Nathan Buckley

[deano_66]

Anybody read the article below. I have posted the link a good look at the love Bucke has for the club and hopefully all works out well at the end




http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport...l/news-story/e5a747b3e0ccfe7a9cb1d8a7a19d434b

 

[THATSGOLD]

Can't access the link. It would want to be good to be another Nathan Buckley thread.

 

[Anzacday]

Here it is - Part 1...

NATHAN Buckley’s story is one of a ruthless quest for perfection and team success, and of continual evolution, firstly as a player and now as a senior coach. One of the most consistent players of his era, Buckley, who played 280 games with Brisbane (20 games) and Collingwood (260 games), won six best and fairest awards at Collingwood (1994, 1996, 1998-2000 and 2003), a Brownlow Medal (2003) and a Norm Smith Medal (2002), and was named All-Australian on seven occasions (1996-2001 and 2003).

Part of a controversial coaching handover with Mick Malthouse at the end of 2011, Buckley is now revelling in building a team of champions, on and off the field.

In this exclusive extract, Nathan Buckley talks to Dan Eddy about his time as an AFL player and coach in Champions: Conversations with Great Players and Coaches of Australian Football (Slattery Media Group).

I’m no shrinking violet. It goes back to my nomadic childhood. We moved around a lot with Dad’s job and his footy coaching jobs. At various times, we lived in Darwin, Canberra, Mount Gambier, Woodville, and Brisbane — and I went to 13 schools by the time I was 13. I soon learned to adjust to new schoolmates and situations. That helped my footy because I don’t think you can afford to keep your mouth shut and fly under the radar in a footy club environment. You need to ask questions rather than wait for help.

In some ways, you need to be in people’s faces to constantly learn and improve. People can say what they like about my approach, but it certainly enabled me to cram in a whole lot more learning than if I had taken a more low-key approach.

I saw footy as a way to fit in. As a kid, I was never in the in-crowd. But very early on, I identified footy as a vehicle to perhaps become a bit more popular among my peers because it was a respected sport. I put a lot of effort into it and it gave me a lot of

self-worth during those formative years. If I felt I had failed on the footy field, I thought it was a reflection of my qualities as a person, or my status at school or among my circle of friends. One of the first instances of that was when I was overlooked for selection in the NT primary schools’ side. I was angry and felt hard done by, and I copped a lot of flak for whinging about it too. They say I cried — I’m not sure that’s true — but I was upset.

I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed — probably too much. But it helped form my tunnel vision and drive to succeed as a teenager. Without it, I wouldn’t have achieved as much.

I struggled for distance in my kicking because I was a small kid. I started kicking around my body to bring my glutes and hip flexor into my kicking action to help my quaddie and, as I became stronger in my legs, I stuck with the same technique because I was comfortable with it.

I was an undersized teenager who only wanted to receive a handball and hit the full-forward on the chest. I was a receiver. I only enjoyed the skilful side of the game. I avoided packs and didn’t want to get involved in physicality because I was built like a stick and I was worried about getting hurt. I started turning away from footy because it was too tough. I started playing tennis instead. Dad was very hard on me during that period and, without his insistence, I might have quit footy.

I played three years of non-stop footy. After finishing high school (1989), I played in Darwin over Christmas (the NTFL season spans October to March), then with Port Adelaide in 1990, and continued to play alternate seasons until the end of 1992. I was footy-fit all year round, which gave me an edge over other players my age.

Dad wanted me to further my footy at Port Adelaide (SANFL). During his playing career at Woodville, he admired Port Adelaide as a strong club with a culture of success, good role models and, importantly, an emphasis on developing young players. Dad wrote to the club and they agreed to let me train with them. I’m certain his choice of club was crucial in my pursuit of an AFL career.

Port Adelaide could easily have given me the axe. In my first year (1990), I played mostly off the pine in the under-19s and struggled, and they must have been close to giving up on me in ’91. I reckon I had osteitis pubis, but I was told I had a groin problem and that I’d be OK to run through it. I stopped training for a while and I’m sure they thought I was dogging it. It might have been a case of them saying: “If he doesn’t show something in his first couple of games, he’s out”. In my first game back, I was best-on-ground in the under-19s, and then they put me in the reserves and I kicked 5.5 from a forward pocket. I was promoted to the seniors for the last seven games and didn’t look back. It goes to show you need a bit of luck to play AFL footy. There would be a lot of great players over the years who mightn’t have had that luck and missed out. But ultimately, if you persevere, you’ll get your break; then it’s a matter of grabbing your opportunity.

Always strive to widen your comfort zone. In other words, if you’re prepared to do a little bit extra, you’ll be better able to cope with the next step up in strength, speed or endurance because you’ve pushed yourself beyond the level you’re at. You have to keep pushing and testing yourself if you want to keep improving. Once you have that mindset, you see things as a challenge, and an opportunity to improve, rather than a chore. The penny dropped for me when I was playing off the pine in Port’s under-19s. I was living at my Nan’s, and I started doing weights out the back of her house. I did bicep curls, shoulder-presses, push-ups, sit-ups, etc. for about half-an-hour a night. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it made me stronger. I wrote down everything I did in a journal, and I’d do 10 more the next week. I’d go from 100 push-ups to 110, 120, 130 — a gradual build-up that fast-tracked my strength work. I competed against myself.

