Inside the Pies Part III: Messy Adam Treloar debacle was ‘beginning of the end’ for then-Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley
Nathan Buckley’s first time ever meeting Graham Wright was filled with vitriol as he glared and snarled ‘I f***ing’ hate you’ at the now ex-coach of Collingwood.
Adam Treloar was defiant.
Standing in his new Western Bulldogs polo at the Whitten Oval the day after he’d been traded last November, Treloar was asked to confirm if then Magpies coach Nathan Buckley had told him senior players at Collingwood wanted him gone.
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“That was told to me in no uncertain way,” Treloar said.
“That did hurt because I know how close I am with the players and to be told that when I don’t think that’s the truth and to be told that there’s some players who don’t want you there when I know the majority love me and care for me, that did hurt a bit.
“I just don’t think that was the truth. I don’t think that was the reality.”
“They were adamant about moving me on and no matter how they were going to go about it that was going to happen.
“It was a fight up until the end because I wanted to stay at Collingwood.
“I think they were up for a fight to move me on and anything was going to be said to move me on.”
Buckley would later maintain he did not tell Treloar that senior players wanted him out, and said the midfielder may have accidentally misconstrued the message.
Former Collingwood recruiter Matt Rendell – who is also a former Fitzroy captain and St Kilda assistant coach – said he believed Buckley was essentially a dead man walking after that.
“As soon as I saw that, I thought ‘well, that’s the beginning of the end for Bucks,’” Rendell told the Herald Sun this week.
“You can’t survive that. You have to put that in a different way.
“You cannot as a senior coach say, ‘the players want you out’ when he is much loved.”
BEAMS DISASTER
The seeds of Buckley’s downfall were planted a few years earlier, not long after the club’s 2018 grand final loss, when then Brisbane Lions skipper and former Pie Dayne Beams signalled his intent to return to Collingwood.
The Magpies paid a very heavy price, a first-round pick, a third-rounder and a 2019 first round selection, in the hope and belief Beams would push them over the top.
His 2018 season for Brisbane, after all, has been outstanding.
Although, Rendell – who was at Collingwood at the time – claimed the list bosses were told not to touch him.
“This was the poorest of poor list management decisions because they were told by the recruiting team numerous times that there were major issues with Dayne when he was in Queensland and not to go near him,” Rendell said.
“We had information from Queensland that we should not bring him back and they didn’t listen to it, and it sent the club into disarray for years.”
The deal would prove to be a disaster for Collingwood.
Beams played just nine games in black and white before his premature retirement, pocketed an undisclosed settlement included in the salary cap because of an ongoing battle with mental health.
It set in motion the salary cap crunch that culminated in the 2020 fire sale, which saw Treloar become a Bulldog, Jaidyn Stephenson a Kangaroo and Phillips a Hawk.
Now former Magpies list boss Ned Guy’s attempts to explain the decisions by downplaying the extent of the salary cap squeeze, as well as suggesting Treloar’s wife’s move to Queensland to play netball had also been a factor, did little to quell the anger of many Magpie fans.
Many were enraged at the perceived lack of governance that led to trade period fiasco, and particularly the pushing out of Treloar, who loved the club, had a contract until 2025 and didn’t want to leave.
Guy quit Collingwood in May this year. Whether Buckley played a part in the decision making process behind Beams or the fire sale does not matter because, ultimately, it almost always comes back to the coach.
LOSING A KEY ALLY AND A PIES REUNION
The trade debacle happened months before Eddie McGuire’s resignation.
But when the president left, Buckley had lost his greatest ally in a year that his contract was expiring.
Ironically, the man who would ultimately decide Buckley’s future this year was also the person who had savagely berated him the first time he’d laid eyes on him.
Collingwood 1990 premiership wingman Graham Wright joined the Magpies from Hawthorn as its new football boss in January.
But his first encounter with Buckley came in Round 12 at the Gabba in 1993, when everyone appeared to know the then-Brisbane Bears rising star would be at the Magpies the following year.
In his 2008 autobiography ‘All I can be’, Buckley wrote he was shocked by the level of vitriol he copped that day.
“The sledging started before the first bounce with Craig Kelly and Graham Wright the most vocal,” Buckley wrote.
“Wrighty was like a broken record; he kept glaring at me and snarling: ‘I f***ing’ hate you!’
“I’d never faced such a consistent and pointed attack on my character and I didn’t know how to take it.
“Just months earlier, I’d made it public knowledge that I really wanted to play for Collingwood, and here was one of their best players abusing me like I’d never been abused before.”
The pair would end up teammates a year later, and they were said to have enjoyed a good relationship when reunited at the end of 2020.
When Buckley eventually received the tap on the shoulder, he was prepared and never blindsided.
The two men held numerous conversations about it all, often heading out together on long walks around the Tan.
