AFL 2020: Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley responds to criticism over Adam Treloar, Jaidyn Stephenson and Tom Phillips exits
Nathan Buckley has conceded the direction Collingwood took during the trade period was a calculated one, but he worries what it might do to team morale.
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Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley admitted the club was “forced” to drive the likes of Adam Treloar and Jaidyn Stephenson out the door to ease pressure on the team’s salary cap.
But he believes they are replaceable.
Buckley admitted that he could have handled the communication with players better, but conceded there had been an unnatural element to the situation that the club found itself in that was always inevitable.
He said the club had tried to act on its salary cap issues 12 months ago but decided to cop the full whack this year.
“Yes, we had to, we had to (actively push them out),” Buckley said on SEN.
“The conversations were pretty short and sharp.
“And for a varying number of reasons — some inside of their control some with absolutely nothing to do with those individuals — we needed to make those decisions and force those outcomes.
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“There’s no doubt the element of what people are perceiving and feeling is that forced element of it.
“It wasn’t natural, it wasn’t smooth, it wasn’t organic. And I think we’ve been a natural, smooth, organic club for a couple of years.
“But yes, there was a forced element to it.
“It’s been on the cards for probably the last three or four years.
“We nearly won the title in ‘18, we were around the mark and contending, and we decided to keep the group together as much as possible and that required us to push back … these cap issues, for right or for wrong.
“There’s a lot of things that have come to pass in the last 12 months, 24 months, that have brought these decisions forward.
“And we felt this was the time we need to stop pushing our pain into the future and take it all in one gulp now.”
Buckley said the decision on which players would go had been a calculated one, with “glue players” not targeted.
“We’ve let some talent go, there’s no doubt,” he said.
“And the perception is we’re going to be worse off in 2021.
“But it’s our determination that we’ve let players go who we can replace … it’s our determination with our knowledge that we’ve let players go that will not damage the fabric of the inner circle of our playing group.
“That’s not to say that they weren’t liked or respective.
“But in every organisation, there’s glue guys.
“There’s people who are fundamental to who you are.
“And sometimes the perception from outside is not actually what you see and what you live every day inside.
“That was part of our determination. That was part of landing on the ‘who’. We’re really confident that we’ll be able to come back together.
“We’re fractured at the moment. Every club is off on a break … licking their wounds off the back of 2020, bar Richmond of course.
“The way our season ended was not great for us and it was part of the reason why we got to the point where we just needed to pull the trigger now on this.
“We need to put it behind us and we need to attack ’21 and beyond with a clean slate, and we’ve now got options and capability that we didn’t have for the last four or five years.
“We’ve given ourselves more scope than we’ve had for a long time by making these tough decisions.”
BUCKLEY ON THE RESPONSE FROM SUPPORTERS
Buckley says the response to the Magpies’ brutal trade calls has been the most scathing he has ever experienced in almost three decades at the club.
Buckley said he could “understand” the overwhelming backlash from supporters in the wake of the club’s call to trade Treloar, Jaidyn Stephenson and winger Tom Phillips, but affirmed that the decisions were “needed”.
“I’ve been through some situations with the football club as a player, as an assistant coach and as a coach,” he said.
“I love the place. I want to see it succeed.
“I’ve committed my life’s work in a professional sense to it.
“I’m hungry for success and for it to be a place that everyone is proud of. I understand that there are a lot of people that don’t feel that way at the moment.
“I can understand that.
“There’s a lot of things that we could have done better in the recent past and the last three or four weeks particularly, but we are where we are and the decisions were made consciously … it’s brutal, but we feel it was needed.”
He said whether the calls flew in the face of the club’s “side by side” mantra “depends on your perspective”.
“I understand how we’ve opened ourselves up to that criticism,” Buckley said.
“My view is, and this has challenged my perspective … we’re a very tight knit group.
“The last three seasons have shown our capacity to come together and support each other … while understanding that we need to challenge each other.
“We’ve done that relatively well. We’ve been relatively successful without getting the ultimate.”
Buckley said as a coach he had wrestled personally with his commitment to the club and also managing his players and the salary cap.
“How do you honour the individual, while doing what is needed for the whole?,” he said.
