I was appointed coach Collingwood at the end of 1999, but the club I arrived at was the Nathan Buckley Football Club.

It did not sit well with him that as an individual he was elevated above the club. It wasn’t fair on him, or the Magpie supporters. But that can happen when a sporting club has been unsuccessful for many years. The Pies had finished 16th that season.

Nathan was highly professional and it was my job to support his professionalism.

To diffuse the white noise, we had two jobs: win games and share the workload on the ground.

As captain he had an enormous amount of work to do, which he readily accepted. When he and the team realised that not every touch of the ball had to go through him, we began to succeed as a collective.

His time came in 2003 when he won the Brownlow Medal and there was an outpouring of joy and pride for him from the club, his teammates, and Collingwood supporters.

Stream selected Fox Footy shows on Kayo Freebies completely free this June including AFL 360, On The Couch, Bounce & more. No Credit Card. No-brainer. Register Free Now >

But it was the 2002 Grand Final that gave me greater insight into Nathan Buckley, when he won the Norm Smith in a narrow loss to one of the best teams I’ve ever seen.

It was a master performance by him. But he would have given up that medal for the premiership cup without hesitation.

As good as he was as a player, and he was the top of the top echelon, I feel that people underestimated how tough he was. I distinctly remember a game early on when Nathan came to me in the break to indicate that his jaw was broken. No fanfare, no heroics. And he was back playing within weeks.

His playing career was unfortunately cut short by persistent hamstring problems. Even as I indicated that he should retire, he understandably fought the decision to the end, which is totally understandable. And totally Nathan Buckley. But I did not want to see a great player relegated to the seconds and that become his legacy after all that he’d achieved.

Nathan the player was admired by some, feared by many, and resented by others. I thoroughly enjoyed our coach-captain relationship. It was challenging, but rewarding.

As a coach it’s always a difficult balancing act.

Nathan’s next phase was as assistant coach. He was one of four assistants at the club, which drew criticism from some for no good reason. I gave him the favoured role of opposition strategist, which meant he had full dialogue with every player leading into the last training session each week. This gave him a broader view of the game, rather than narrowing his focus on one divisional line.

Through this process I could see that he had a good knowledge of the game, and a good feel for strategies, but he still needed to understand that each line had to be co-ordinated and interlocked. He developed this sense over his two years as an assistant.

There were moments pre-game in 2011, as I ran through warm-up rituals with certain players, that I wondered what Nathan was thinking as he leant against the wall and watched on. Would he have the same rituals, the same players, would he persist with the same processes? And I’m sure he was questioning himself – how would he change or develop that connection with the player group?

As I pointed out to him before I left, every player expects different things from the senior coach, but fundamentally they all want to be recognised and treated as an individual.

I’m not privy to how a lot of these players responded to Nathan coming in, but it became clear from the outside that he wanted his own team and his own culture.

Leon Davis, Alan Didak, Ben Johnson, and Darren Jolly were retired prematurely. Heath Shaw, Dale Thomas, Chris Dawes, Heritier Lumumba, Travis Cloke and Sharrod Wellingham were all traded out. And some wonderful volunteers were no longer required.

No one can begrudge a new coach wanting to stamp his own style on the place. To have input into selection and game style and who stays and who goes at the football club. New methods, new people.

There’s no doubt his greatest moment in coaching would have been the 2018 Grand Final. It was a herculean performance to get there and it took a herculean performance from the West Coast Eagles to snatch it from Collingwood.

History has not been kind to the Magpies in Grand Finals. It feels like a curse.

Nathan Buckley is one of the most highly decorated players and icons in Collingwood’s history and he should be recognised as such. He put enormous pressure on himself as a player, and I imagine he did the same as coach.

The question is, will he coach again? I have a feeling that he won’t. There’s no doubt he will get into the media at some stage and have an opinion. He’ll still be his own man.

Coaching is great when you’re winning, but it is enormously tough when you have to keep getting teams up. He has been through both ups and downs, but like all coaches – you don’t get to choose when you finish.

There was a time in 2017 when Collingwood was really struggling and I called Nathan to offer support to him and his family, but he chose not to take my calls and that is his prerogative.

I will remember the great times we had as player and coach and I wish him all the best for the future.