You could have all the football ability in the world and still not play in the AFL. I reckon 25 to 30 per cent of the game is talent; the rest is work ethic and maintaining competitiveness. James Hird, Michael Voss and Robert Harvey have been the hardest workers in the game over the past 15 years. For each of them, there would be 20 other blokes their age around the country who were just as talented, but maybe they weren’t prepared to put in the hard yards, or perhaps they just didn’t get the breaks.

I was purely an offensive player at Port Adelaide in 1992. It was all one-way traffic. I was tagged, which was actually a luxury because I didn’t really have to work defensively. We also had some solid midfielders who covered for me anyway. If someone other than John Cahill had been coach, I might have had the acid put on me earlier and it might have stung my confidence. Jack was perfect for me at the time. (In 1992, Buckley won Port’s best and fairest, the Magarey Medal, and the Jack Oatey Medal as best-afield in the SANFL Grand Final.)

I seriously considered not going to Brisbane and staying with Port Adelaide for another year. I hadn’t made it to Collingwood, my club of choice, and I was undecided. But I thought: ‘Why wouldn’t you play AFL footy while you’ve got the opportunity?’ When I arrived in Brisbane, I immediately shut off all the stuff that had happened in the lead-up. In the six months I was there, I was committed to playing my best footy for Brisbane.

Tagging was football for me. Apart from when I was given a designated role, there were only been a handful of games in my career where I wasn’t tagged. I was tagged in my first three AFL games. I had Anthony Stevens (North Melbourne) in my first game, (Richmond’s) Tony Free and then (Melbourne’s) Todd Viney. Early in my career, the actual tagging didn’t bother me; it was more about adjusting to the speed of the game and finding space. I found that if you focus solely on the ball, your tagger doesn’t exist. If you allow yourself to be sucked into a wrestling match, you’re doing his job for him. But if your first focus is the ball, and his first focus is you, you’ll get to the ball before him. It can be difficult at times when someone is constantly in your face, but after a couple of years of maintaining your composure and discipline, they realise it’s just a waste of time.

(Brisbane coach) Robert Walls challenged me about my lack of tackling and defensive pressure early in my first AFL season (1993). In front of the player group, ‘Wallsy’ pulled out stats from the previous four weeks and said that I’d only laid four tackles in that time — an average of one a game. He said it wasn’t good enough if you had less than four a game — one a quarter. He then pulled me aside and said: “You’re not doing enough to put pressure on the opposition. I understand that you’re being tagged, but you can’t play all one way (offensive)”. The Bears didn’t have the defensive midfielders that Port had to cover those shortcomings in my game and I learned quickly that AFL players were more rounded, the game was a lot quicker and you can get exposed more defensively. I was challenged to improve and I’ve always thrived on a challenge and was ready to do whatever I had to do to rectify it.

If I didn’t make that transition, I wouldn’t be playing now.

People who branded me a mercenary for leaving Brisbane were ill-informed and shortsighted. I gave my all for Brisbane in ’93, and when the season was over I was still pretty keen to get to Melbourne — the Mecca of football — and the opportunity existed to go to Collingwood, which was still my first choice. The true test of my loyalty came in my third season at Collingwood (1996), when I was 24, and Port Adelaide was recruiting players for its first season in the AFL. I’ve never forgotten the opportunity Port gave me, but I wanted to stay at Collingwood because I felt a strong sense of loyalty to the people I’d been involved with. It’s about loyalty to people, rather than loyalty to a club or organisation.

Learn how to turn positive or negative expectation into a motivating factor.Particularly when I was younger, if someone wrote positively about me, I’d do my utmost to prove them right. If someone wrote unfavourably about me, I’d think: ‘How can I prove this person wrong?’ If you’re honest about your footy, nothing anyone says can knock your confidence around because you already know everything anyone can label you with. The most successful players I’ve seen are the ones whose expectations of themselves are even higher than those others have of them. That buffers any public opinion from people who know less about your situation than you do.

Consistency is a product of work ethic. The most consistent players are the ones who, after they’ve had a few great games in a row,

don’t drop off in their training or run around like bigheads. They’re looking for the next opportunity to gain an edge.

I was a better runner in a game than at training. It’s the adrenaline and the love of the game — I just wanted to get the ball. It’s that competitive edge to get the best out of yourself, which the best players have. When (St Kilda champion) Robert Harvey hunches over, you think: ‘He’s gone’, but then he wins a sprint to the ball. I prided myself on that, too.

If you can’t take the ball cleanly at ground level, at pace, you’re not going to play AFL footy. I religiously did ground level work every training session. You can get the coach to rifle the ball at your feet from different directions and speeds, from three to five metres away, and attack it as hard as you can. If you work on the hardest possible scenario in training, you can cope with any instance on match-day.If you take shortcuts, you’ll be exposed. You might get away with certain things for a couple of weeks, a month, maybe even a season, but it catches up with you. If you don’t make the sacrifices and consistently take care of the little things, you’ll let yourself and your team down.

