The Pies have gone all in on winning the 2025 flag. But at what cost?

Jeff Browne became president of Collingwood after campaigning on the need for strong leadership at the club.

At the time, Craig McRae had already been appointed coach and Graham Wright was the general manager of football.

Collingwood president Jeff Browne is stepping down.Credit: AFL Photos

Browne will stand down at next month’s annual general meeting after three years with no publicly declared successor and his club unable to sign an experienced general manager of football. In fact, the Pies have not had a permanent head of football for almost a year. They unsuccessfully attempted to lure both Port Adelaide’s Chris Davies and the Brisbane Lions’ Danny Daly in a field where there are few obvious candidates.

Respected financier Barry Carp will doubtless be the next president, with five senior club sources all confirming the plan for him to be president if and when he is re-elected to the board. But, to date, there has been no public comment from Carp or the club about this.

In 2024, the Pies’ men’s team finished outside the finals for just the second time in seven years and a year after winning the flag under McRae’s fresh direction from the 2021 dip. Meanwhile, their AFLW team – a perennial poor performer – finished the season with one win and the wooden spoon. Collingwood also shut down their netball team at the end of the 2023 Super Netball season.

Browne presided over a flag. His presidency thus is unimpeachable. He was non-interventionist in allowing football people to do their jobs when they won the flag in 2023 and he remained true to that this year.

Browne’s key appointment during his tenure has been Craig Kelly as chief executive. As it transpired, Kelly was the primary reason Wright did not return to the club after the former general manager of football resigned but was then persuaded by Browne, Kelly and other board members to instead take a six-month sabbatical.

Browne in particular desperately tried to convince Wright to return to his job late this year but when Wright was adamant that he could not work with Kelly, Browne backed the CEO.

It was a well-intended but wrongheaded decision to effectively leave Wright’s position open for a season. Collingwood might have foreseen the folly of trying to get through a season without a permanent head of football – the AFL tried it before Laura Kane’s appointment. It did not go well.

The problem for Collingwood without Wright was twofold. They not only lost a head of football, they also lost a list manager. In his stead they appointed Justin Leppitsch to manage the playing list, a job the former senior coach and Collingwood assistant had not done before.

The Magpies took the aggressive approach at this year’s trade table to bring in Harry Perryman as a free agent and to trade heavily for Dan Houston. Houston is an excellent player and an understandable target, but Collingwood needed to more searchingly ask not whether Houston would immediately make them better – of course he will – but what was the cost?

Collingwood recruit Dan Houston puts on the black and white stripes after he was traded from Port Adelaide.

The club 12 months ago traded out its first-round pick in this year’s draft for Lachie Schultz, a decision made under Wright that proved unwise. Then this year under Leppitsch they traded out next year’s first-round pick and all other picks they had this year, or could have brought in through the exits of John Noble and Joe Richards, until pick 52.

McRae had said recently that he didn’t want draft picks, he wanted players. He got what he wanted.

By the end of next season Collingwood will have 12 players over 30. Not all of those will retire in 12 months’ time but some or all of Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom, Jeremy Howe, Tom Mitchell, Brodie Mihocek and Mason Cox would be expected to depart.

Last week the club re-signed four players to one-year deals and moved Ash Johnson and Oleg Markov to the rookie list. Other players, such as Finn Macrae, are in the final year of their contracts next year.

Scott Pendlebury and Steele Sidebottom: Collingwood’s only dual premiership players since the 1950s.Credit: AFL Photos

Conceivably, the Magpies could have 10 players or more that they will want or need to exit the club at the end of next season, a year in which they have no first-round draft pick. They have Mick McGuane’s son Tom, a talented onballer, as a father-son candidate potentially requiring an early draft pick – which they don’t currently have. They also have no draft capital should a valuable player such as a Matt Rowell or Zak Butters be available for trade.

The Magpies have precious few young key position players on their list. It has made them even more desperate for 212-centimetre Alex Condon, a former talented junior footballer from WA who is now playing college basketball, to abandon his NBA dreams and return to Australia to sign for the Magpies (whom he has nominated as his preferred club) as a category B rookie.

At the end of the recent trade period, Leppitsch reasoned that next year the AFL would allow clubs to begin trading draft picks two years into the future, so that could give the club flexibility for potentially trading in a first-round pick next year.

A wrinkle with that is that current AFL rules require clubs to use two first-round draft picks in any four-year cycle, and with the Magpies having no first-rounders this year or next that would preclude them from future trading next year. There is talk that the two first-rounders in a four-year cycle rule might change with the extension of future trading, but as yet there has been no change or announcement of a plan to change.

Port Adelaide supporters, commentator Kane Cornes included, felt the Power did not get a strong enough trade return for Houston. It is not an incompatible statement to also say that Collingwood gave up too much for the player. For Collingwood, the price in their circumstances should have been too great, while for Port in their circumstances it was not quite enough for a contending side to lose a player of his ability.

The Magpies have boldly gone “all in” and attacked next season as the chance to jag another flag. It is understandable that when you are in the window you push to squeeze out another, but the window Collingwood are targeting is punishingly tight.

Collingwood might have made the same trading decisions had there been a permanent, experienced football boss in place this year. They might have still said “we can win it, let’s go for it”. But a football manager might also have said “we need to look at the bigger picture”, as Carlton appear to have done by prioritising a first-round pick in this year’s draft ahead of trading in Houston.

True, Carlton have not won a flag in decades and Collingwood are fresh off a premiership victory. That gives the Pies an immediate sense of authority in decision-making, even if some of the decision-makers are different to the ones who built that premiership team.

The Magpies’ premiership victory in 2023 – due to the influence of McRae, the players of course and the assistant coaches as well as canny trading – has justifiably entitled the club to the benefit of any doubt over management decisions in the eyes of their members and the media. But that does not mean there is no doubt at all.

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