Nathan Buckley among five emergencies named in best team of 21st century

THERE’S been plenty of superstars, but only 22 can make the greatest team of the past 17 years, and that meant Nathan Buckley was unlucky. JON RALPH defends the omission but did readers?

Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury pips his coach Nathan Buckley. Picture by George Salpigtidis

ASSEMBLING a list of champions is hard enough when you are taking into account entire careers — it becomes close to impossible when you have selected windows to choose from.

The most contentious omission from our list of the best team of the 21st century is quite clearly Nathan Buckley — one of five emergencies named in the prestigious squad.

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While he ranks among the all-time greats when taking into account his entire career and is arguably Collingwood’s second best player, he played just 117 games from 2001-2007.

There was a Norm Smith Medal, a Copeland Trophy and two All-Australians, but for at least three of those seven years he battled hamstring injuries amid diminishing returns.

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He was placed in the top five of the Copeland Trophy only twice during this time, and wasn’t in the top 10 in his last three seasons.

Our judgment was that players such as Scott Pendlebury and Brent Harvey, amassing 200-plus exceptional games in that time, forced their way into the team at the expense of an acknowledged champion, who would be among the first selected in any team encompassing his whole career.

Bucks is still there at the head of the emergencies along with a list of other stars who were stiff not to get a guernsey.

One of those is Dane Swan, who won three Copelands and had six consecutive top-three finishes.

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In that time, Pendlebury has won five club best-and-fairests and finished in the top three in nine of the past 10 seasons.

Matthew Lloyd, Matthew Richardson, Mark Ricciuto and Simon Black were the other emergencies, with each man entitled to consider himself stiff after a superb body of work during the period.

Simon Black won three premierships, a Brownlow and a Norm Smith in his career. Picture: David Kapernick

In the Herald Sun poll above Black, a triple premiership player with Brisbane during the club’s golden era, is considered the most unlucky to miss out on selection.

Black’s career began in 1998 and he retired in 2013 with three premierships, a Brownlow Medal, North Smith Medal and three club best and fairests.

He also finished runner-up in the Brownlow twice — in 2007 and 2008.

As part of the criteria, we took into consideration a range of factors, including performances in best-and-fairest awards, individual AFL honours and ultimate team success, position flexibility and overall consistency over a long period, along with Champion Data ratings, to finalise the team.

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Originally published as Nathan Buckley among five emergencies named in best team of 21st century