Coaches often tried to change my kicking technique. They tried to get me to run straight at the target. Even when I had a set shot at goal, I would veer slightly to the right in my last couple of steps — it’s just my natural kicking style. I don’t necessarily believe in a perfect technique, just basic fundamentals. You need to be comfortable with your own style and that only comes from practice. Early in my career, I often kicked the ball too hard and flat, but I came to realise there’s less margin for error in that type of kick, and it’s harder to receive.

I should have kicked more goals. I kicked roughly the same number of goals as points (284.262) and missed more shots than I should have. Having said that, I had a lot of lower-percentage shots from 50-55 metres, on the run and under pressure.

But I averaged a goal a game, which is a reasonable result for a midfielder. I always aimed to kick at least 20 goals a season because it adds another dimension to the team if midfielders contribute on the scoreboard.

When I became Collingwood captain (in 1999), I demanded the best from myself and others — and it backfired. Early on, I thought: ‘Everyone needs to work as hard as I do. If it’s good enough for me, it should be good enough for everyone’. That approach worked for me personally because I’d lived it my whole life, but placing those demands on everyone else and expecting them to adopt it all within a month or two was unrealistic. It stemmed from honourable intentions: wanting the group, and all the individuals within the group, to play to their potential. But I developed more empathy for my teammates and I came to understand everyone has their own way of doing things. Instead of trying to drive the group with my motivations, I tried to find out what theirs were.

Leadership is about making things easier for people by showing them the right way, but I know at times I’ve made it harder for teammates to make the right decisions. But I think I eventually created an environment where it was easier for them to make the right decision. If you see something you think they can improve on, you’ve got to let them know about it, but you need to work out the right way to approach them to get the desired response. The criticism levelled at me about my on-field leadership — from people outside the club — revolved around a perceived selfishness on my behalf because I didn’t get the ball passed to me or whatever. But that was more related to disciplines, team rules and expectations the coach was trying to enforce. Part of my job was to ensure the coach’s demands were met and occasionally that meant having a word to a teammate, and you can’t always take a bloke aside in the heat of battle. If you’re not willing to play the way the coach wants for four quarters of a match, you’re going to break down as a unit.

If you want to contribute to something bigger than yourself, you must have genuine care for people and how they’re travelling physically and emotionally. You need to set aside any personal troubles you might be experiencing and see what troubles other people are having. Football clubs are made up of different types of people with different attributes and motivations and you need to find what makes each individual tick. You can only do that if you get to know your teammates as people.

If you’re honest with yourself, you can be honest with others. Honesty is the key ingredient that underpins any plan to get the best out of ourselves. If you’re honest, you’ll make the right decisions, the right sacrifices, and you’ll be in a better position to judge where you sit in relation to your ability, your team and the competition. In my experience, the difference between playing in a team environment that has been fairly successful and one that hasn’t has been the honesty factor. It’s such an important quality in the game.

The ‘FIGJAM’ (‘F___ I’m Good, Just Ask Me’) perception is an easy out for people who either don’t understand, don’t like Collingwood or don’t like me. It still pops up from time to time, but honestly, it does not register with me. I think you need to be confident and believe in yourself.

How that manifests itself is different for different people. Some of my outward confidence was probably as much a facade to try to convince people I was on top of things when I was actually still trying to work them out. During my time in the game, I developed a lot, both as a person and as a footballer. Without footy in my life, I wonder how I would have developed. Despite the beating footy sometimes takes in the press, I couldn’t be more positive about the game, and the opportunities it’s given me, and the personal growth it has enabled me to undertake simply by being involved in the footy environment.

I regret wiping blood on Cameron Ling’s jumper (in round 15, 2002). I was far too calculated in too short a time. It was a deliberate act; it wasn’t an accident. I was very angry, but I was thinking clearly. In that split-second, I had time to work out: ‘I’m bleeding because of him (Ling). If I’m going off the ground due to the blood rule, so is he’. I had no intention of wiping blood on ‘Lingy’s’ body. I knew he’d have to go off if I got it on his jumper, so you could say I took advantage of the blood rule. You can’t condone that behaviour.

There are no redeeming features about it. I’m not proud of my actions that day. There are times when you are at risk of being overtaken by emotions that aren’t constructive, and that was one of them. The ability to control those emotions is what they call discipline. What I did, however, was undisciplined. I cost myself and the team — I was suspended for a week — and because of the huge uproar, it gave more ammunition to the Collingwood-haters and haters of me. It wasn’t a great thing for youngsters to witness, either. It’s amazing how quickly things change in football. (In round three, 1997, teammate) Scotty Burns collected (St Kilda’s) Stewie Loewe in the nose with a shepherd — which he got two weeks for — and Loewe wiped his blood all over ‘Burnsy’s’ face on his way off as a type of retribution, yet no action was taken and no one remembers it. The modern stance is for the better though.

The fear of failure was always there. In the early 2000s, it was a huge motivator for me. I held a real fear of not capitalising on the opportunities that were being presented to me. That drove a lot of my work ethic. In many ways, it was probably unhealthy.

