Mick Malthouse says Collingwood didn’t need to rebuild after back-to-back grand final appearances

COLLINGWOOD premiership coach Mick Malthouse knows new coaches like to put their own stamp on a team. But he still doesn’t see why the Magpies rebuilt their list once Nathan Buckley took control.

Collingwood captain Nick Maxwell with coach Mick Malthouse and the AFL premiership.

COLLINGWOOD premiership coach Mick Malthouse has questioned why the Magpies rebuilt their list in the wake of successive Grand Final appearances.

Malthouse said the talent-laden Magpies were in great shape when he was replaced by Nathan Buckley as part of the contentious succession plan at the end of 2011.

But the Magpies off-loaded and lost a bevy of senior players amid some off-field problems and have missed out on finals in each of the past four seasons.

Malthouse fiercely defended the Magpies’ culture during his tenure and said he believed the team was well-placed for future success.

“I don’t know why there needed to be a rebuild,” Malthouse said on the Don’t Argue podcast.

“I certainly don’t get caught up with what another coach does with a team because he (Buckley) wants to have his own mark on it.

“He wants to reinvent the side he wants to — that’s their prerogative.

“All I know is the side I left, the 2010 premiership side I think was one of the youngest in 50 years.

Mick Malthouse and the Pies celebrate in 2010.

“In 2011 (it was only) a year older, that’s not much older.

“The culture we left was a winning culture but also a damn good culture and built on trust.

“Yes there were a few hiccups but it happens at every club with young men.

“But the basic ingredient of all those young blokes that represented Collingwood for me right throughout (his tenure) was built on trust and that was broken from time to time.

“But basically you couldn’t get a group that was stronger.”

The Magpies had an average age of 24.17 in the 2010 premiership and were the youngest team to win a flag since Hawthorn in 1978.

Malthouse with president Eddie McGuire.

But premiership stars Heath Shaw, Dale Thomas, Dayne Beams and Heritier Lumumba and a host of veterans including Alan Didak, Ben Johnson and Darren Jolly were moved on as the Magpies looked to forge a new era.

Malthouse said he agreed to the succession plan in 2009 under significant personal duress.

He said he eventually folded to the club’s request to pass on the reigns to Buckley “because it got too hard”.

“It’s a very difficult one because at the time it was, like, Nathan has got a very strong management group and that’s through Ned Kelly and so forth,” he said.

“My management group consisted of Peter Sidwell, who looked after my contract but that was it.

“There was a period there, I think it was 2009, there was a period of about one month when I was up and back to Ballarat to see my mother and she died in that period.

“My wife was ill, my daughter had a shocking pregnancy.

From left, Malthouse, McGuire and Nathan Buckley at the ‘handover’ announcement.

“There was a whole heap of things that was happening internally an in the end it just got the better of me and I said ‘damn this, ‘whatever they want let’s do’ because it just got too hard, because there were too many things.

“If that’s what the club wanted let them have it, because I was in a position where, well, you have only got one mother and she wasn’t well (with cancer).

“All those bits and pieces add up and wear you down.

“And then you start to prioritise and what’s more important? Clearly family.”

Malthouse also took aim at a 14-match suspension (with six matches suspended) handed to Shaw for asking a friend to wage $10 on a Collingwood game.

It was on Nick Maxwell to kick the first goal against Adelaide at 100-1.

Malthouse labelled the suspension, which hampered the Pies in the back half of their 2011 back-to-back premiership tilt, “absolutely ridiculous” and an “over-reaction”.