Pure Footy: David King and Daniel Hoyne lift the lid on AFL trends, statistics

You don’t have to look far to find an opinion on Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley. But the stats might surprise you. Watch Pure Footy here.

Things might not be as bad as they seem for Nathan Buckley.

The future of the Magpies coach is under a huge cloud after claiming just two wins in the first nine rounds.

But there are some green shoots for Buckley and his team, according to dual North Melbourne premiership star David King.

King and Champion Data analyst Daniel Hoyne lift the lid on what’s really happening at your club every week on Pure Footy, exclusive to heraldsun.com.au.

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King pointed out Collingwood has played the equal-most debutants in the competition (six) and used the most players (35) of any club in the first nine rounds.

“Their average losing margin is the fifth-lowest at 21 points ... behind Melbourne, Geelong, Sydney and Brisbane, so they’re in great company there,” he said.

“Nathan Buckley, I think, can sit there and say, ‘Hey, we’re in every game, we’re blooding youngsters and we’re still here.

“Last week they had five players under 10 games, nine players under 30 games, so they are going to war with a very inexperienced model.”

Nathan Buckley has some reasons to smile despite Collingwood’s 2-7 record.

He also highlighted the improvement in some of the Pies’ younger players.

“Darcy Cameron has taken 13 contested marks in the last four weeks, which is only behind Jack Darling.

“Josh Daicos is doing fantastic work at centre bounce clearances and (Beau) McCreery is the No.1 forward-50 pressure player in the competition over the last month.

“There’s a few little things that are correcting at Collingwood — their clearance game, their contested possession game — and while not everything is humming and the systems are looking a bit broken because they’ve got these youngsters in the team, but if you asked me to mount a case to why you should look at re-signing Nathan Buckley on the last nine weeks alone, I reckon you could.”

King and Hoyne also discussed the rise of Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti, what David Noble is doing right at North Melbourne, why Port Adelaide fans shouldn’t panic, the crazy Charlie Cameron stat Richmond will try to exploit on Friday night and more.