You’d rather be motivated by a positive than a negative but, at the same time, it formed a crucial part of my make-up, particularly in my younger days. I was very conscious of not letting myself down, and I never forgot that people rely on you to do well — teammates, family, friends — so then it becomes a fear of failure not only for yourself but for the people who are close to you.

‘The zone’ is a crystal-clear state of mind where you know you can do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. You think totally about the game itself, and nothing — nothing — can shake your focus. Things happen instinctively. You run to a position and the ball just comes to you, partly because you’ve read it well, partly due to luck. You get a couple of those touches in between your other good pieces of play that you do have control over. You know you’re in control of the contest. My best personal experience of it was when we beat Brisbane by three points at Telstra Dome in 2002 (when Buckley had 31 disposals and kicked two goals). My first three quarters that night were the best I’ve played. It seemed like I got the ball every time I went near it. But you can’t reach that elevated mental state without the right preparation. Confidence is a byproduct of hard work.

If you’re not moving forward, you’re going backwards. As soon as you think you know it all, you’re dead in the water. There is always someone else working to go past you. But if you love your footy, the thing that naturally follows, and flows out of you, is effort. And that’s regardless of the quality of your opponent, or if you are five goals up or down.

You become a more rounded player when you play in a more rounded team.(Coach) Mick Malthouse set up a structure whereby there was less focus on me and more on getting an even contribution throughout the group. I welcomed that because my focus as a leader was always: ‘How can I help my teammates be better?’ Coaches can ride you but, ultimately, the individual must decide to do the work. The individual needs to decide to listen to what’s being said to him and work out how much he’s going to take on board. A lot of things can only be learned through experience, so if you stuff up, you’ve got coaches around you saying: “That wasn’t the right way to go about it; this is the right way to do it”. That’s what coaches are there for — they are the one-stop shop to help you improve.

Footy is about winning premierships. In many ways, it’s a cop-out to say it’s more about the journey than the destination. I think I said that (after the 2003 Grand Final loss to Brisbane) as much as a coping mechanism as anything else. It’s actually a lot about the journey but, ultimately, it’s about premierships. That’s what clubs exists for. So when you get a couple of opportunities and don’t take advantage of them, it knocks you around. The simple fact is we were beaten by Brisbane, who were the better side on both occasions. In 2002, we came close and most supporters were fairly proud of our efforts. That was in stark contrast to the result in 2003 when the Lions were at their best and we performed well below our best and were humiliated. But you can’t afford to dwell on it. You’ve got to learn from the past and set goals for the future, but live in the present. That means working hard and focusing on the next challenge, which is making another Grand Final.

Your reaction to losing is important. You’re always taught to be a good sport and a good loser and appreciate that you can’t win every time. When I talk to kids, I tell them: “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, as long as you do your best”. But I don’t mind seeing a kid who’s disappointed when he loses because you know somewhere deep down inside him lies a hunger to win. I liked seeing that in my teammates. The players who hurt the most when things don’t go well are generally the ones who work hardest to ensure it doesn’t happen next time. They’re the teammates I loved playing alongside. With attitudes like that, they’re going to be winners one day; or they’ll do everything in their power to be successful.

I’m often asked: “Do you regret the decision you made to leave Brisbane?” I’m sure there are people who made decisions 15 years ago that have affected their lives profoundly, but they wouldn’t have a clue what the alternatives were. The difference in my case is everyone knows what the alternative was. But if I stayed in Brisbane, maybe Alastair Lynch wouldn’t have got there. In exchange for me, Brisbane got (1990 premiership player) Craig Starcevich and Troy Lehmann from Collingwood, (No. 12 draft selection) Chris Scott, and room in the salary cap to get Lynch. Lynch and Scott became premiership players, and Starcevich later became their strength and conditioning coach.

No one could rightfully say what the outcome would have been if I’d stayed. It’s pointless speculating on ifs and buts.

All the talk about players like myself deserving a premiership before they retire is rubbish. No one deserves a premiership. Players earn it. And they don’t earn it over a career; they earn it for the efforts and sacrifices they’ve made leading up to, and including, that one premiership season.

There shouldn’t be any stigma attached to being a receiver, or getting on the end of it, because it’s a legitimate and essential role within a team. They should actually be called finishers because that’s what their best asset is. Mark Ricciuto was in the top five for handball receives about five years in a row, but no one would call him a receiver. You’re a product of your environment. Depending on the relative strengths and weaknesses of your side, you might be used as a handball-receive, run-the-lines, finishing-type player, but if there is a dearth of in-and-under types, as happened at Collingwood along the way, you might be asked to fill that void. But whatever role you’re required to play, if you work on it and keep improving and refining, you can change your game. It takes time, but it really only takes mental application and effort to do it.

Your role can also depend on where you are in your development. You can’t expect a raw-boned, 18-year-old kid to throw himself into packs like Michael Voss, although it happens occasionally — (former Collingwood captain) Gavin Brown would have done that from the start. It’s not as if I didn’t go into a pack when I started — if you don’t do that, you don’t play AFL footy, full-stop. You need to be able to win your own ball. It’s just a matter of getting the right mix of inside and outside possessions.