“How do you provide love and care for the individual while making the decision you feel for the short, medium and long term?”
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BUCKLEY ON ADAM TRELOAR
The coach described the Treloar call as a “business decision” that he knew had hurt the star midfielder on a personal level, likening it to a “break-up”.
But despite initially denying reports that he had told Treloar that his “teammates didn’t trust him”, he said he could “understand how Adam has perceived it that way”.
He said he “needed to be better at” how he expressed his feedback, but stopped short of saying he regretted his handling.
“As soon as we determined that this was the way we were going to go, I don’t think it was going to be pretty, we knew that,” he said.
“Adam’s a heart and soul person.
“My personal relationship with him is important to me. We’re really close.
“Obviously it’s strained at the moment and the dust is yet to settle on that.
“But I believe that Adam is a quality young man.
“I’ve got great respect for him … and I think we’ve supported him personally and professionally really well.
“In my communication with him — and it was me, and we’d determined it had to be me … this is a break-up.
“This is something that he was aware of 12 months ago that became more real now, and it’s been difficult for him, difficult for us as a football club, but it was a business decision unfortunately.”
Buckley said there was “clearly something I could have done better” in the conversations with Treloar.
He said they had spoken several times post-season – including on a beach walk regarding his partner Kim Ravaillon’s decision to play netball in Queensland.
“This was always going to be hurtful,” he said.
“It was always going to be a shock, it was always going to cause distress …. and I didn’t feel entirely great about it.
“But as I said, we feel that we’ve made these decisions for the betterment of the football club in the short, medium and long terms and we’ve had to be quite brutal in a professional sense with some of our players.”
BUCKLEY ON JAIDYN STEPHENSON
Buckley was adamant that despite Stephenson’s claims he had been blindsided by the trade prospect, it had been communicated to his management clearly.
“I don’t think the general public (are) aware of how these things actually play out,” Buckley said.
“The third parties here that are often not considered are the managers of the respective players.
“This is the reason they have managers — to manage their football and professional affairs.
“The communication between the club and the manager is often those conversations actually inform the progress of an outcome, not a decision.
“That was communicated … the concept of exploring a trade for Jaidyn who had a couple of years to run. That concept wad floated through our list management crew.
“Jaidyn was aware in his exit (meeting) that there was a possibility that we would explore that.
“The call that he gave to me was two weeks later in the middle of trade period and he wanted to confirm is this what I was looking for.
“Everyone wants to hear from the senior coach.
“I had to be clear to him then that this is where the football club needs to go. ‘If you’ve got an opportunity to go elsewhere mate, you should take it’.
“He was aware of his situation through his management before that.”
Buckley said he had spoken with Stephenson – who is now at North Melbourne with fellow former Pie Atu Bosenavulagi, who has also spoken with his former coach — and left messages with Treloar and now-Hawk Phillips.
“These things are going to take time,” he said.
“There’s some wounding that’s happened on the personal side, because the reality of the professional, hard edged, brutal aspect of our sport has come into play and got in the way of those relationships … I hope there is something on the other side of it, but there’s two sides to that and that’s up to the other side as well.”
BUCKLEY ON DAMAGE TO THE TEAM FABRIC
“Yes, I do worry about that,” he said.
“Because that’s critical.
“I’ve got no doubt that a lot of our people that wouldn’t be as aware of our situation off-field … we didn’t walk around talking about our bulging salary cap every day when we were going around our last three years.
“It’s a challenge that every club faces.
“We haven’t managed it quite as well as we would have liked.
“The players themselves have made sacrifices. They were aware.
“A lot of our senior players had money that was pushed back to facilitate what we needed to do and to keep within the rules.
“The issue for me is clearly coming back together. I’ve got no doubt that we can do that. This has been a year like no other.
“We felt fractured, and felt like we were off balance.
“That was every club in the competition and we were just doing our best to look after one another and to survive.
“We’ve kept the key people informed as much as we possibly can.
“I’m sure that we would all like this to have played out a little quieter, a little more under the surface, but we’ve ripped the bandaid off, the wounds are raw still, but they will heal and we will move forward from this.”
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