ECHOES OF LUMUMBA
When Buckley turned up for the 2018 pre-season he had a noticeably different approach.
During his break he had gone on journey of self-discovery, spending time at a yoga and meditation retreat in Bali.
In the 2018 documentary ‘Collingwood: From the Inside Out’,’ Buckley said he wanted to change the culture of the club.
“We were a chest-beating club, we were arrogant … and I was a part of that,” Buckley said.
Ironically, it was the club’s past and cultural shortcomings that led to the Do Better report and pushed a broom through the club.
Buckley’s cultural shift was too late.
After McGuire had departed, questions began to arise in Buckley’s press conferences about the experiences of his former teammate Heritier Lumumba, who he had also coached.
Buckley admitted he was “dismissive” and “needed to be better” when presented with Lumumba’s claims of racism within the club.
“In the end we’ve seen Heritier, Leon (Davis) and now Andrew (Krakouer) who have spoken from the heart about their experiences. I have a personal reflection. There was a press conference I gave in 2017 when Heritier’s documentary came out,” Buckley told AFL Media.
“I wasn’t able to separate myself from the personal connection and the potential feeling of not having been able to have done enough in that circumstance to lift myself out of that to see the bigger picture which is that what Heritier’s talking about, what Leon’s talking about, what Andrew has spoken about, is their experience. Where they want to be and what we want the place to be – we’re united in that.
“We don’t want people to ever feel like they’re diminished or vilified or seen as less than in our environment.
“If that is their experience then it needs to be acknowledged and for that I think the club has said it apologises unreservedly and obviously I have been a part of this club for a long time so I don’t like the fact that people have felt that way and I’ve got to – we’ve all got to – listen and learn more to the experiences and acknowledge them rather than dismissing them.”
While Buckley addressed the club’s past on numerous occasion at the start of the 2021, he could not turn around the on-field slide.
As the Magpies dropped further and further away from finals contention and closer to the bottom of the ladder, the football department’s decision to trade away their top 2021 draft pick to Greater Western Sydney became another bone of contention among fans.
By the end of the 12th round with the Magpies sitting 2-10, the club announced they were cutting Buckley loose.
He would be granted one more game in charge and would walk away after the Queen’s Birthday clash against Melbourne – a match the Magpies won by 17 points.
At his resignation press conference Buckley said Collingwood was in good shape to rise up under new leadership after a difficult trade period the year before.
“There has been some decisions which we could have made better in the past, but I think the next best decision is to own those and acknowledge them and then to make the right decision for now,” Buckley said.
“And to try and clean the slate. I think the slate is as clean as it could possibly be now, with a new president, a new football manager, an interim coach and then you will have a senior coach for 2022.”
But the new president – Mark Korda – was already feeling the heat.
His decision not to sit beside Buckley when the Magpies announced they were parting ways drew immediate criticism from outside the club.
Was this the leader that Collingwood wanted or needed going forward?
The emergence of Jeff Browne would suggest that he was not.
THE SLIDING DOORS MOMENT
The 2018 grand final was the sliding doors moment that dramatically changed the course of Australia’s most famous sporting club.
Collingwood led until the last two minutes, when West Coast pushed up the field and the ball landed in the hands of Dom Sheed deep in the pocket.
Magpies defender Brayden Maynard had been illegally blocked out of the marking contest by Eagle Willie Rioli, but the umpire ignored his pleas for a free kick.
Collingwood legend Peter McKenna, who is no stranger to grand final heartbreak, was watching from the Olympic Stands as Sheed kicked truly to add to the Magpies’ long history of misfortune on the game’s biggest day.
The impact of the kick is not at all lost on him.
“Nathan Buckley was a kick away from being a premiership coach, and had we won that he’d still be coaching,” McKenna said.
“That’s the amazing thing about it. You’re beaten by a kick and that great mark taken by Jeremy McGovern, then marked in the centre and then in the forward pocket with an amazing kick from the boundary line (by Sheed).
“It didn’t veer of course, and even though he’s a left footer if you had 10 shots from there you’d kick one.
“He’s very unlucky to not still be coaching the club.”
When Sheed kicked truly, Magpies legend and 1990 premiership captain Tony Shaw was standing at the MCG race in preparation for the post-game podium presentations.
He’d been appointed the man to present Buckley, who was a young teammate in Shaw’s final season as captain in 1994, and skipper Scott Pendlebury with the premiership cup had the Magpies prevailed.
Up until the last 90 seconds, it appeared Shaw would get the opportunity.
“No doubt whatsoever that Nathan Buckley would still be there (had Collingwood won),” Shaw said.
“And I don’t know if Eddie would have still been there.
“He might have thought two (premierships) was enough and you move on, but I know Bucks definitely would still be there.”
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