Choose a position where you think you can play senior footy and prepare yourself accordingly.

If a young player nominated the half-back flank, for example, I’d tell him: “You need to do all these things better than the blokes who are already playing there: run the lines, spoil, be good in the air, crumb, play on a tall or a small, be strong at clearances because you’ll play on midfielders, be clean with your hands and dispose of the ball well. Tick off all of those boxes, and then you’re a chance”. It gives blokes something to work towards. In today’s footy where players are thrown around a lot more and are expected to be versatile, sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint that goal, but it’s hard to work towards something if you don’t know what it is.

As a leader, I felt I’d failed on some level when a teammate was delisted. You can’t help but feel partially responsible because you wonder whether you could have set a better example or done more to help them take advantage of their opportunity. But sometimes the penny just doesn’t drop and they don’t apply themselves like they should. They might have only needed to sacrifice five per cent in four or five different areas of their life. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. There are other players who commit everything of themselves but don’t have the ability of others. They leave the club with the full respect of their peers and they’re the ones you feel for most.

A concern I have with footy today is a lot of initiative and self-analysis is taken out of players’ hands.

There are set training programs for each player. You can’t just identify a problem and do an extra session. Late in my career, if I wanted to increase my workrate by going for an extra 3km run, I’d have to get it signed off by four people! Even the number of kicks you have at training is controlled. They don’t want the balls coming out at training until a certain time; they don’t want players kicking too much, or staying out on the track too long. It’s heavily monitored, and quite robotic. It’s a far cry from when I started, when training was less scientific and more shotgun theory.

Modify your game and your body to stay in touch with the game.

If the game is predominantly being played in close, you need strength over the ball; but if there’s a lot of contested marks and crumbing, you need to be a good marking player. I was always a heavier, bulkier midfielder — the heaviest weight I played at was 95kg. I was never an elite runner, but I always had enough endurance and speed off the mark to cover the ground with that weight. You can get too heavy or too light. You’ve got to know what weight range is healthy for you, and feel comfortable in your skin. As long as you have continuity in your work rate at training, you get used to carrying whatever weight you have. After the 2000 season, I thought: ‘If I want longevity, I need to be lighter. I’m putting myself through a lot of stress carrying 95kg; if I carry 90kg I’ll be better off’. When I focused on something, I became obsessive about it. I went to the extreme in the off-season with a super-strict diet and training program and dropped to 81kg. I was running my best times in pre-season but I had no strength. I compromised too much of my clearance ability. It took a year to get that strength back, and I played at 91-92kg thereafter. You can do different types of strength work to maintain your strength anywhere between 88kg and 95kg. There’s always a solution; you just have to look hard enough to find it.

You need to reinvent yourself every two or three years if you want a long career in the AFL. The game moves so quickly that if you don’t evolve, you risk the game passing you by. When the game changes, you need to change with it. I had to evolve as a player, partly because of different roles I played within the team, but mostly because of my opponents and how I planned to take advantage of their weaknesses, or the opportunities they gave me, and buffer their strengths. If one of your favourite tricks is to push your opponent under the ball at a stoppage and get the clearance when the ball comes over the top and, all of a sudden, the opposition wises up to it and starts playing a bloke behind you, you need to work out a way of countering that. I think a real sign of a consistently productive AFL player is the ability to adapt to anything the opposition throws at him to try to stop him from doing what he usually does.

 

[Anzacday]

Part 2...


Becoming a coach

Interviewed in 2015, Nathan Buckley spoke to Dan Eddy about his transition into coaching. Having handled himself with aplomb, despite heavy scrutiny surrounding the coaching transition with Mick Malthouse at the end of 2011, Buckley has left no stone unturned in his endeavour to lead his beloved Magpies to their 16th premiership. One of the game’s most insightful speakers, Buckley reveals how he places high importance on building strong relationships with his players and fellow coaches, believing in trust as a key platform to sustained success.


It was assumed that I would want to coach when I finished playing. But I took a couple of years out of playing to work out whether I had a passion to coach in the same way that I’d had a passion to play. That required some soul-searching and throwing myself into a few situations to see whether it was right for me.


For the first half of my career it was just about me. But in the second half I realised how much more enjoyable it was to focus on others, and my leadership grew and my enjoyment grew. I needed to find out whether I had the capacity to not get my hands dirty — in a football sense — and instead to just direct and coach and support, and whether I was going to gain enough satisfaction out of that to be able to exist in the role while building a skill set to do it justice.


As a player I was always aware and observant of what was going on. I recognised what I thought was strong, what we could improve on, and who the influences were and why, and so I believe that I was thinking like a coach all along. I was absorbing it but I wasn’t actually projecting myself too far forward. I was only ever using that information for what was going to help the club and assist my responsibilities as a leader. At the same time I had tunnel vision on what was happening in the present.


