Malthouse: Coaching shenanigans didn’t cost us the 2011 premiership

Collingwood’s coaching succession plan was well-known by the 2011 finals series. While rumours swirled of a player push to keep Mick Malthouse in charge, the coaching great says he never put pressure on the board. SACKED PODCAST

Mick Malthouse denies the off-field disruption led to on-field pain in the 2011 Grand Final.

Mick Malthouse has dismissed suggestions overconfidence and the distraction of a turbulent coaching handover plan cost Collingwood the 2011 premiership.

But the AFL Hall of Famer has revealed for the first time some of the mistakes made leading into — and including — the Grand Final with Geelong, which proved his last game as Magpies coach.

SACKED: MALTHOUSE DROPS BOMBSHELL PIE REVELATIONS

In the first of a Sacked podcast series, Malthouse pinpointed a pre-finals training run at the MCG as a costly blunder, while saying he wished he had asked a retired Magpie to overturn his decision.

Collingwood won 20 matches in the 2011 home-and-away season — losing twice to Geelong — but got into the Grand Final thanks to a late Luke Ball preliminary final goal which set up another meeting with the Cats.

Mick Malthouse denies the off-field disruption led to on-field pain in the 2011 Grand Final.

The Magpies led by 18 points eight minutes into the second term and trailed by only seven at the last change before Geelong — and a rampant Tom Hawkins — overpowered them in the last term to win by 38 points.

Asked if Collingwood left a physically hampered Ben Reid, carrying a groin issue, on Hawkins for too long, Malthouse conceded it was one of the many ‘what-ifs’.

“If you had your life over again, I would talk Simon Prestigiacomo out of retirement,” Malthouse said.

“He may have said no.”

Prestigiacomo had retired the previous November — at 32 — having famously withdrawn himself from the 2010 Grand Final due to injury.

“(Nathan) Brown took Prestigiacomo’s place, but he did an ACL,” Malthouse said.

He could have chosen Tyson Goldsack — the 2010 premiership Magpie who was overlooked for the Grand Final the following year — instead of Alex Fasolo.

Malthouse went with Alex Fasolo in the 2011 Grand Final.

He says he could have picked Tyson Goldsack.

“Would it have changed the result?” he pondered, while acknowledging the Cats beat the Pies on three occasions that year.

“It’s a hard call to say that it would have, but who knows?”

He blamed himself for an eventful training run at the MCG before the qualifying final against West Coast which saw Ben Reid and Alan Toovey suffer injuries.

“I don’t know why I wanted to train at the MCG … (as a training venue it) was a bloody monster to me,” he said.

“For some reason we trained at the MCG to familiarise ourselves … well, we’ve only played their 14 times (that year).

“How ridiculous am I! (Collingwood director of sports science) David Buttifant came up and said ‘we’ve just lost ‘Reidy’ and ‘Toovs’.

“I said, ‘What, at training? What did they do? Did they fall down the stairs?”

Alan Toovey and Ben Reid both suffered injuries during an ill-advised MCG training run before the 2011 Grand Final.

Toovey recovered to play against the Eagles. Reid missed the qualifying final, but returned for the preliminary and Grand Finals, though he struggled in both finals.

Malthouse dismissed the suggestion a potential players’ push to convince the club to keep their coach for at least another year had anything to do with the result.

“There were inferences around that all the shenanigans cost us a Grand Final,” he said.

“I never went near the board to say listen we need to reconsider this because ‘look at where we are’, and I never put the players up to it. I can categorically tell you that.

“In fact I was a little bit annoyed … I was thinking ‘Gee they (the players) have got to start to focus’, which is a shame.

“In modern football, you have to have a board committed, an administration working very hard, and a football division united … that gives you a chance to win it; it doesn’t guarantee it.

“If any of those are not in alignment, you will never win it.

“I know I had the players. They were fantastic. They were totally outstanding and most of the staff were outstanding.”

He was always a Malthouse favourite and the master coach says he wishes he’d talked Simon Prestigiacomo out of retirement.

COMING SOON: MALTHOUSE, THE BLUES YEARS

NEXT WEEK: GRANT THOMAS