Magpies coach Nathan Buckley to exit Collingwood after 10-year stint in charge

Nathan Buckley led the Magpies to the 2018 grand final but has decided to end his 10-year stint as coach of the club.

Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley, centre, announces his tenure at the club is over

Nathan Buckley, a towering figure in Collingwood’s history, will coach his final game for the Magpies in Sydney on Monday, ending a 26-year association with Australia’s most famous club.

After weeks of discussions with Collingwood’s new football manager Graham Wright, it was agreed on Monday that Buckley’s reign of nearly 10 years as senior coach would end.

“I have had a fair crack at it and everyone has their time, every person and every relationship, and mine has come,” he said.

“I really do feel like I have had the better end of the bargain. It has definitely shaped the person I am and now I will go into the blue skies of whatever the rest of my life looks like.

“I will always be, as a Collingwood supporter, looking from outside in, wishing the club its best and that it is prospering at every opportunity. That is where it will sit on Monday.”

While Buckley has been under pressure, with the Magpies winning just three of their opening 11 games in 2021 including a victory over Adelaide on Saturday, the timing of the decision came as a surprise.

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The Magpies coach addressed players on Wednesday morning prior to a press conference lasting nearly an hour in which he was flanked by Wright and the club’s chief executive Mark Anderson.

After the Queen’s Birthday clash against Melbourne, which has been relocated to Sydney due to the Covid-19 outbreak in Victoria, Collingwood will begin the search for their third senior coach this century.

Board members Peter Murphy and Paul Licuria, a former teammate of Buckley, as well Wright, Anderson and a fifth person, who is yet to be decided, will form the panel tasked with replacing Buckley.

Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury said he was shocked when he learned of the departure of his coach, who succeeded Mick Malthouse in 2012.

“You come in to train today and that happened, so it’s definitely a shock,” he said.

“It’s the first time ever in my career that I’ve been through something like this. I feel almost a little bit numb.

“He just spoke about how he thinks it is the best thing for the club and no person is bigger than the club and he thinks it is the right time for him to step away.”

As a player, Buckley captained Collingwood to successive grand finals in 2002, when he won the Norm Smith Medal, and 2003 against the mighty Brisbane Lions.

He was an assistant coach to Mick Malthouse in the club’s 2010 premiership and assumed the senior coaching role as part of a contentious succession plan in 2012, a year the Magpies reached a preliminary final.

“Bar a kick here or there, I would not change much,” he said.

Two kicks, in particular, stand out and neither was from Buckley, whose own kicking was exceptional.

Eagle Dom Sheed wove the matchwinner from a difficult angle in the 2018 grand final.

The other was from teammate Anthony Rocca in the 2002 grand final, with the forward certain a disallowed goal that would have given the Magpies the lead went through “by two feet”.

As a player, Buckley felt shattered not to win a premiership. But he does not feel “unfulfilled” now, despite the near misses.

The 48-year-old, who said he was looking forward to spending more time with his teenager sons Jett and Ayce, took the Magpies to within one kick of a premiership in 2018 when they were beaten by West Coast.

But the Magpies slipped from second to fourth to sixth in subsequent seasons before this year’s decline and are clearly in a rebuilding phase.

Buckley said he felt he could not categorically say he would “be here for another five years” and “fresh eyes” were needed to oversee the program.

Dual-Brownlow Medallist Robert Harvey, who has been an assistant to Buckley since 2012, will serve as the caretaker coach for the remainder of the season.

Collingwood will form a committee to select a new coach after the clash with the top-placed Demons on Monday.

“I have had a part in the conversations. Nothing lasts forever. I was going to be tapped at some stage. There is no doubt this is the best thing for the football club,” Buckley said.

“We are in a period of regeneration as a football club. I think we can refresh really quickly. I think it can happen quite quickly.”

Buckley coached Collingwood to 116 wins in 217 games and represented the Magpies in 260 games after arriving from Brisbane, where he played 20 games, in 1994.

He will take time to consider what lies next, but he did not rule out coaching again in the future.

He spent two seasons working as a television analyst at the end of his playing career and will be highly sought after by AFL broadcasters given his profile and communication skills.

His exit continues a tumultuous time for the Magpies, who have now lost four key pillars since they were thrashed by Geelong in a semi-final last year.

This was the match Buckley identified as crucial to the decision to invest in a period of regeneration.

Veteran football operations boss Geoff Walsh departed and was replaced by Wright, a former Magpie who played a key role in Hawthorn’s success last decade.

Eddie McGuire’s 23-year reign as president ended in February after the release of the Do Better report which found evidence of systemic racism at Collingwood.

Buckley, who was criticised by former Magpie Heritier Lumumba, acknowledged earlier this season there were matters Collingwood could have handled differently.

List manager Ned Guy has also departed after a controversial trade period last October in which three Magpies were offloaded to deal with a salary cap issue.

Former Magpies star Dane Swan did not always see eye-to-eye with Buckley but said his fellow Brownlow Medallist always placed the Magpies first.

“(He is the) biggest name in the history of the club and the one thing he always did was put the best interests of the club first (whether we agreed or not),” he said.

Having announced his resignation, Buckley turned his mind back to football immediately, noting the Magpies faced a mighty challenge in his final game as coach against Melbourne.

“It will be a bloody tough game. They are playing some good footy,” he said.