I was influenced by all my coaches. Jack Cahill (Port Adelaide, SANFL, 1991-92) was ultra-positive. He’d say, ‘This is what you’re good at son, go and do it.’ We’d have short, sharp training sessions and hard pre-seasons, which I’d miss because I was playing footy in Darwin. Those three years I spent at Port were fantastic because I felt 10-feet tall and bulletproof: that’s how Jack made me feel. While Jack was a positive motivator, Robert Walls (Brisbane Bears, 1993) was a hard disciplinarian. I wanted to be good and I wanted to succeed and he knew that. He was pretty hard on me, and I think that he was shaping me because he saw something in me. He would challenge me about my defensive work and all the things I wasn’t good at, which was chalk and cheese compared to Jack’s approach, but it was the right balance and the right progression for me.


Leigh Matthews (Collingwood, 1986-95) had a very simple coaching philosophy. He was probably the coach who shaped my belief that the players bring their own motivation. If it means enough to you, you work hard, play for your teammates and go out and get the job done. Leigh was always simplifying the game and simplifying the motivations for it and often leaving it to the player: if you’re motivated you’ll be rewarded, and if you’re not motivated you won’t be part of it for long. Then Tony Shaw (Collingwood, 1996-99) took over from Leigh, and he was probably a good example for me of a guy who made a quick transition out of playing to coaching. He had some great ideas and was ahead of the game in many ways. He had a lot of set plays and there was a lot of learning about where to stand and what to do, but we just didn’t have the talent to execute it at that time.


When Mick came to the club he taught us how to win. When a two-time premiership coach walks in the door, he carries weight, and from day one the players hung off every word that came out of Mick’s mouth. In the early 2000s, the senior leadership within the playing group matured and we became contenders really quickly. Mick’s plan was clear and simple — he had absolute faith in how the game should be played and was unwavering in his application of the disciplines around it. As his captain, it was an easy environment to lead from, as the expectations were so clear.


It’s a widely held belief that great players don’t make great coaches. But there are strong examples on either side. Look at Leigh Matthews and Malcolm Blight: they were both great players. It’s too easy to look at coaches who have failed and say they were great players but couldn’t coach. There are plenty of reasons why a coach may fail. Sure, there are certainly some players who played the game on instinct but couldn’t tell you exactly why they did what they did. But coaching now is very different from what it was years ago. When we draft kids and they step in the door it doesn’t matter whether they were pick one or pick 100, they’ve all got equal opportunity when they come in. It’s what you do with it. It’s the same for a coach. Once you become a coach, what you’ve done before is largely irrelevant: whether you were a good player, ordinary player, struggled through, haven’t played at the level, it doesn’t matter because it’s a significantly different skill set. Have you got the capacity to develop and to build players and can you impart it on a coaching team, a playing group and a club? How you played the game, if at all, is less relevant.


I had a close look at coaching North Melbourne in 2009. It had nothing to do with leaving Collingwood; it was all about opportunity. Even now, I couldn’t tell you whether I would have taken the job or not. I spent a month looking at it, and for three weeks of that I was overseas. I was doing some work in development with the AFL in America during the day, then I was up all night talking to people back home. So in that time I averaged around two hours sleep per day. I thoroughly analysed North and myself and whether we would be a good fit. I was umming and aahing a lot over it, so logic tells you I wasn’t going to jump straight in. In retrospect, I can’t imagine coaching anywhere else other than Collingwood because I have an emotional connection here. But when you talk to coaches who have coached at multiple clubs, they tell me that it isn’t hard to have that connection again at another club when all your blood, sweat and tears goes into the new environment. So I’ve got no doubt that if I had gone to North and been involved with a whole different group of people, it would still be about the connection I had with them. All the same, I’m very happy to be coaching Collingwood.


The succession arrangement at Collingwood would not have happened without Mick’s blessing. He looked me in the eye and shook my hand and said, ‘I’m in, so let’s do it.’ The success that immediately followed was exceptional. Recruiting Luke Ball and Darren Jolly that off-season added real steel and hardness to the existing talent. We played in three Grand Finals (2010 draw and replay, and 2011) and won one premiership (2010). Mick coached the same way he always did, and it was a great environment to learn from.


Although I don’t compare myself with Mick, I can see how it would be difficult for others not to. There has been an unhealthy obsession with our relationship. Collingwood has always been a high-profile club, and that alone brings a lot of speculation, but the constant suggestion that our relationship is adversarial has been impossible to quash. I’ve got great respect for Mick, I played my best footy under him, played in Grand Finals with him as coach, learned more about the game, about people and about myself during that time. A lot of the ideals I carry into my coaching have been honed from those experiences.


As a senior coach, you can’t shy away from making hard calls. Retirements are unfortunately inevitable: no one plays forever. But there were others who didn’t buy into where the club was heading. We had to be true to direction of the club and make those decisions. There’s a curse of talent everywhere, and you can fall in love with players who go out and do the spectacular on the footy field. But champion sides, while they have great talent in a broader sense, have a group of players who are subservient to the greater good. We’re not just big on building a 22 that takes the park, we’re building 45 players, a coaching staff and our off-field administration staff — everybody needs to be on the same page. They need to be prepared to make decisions that are team-orientated and club-orientated, and that’s a non-negotiable.


