jack Ginnivan, leading to the AFL’s scapegoating of him, has been shameful. But both organisations are great at this: the…
The latest Jordan De Goey saga has thrown up an interesting juxtaposition. There are those who believe that De Goey has messed up, and…
I don’t want to be the 'when I was young' guy lamenting a past that’s gone, but I genuinely lament a past that’s gone.…
I understand rebuilding fine. But Malthouse was in his tenth year as coach when I had these thoughts. I was proven wrong that Malthouse would get there — he did, in his eleventh year. I don’t know of any other coach who’s been given that time — with all the resources Malthouse had at Collingwood — to win a flag. So, yes, at that time I would’ve happily made a change. Obviously, Collingwood thought similarly at that time, because they implemented the succession plan.
And once Buckley became head coach, he was determined to rein in a rampant culture, which is why so many of these ‘loyalists’ were moved on.
Collingwood: Potential versus reality
I don’t think Nathan Buckley was underrated by his own supporters, but the media constantly qualified how good he was by saying he only shone because he was in a bad team, whereas with somebody like Chris Judd at Carlton, for example, they said he shone *despite* being in a bad team. Mike Sheahan regularly had Buckley down his list of Top 50 players, and didn’t rate him Number 1 until 2004. When people talk about greats of the game, how often do you hear Buckley’s name mentioned? He was amongst the best players I saw, but doesn’t even feature in these conversations in the media.
Collingwood: Potential versus reality
Thanks, Katfish (and Jack). The way the holding the ball has come to be treated continually appalls me, and it’s deterioration has made the game more like rugby than ever.
Keep on movin': Tackling congestion
You could be right that Collingwood had more premiership success left in it. Unfortunately, it’s not something we’ll ever know for sure, and now we’re left with trying to get it right somehow.
Collingwood: Potential versus reality