Collingwood’s slow progress under Nathan Buckley is the real issue, not the rivalry with Mick Malthouse writes Jon Ralph
THE issue isn’t why Nathan Buckley had to rejuvenate Collingwood’s list, it is why the team hasn’t come good by now, writes Jon Ralph.
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MICK Malthouse says Collingwood’s 2010 premiership list should have extended into a “mini-dynasty” of premierships and unrivalled success.
Nathan Buckley says by the end of the 2013 season Collingwood’s brains trust wondered out loud if the list could win another flag.
“And the answer was resoundingly, no, it’s not going to. So we have to take an opportunity to regenerate,” Buckley admitted the year after.
What happened in between those years is one of football’s greatest mysteries.
Malthouse, the biggest bull in the AFL paddock, today fiercely defended his list and the legacy of “his boys” on SEN radio.
Buckley, who notches 100 games as Pies coach this week, cannot move on from Malthouse’s lingering presence no matter how hard he tries.
What we do know is Malthouse’s prognostication on the Pies list is predicated on talent and nothing else.
If only footy was so simple.
The Pies’ list had an average age of just 24.16 years, the youngest side to win a flag since Hawthorn in 1978.
It oozed talent — Dane Swan, Scott Pendlebury, Travis Cloke, Dale Thomas, Ben Reid, Heath Shaw, Steele Sidebottom and Harry O’Brien.
But footy is seldom as simple as just assembling talent and letting it flourish.
The reality of Collingwood’s 2010 side, which fell just short again in 2011, is that they played fast and loose.
They played hard, they partied hard, they developed a culture which club insiders now concede was detrimental to continued success.
Call it volcanic behaviour or read between the lines.
A team that had talent by the bucketful but couldn’t or wouldn’t maximise it.
What became apparent to not just Nathan Buckley but everyone at the club agreed it was time for a shot across the bows.
Within three years of that premiership success a handful of those stars had been traded for a variety of reasons.
Not all of them were because of lifestyle issues, but the Pies had decided the list was very far from capable of a dynasty.
Other players just never came on.
Key forward Chris Dawes’ potential flatlined and they traded him to Melbourne.
The issue isn’t why Buckley had to rejuvenate the team. It is why it hasn’t come good by now. 
Heath Shaw became a negative influence given his constant interjections in team meetings and relationship with Nathan Buckley.
If anything he cared too much, but he went to GWS for Taylor Adams, who is a very solid player but not the star Shaw is.
Of the 23 players who took the field in both Grand Final sides, only 10 were left by the end of 2014.
The kids and experienced types that replaced them — Tim Broomhead, Matt Scharenberg, Jesse White, Clinton Young, Jordan Russell and many others — haven’t passed muster.
A club that had hoped it might quickly re-establish itself as a premiership force is still effectively playing a team of kids.
Buckley had hoped he might be so far into the rebuild that no one would dare question the decisions made.
Instead he is still effectively playing a team that is in development mode.
That is on him and the club, because he has had enough time to assemble a side that should be playing finals.
He isn’t helped by his senior core of players who are injured or just out of form.
Cloke has been dropped, Brent Macaffer can’t get into the team, Alan Toovey is not the star defender he once was and Ben Reid has been injured for years.
Despite Malthouse’s interjection, this is Buckley’s team and has been for 99 games.
The issue isn’t why he had to rejuvenate it. It is why it hasn’t come good by now.
That is the real story here.
No matter how titillating the Buckley-Malthouse rivalry remains so many years on.
Originally published as Collingwood’s slow progress under Nathan Buckley is the real issue, not the rivalry with Mick Malthouse writes Jon Ralph
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