Never forget that football is about people. We suffered a number of serious injuries to key players in 2012, but still managed to make the finals. But football immediately became a secondary focus when we heard that former player, John McCarthy, had died in Las Vegas on an end-of-season trip. All of a sudden you’re thinking to yourself, ‘Where does footy fit in?’ The boys came out and won a semi-final against West Coast with real emotion, then five days later they had John’s funeral and then a day after that we had to back up against Sydney in a preliminary final. Despite the whole year’s preparation, we had all these other things happen, and it made you realise that it’s not all about footy: it’s about the relationships with people. They all grew up with ‘J-Mac’ and they were tight in a football environment with him, then he moved to Port Adelaide in 2012 and suddenly they’d tragically lost him a few months later. So that brought it back to Earth for all of us: footy’s not all about kicks, marks and handballs, it’s about the connection between you and me and how much we support each other.


I’ve learned that the key to being a successful coach is trusting people, and where and when you give that trust. Being a senior coach can make you a cynic really quickly. If you strip me back to my core, I believe in the good of people, and so that resonates with the way I coach. As a doer, however, there are times when I have to remind myself I need to give space and trust. While I’m getting better at that, it still comes back to experience because you can’t just hand it over. Having a strong coaching panel you can lean on is crucial. I under-appreciated how coaches used to have their right-hand man, and how important the feedback from that guy is. Going into 2012 the planned coaching panel was Mark Neeld, Scott Watters, who would stay on as assistant coaches, and I was hopeful of my good mate Brenton Sanderson coming across. It’s a funny game footy, as all three of those blokes got senior jobs in 2012. We did a fair bit of scrambling during that off-season and I was very lucky to get Robert Harvey, Ben Hart and then Rodney Eade came over as our director of coaching. We were a brand-new coaching group, which wasn’t planned, so that was our first big challenge, and we feel that we’ve been able to build trust and understanding between us, which is crucial to strong performance.


My philosophy on game plan is that you’ve got to stay the course on it. I have a belief on how the game should be played. Drill it, coach it and get good at it, and better at it, and the more we do it the better we’ll get. You need stability for that to take hold. The demands of the game change consistently but only in increments; much of it stays the same. Even if innovation is the last 10 per cent of your plan, the other 90 per cent are the basics common to all. I love having a look at what other teams are doing and seeing little things you can try to exploit when you play them. We educate the players about it, so they know that when they see something they can react to it. But if you can’t get the people side of it right then it doesn’t matter how good you are at seeing that opportunity: you need the belief in each other and how you go about it. Then go and do it.


A big part of coaching is managing. It’s dynamic and once again it comes back to the people around you. That’s what footy is all about. You can take your eye off the person and get caught up in tactics and you miss out on the medical or physical side — then underneath all that is their personal life and the emotional and stress responses that come through. It’s never ending and it’s the most enjoyable thing about coaching. I consider that it’s my job to be there for every person in the footy department, and if there’s any way we can support them away from the club, we do.


I think there’s a lot of demand in caring. Showing care for a player can be delivering a really strong message to him about what he might have just done or the way he’s responding to a certain situation. I see that as caring for him, because if you don’t give him that feedback he doesn’t grow and he doesn’t learn. Care is a basic element of my management style and I think it’s fundamental to everything else that I do.


An open, challenging and learning environment is crucial to performance. I wanted a really open, two-way environment because I’m not a big believer in a massive hierarchical system where people know their place and don’t move beyond it. I want every person to be valued for their role and to have the forum for them to be able to voice their opinion — to receive honest feedback and to give honest feedback. If a young player comes in and assumes the values and behaviours of the football club, then he’s got just as much right to be rewarded as anyone else.


Most of a coach’s work is done through pre-season and during the week. That doesn’t mean we don’t provide in-game feedback. I think we could do without runners delivering messages during a game. It’s the dominant streak of the coach that needs to immediately try to influence what happens during a game that sees us using runners. Certainly you can have an influence on the players’ psyches during a game, but you’ve still got to be clear in your communication and you need to make sure the messages are consistent based on all the information you can gather.


I’m not comfortable making changes during a game that our players have not been privy to in training. In modern footy, every one of the players on the field needs to understand what we’re trying to achieve, what our structure is, why the structure is what it is, and what are the opportunities that can flow from it. All of that is a part of learning, and you can’t do that on game day because it needs to be so ingrained by then that the players are not actually thinking about it: it’s just instinctive.


I’m quite process-driven and always was as a player. It’s easy to look at the win-loss as a coach or the stats sheet as an individual player. But I’ve always been a believer that if you get your preparation right and you work hard at it that’s where you give yourself the best chance to succeed. So even as coaches we go back to that process. After a game I ask myself, ‘Did we communicate well with the players? Did we engage them well enough during the week or during pre-season? Was there something left unsaid that should have been said? Were the meetings effective? Did we manage the players well so that they were at their optimal physical status on game day? Did we select on the right criteria and did we reward the right behaviours with that selection?’ There are so many little messages that players and staff absorb through the process we implement.


There needs to be black and white for the players. Grey exists everywhere, but reducing indecision and miscommunication is a real key to strong consistent performance. Our biggest challenge is to continually provide clear expectations to players, coaches and staff about what’s acceptable and what’s not. Remove the grey and it provides more clarity and less stress. The coach’s job is to find the grey and then remove it.


