Collingwood great Tony Shaw reveals the leadership lessons which turned Nathan Buckley into a great captain

Tony Shaw made Nathan Buckley Collingwood captain, but one aspect of the Magpie champ’s leadership style drove him crazy for a season.

Glenn McFarlane and Jon Ralph

2 min read

September 4, 2019 - 1:55PM

An injured Nathan Buckley walks with Tony Shaw during his last season as Collingwood coach.

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Tony Shaw says he repeatedly dragged new captain Nathan Buckley off the ground for poor body language in his first season as skipper in an effort to make him a better leader.

Shaw, who appointed Buckley captain in his final season as coach in 1999, said the star Magpie was too critical of his teammates and needed to take stock of his body language for the sake of the side.

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Buckley has turned into one of the AFL’s finest coaches but admits he was too driven early in his career and had to eventually mellow.

“People don’t understand Nathan … he wanted to win,” Shaw told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast.

“People put it on him and there was the old FIGJAM joke.

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“What he had to learn is people aren’t as good as Nathan Buckley and he might not agree, but I remember.

“You ask the runner or anyone at Collingwood.

“How many times I got him off the field because he berated his teammates by body language? I hate that on a footy field.

Nathan Buckley’s early beginnings as a leader were realised under Tony Shaw.

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“I was hard on blokes, but with a verbal real quick (retort). You never show it. You can still be strong, but you do it behind closed doors.”
Shaw said he would take Buckley off to speak directly with him on the phone, saying: “Do you know what you did wrong? I have told you it’s not what we want, we don’t want to see it’.

“And (he would) go straight back on.
“I reckon I would have done that four or five times in a year and it just takes time because he wants to win.
“He is a great professional and the drive overtook him sometimes about what could make you a very good leader, and he turned into a great leader.”

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Buckley captained the Magpies for a number of games in 1998 during then-captain Gavin Brown’s injury absence, but took over permanently.

He would go on to become Collingwood’s captaincy games record holder with 161 matches from 1998 to his retirement in 2007.
Shaw said of Buckley: “He would verbalise and it was pretty ordinary. But he learnt.”
“You had Gavin Brown who wouldn’t do that. He set an example and so did Nathan but they were different captains.”

Nathan Buckley became the leader teammates looked up to.

Shaw said his decision to elevate Buckley to the captaincy 20 years ago at the expense of Brown was tough but necessary.
“I think I taught him to be a good leader and one of the hardest days of my life was to tell Gavin Brown he wasn’t going to be captain and Nathan that he was.
“Because Gavin was coming to the end of his career and how that was accepted, it was part of history.”