I missed playing in a flag as a player. But my experiences as a player and my growth as a person, and the opportunity to play in two Grand Finals (2002-03) have been invaluable. In the first half of my career we were nowhere near it. There are no guarantees in footy. I would love to share in success as a coach with this footy club and this group of players, and I’d love them to feel the ultimate of being a part of a premiership team and be acknowledged as premiership players. Along side that endeavour is the drive to provide a really solid environment in here, where people grow self-esteem and remember their experiences at Collingwood favourably, because it helped them to become a better person.


I’m hungry for a flag, and if we do win one, why stop there? True success is actually living your life to the fullest. Footy is just one part of who these young men are and we’ll celebrate all of them in their own way as we go along. I’d love to set up the club for a sustained period of success, in and away from the game.

 

[76woodenspooners]

Can't access the link.

Copy the article heading into your browser and let Google show you a cached version

It would want to be good to be another Nathan Buckley thread.

Yeah, it is. It's an extensive article.

 

[Chameleon75]

Thats just an extract from his book is it not?

 

[PicaBoo]

Awesome read. You read about his attitude on self improvement& reinventing, you look at Cloke and you would think there is a collision course right there.

 

[deano_66]

Thanks for posting that I read the full article off the link and then once I posted it found that I couldn't read it again so sorry about that. I think one thing you can see from the article is the loyalty and the love that Buckley had for our wonderful club. I really wished that better things could have happened since he took over the club as he was also my favourite player. The thing what kills me most is his luck not really an excuse but the terrible run of injuries he has suffered since he took over has been unbelievable and also to the players it had happened to. People can talk about the game plan working but during pre season when it was being run he had a full team to do it with. Now the team that we have got we have got about 15 players with less than 50 games and missing key crucial players

 

[Saintly Viewed]

Awesome read. You read about his attitude on self improvement& reinventing, you look at Cloke and you would think there is a collision course right there.

You have great perception mr boo.

 

[Saintly Viewed]

Great article.
Insightful.

 

[PicaBoo]

You have great perception mr boo.

Thanks . I am thinking of changing my name to PicaBooHooHoo to blend in even more with the BF community.

 

[Saintly Viewed]

Thanks . I am thinking of changing my name to PicaBooHooHoo to blend in even more with the BF community.

Not sure you have the requisite sky is falling in, down pat yet.
Just remember when in doubt about anything, blame Buckley.

Being with the good lady, don't quite get there simply say
"It's Nathan Buckleys fault"
Tried it once, she said
"Nathan Buckley, mmmm, works for me"

 

[Maggie Greg]

This article has a relevance factor of zero. It is nearly 2 years old. Please pull out his reviews for his Port Adelaide games. Just as relevant.

 

[jmac70]

This article has a relevance factor of zero. It is nearly 2 years old. Please pull out his reviews for his Port Adelaide games. Just as relevant.

I agree with this. In fact I'm sure the article was discussed back then.

 

[Primetime Pricey]

Old article but the thing that stood out for me is the constant argument i have with people about Bucks missing out on the flags and thisis all you need to shut it down

I’m often asked: “Do you regret the decision you made to leave Brisbane?” I’m sure there are people who made decisions 15 years ago that have affected their lives profoundly, but they wouldn’t have a clue what the alternatives were. The difference in my case is everyone knows what the alternative was. But if I stayed in Brisbane, maybe Alastair Lynch wouldn’t have got there. In exchange for me, Brisbane got (1990 premiership player) Craig Starcevich and Troy Lehmann from Collingwood, (No. 12 draft selection) Chris Scott, and room in the salary cap to get Lynch. Lynch and Scott became premiership players, and Starcevich later became their strength and conditioning coach.

No one could rightfully say what the outcome would have been if I’d stayed. It’s pointless speculating on ifs and buts.

 

[Gone Critical]

A good read. I love Buckleys positivity and work ethic. Love that he has stayed loyal to the Pies and never offers excuses. Would love to see him succeed as Collingwood coach but hopes for that fading

 

[Scodog10]

A good read. I love Buckleys positivity and work ethic. Love that he has stayed loyal to the Pies and never offers excuses. Would love to see him succeed as Collingwood coach but hopes for that fading

This is my feel to. I'd only add that I've never questioned his passion for the club from my perspective it's as fanatical as any of ours, but I'm more than content questioning his coaching ability given all available evidence suggests it is questionable (at Collingwood anyway).

 

[doodles98]

Such fine sentiments and intentions! Their translation into real tangible results has been a highlight for me the last 4 years. Yay for words~!

 

[TradeDraft]

A good read. I love Buckleys positivity and work ethic. Love that he has stayed loyal to the Pies and never offers excuses. Would love to see him succeed as Collingwood coach but hopes for that fading

He great speaker and great in the Media.

So should be in Media then Head Coach

 

[soreplums]

On reflection, you wonder if Neeld, Waters and MM staying in would have us in a very different position now.

To have three people leave the nest inside a pre-season and need to be quickly replaced surely throws plans out and sets you back a little.

 

[rand corp]

Great read