Is Buckley A Good Coach?

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The senior coach is an important club figure and a legitimate topic of discussion. It's fair to do so and everyone has a right to express their view.

The mod team observed that the thread was dominated by a few protagonists and their points were repeated i.e. 8 years of regression vs marked improvement in 17,18 etc Pretty much everyone with a strong opinion has already expressed it here.

What further degraded discussion was the simplistic "sack FIGJAM" or "he's a legend" type posts.

This thread will remain open. If your view has slightly shifted or you have new thoughts please share. In an effort to encourage quality discussion repetitive statements and circular arguments will from now on be deleted as will silly posts suggesting that we sack a coach on match-day.

FYI Gone Critical Anzacday Maggie5
 
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Jul 12, 2004
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Given that implicit in your question that success means flags - then 99% of coaches are unsuccessful and by definition any change of coach doesn't guarantee success. So your premise that a change is the only way to get success is clearly false.

By a standard such as making a GF Buckley is way ahead of the majority of coaches.

He is the fifth longest serving coach in the AFL, all 4 above him are premiership coaches with 8 flags between them.
 
And we're not gonna get it coz covid, Bucks aint leavin anytime soon. Almost pulled off the unwarranted Houdini trick in 2018, to be fair we weren't / aren't that good. It's the system which is great but the execution is difficult, the list isn't super flash and overrated by the system. It's good but not flag good.

Another half a dozen years in the middling wilderness, great.
I view it the other way. To me, our system is the issue. Teams have worked out how to slow our transition, resulting in a really crowded forward 50 which really doesn't suit our team.
 
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And????
How does that impact my point that the Stats don’t ensure change means success. Look at the Carlton coach merry go of the last 15 years and Rich before Hardwick as cases in point.

It means every other club changes when things don’t work. For some it turns out successful, for others they move on to the next.

But if you want the club to keep doing the same thing that nots working forever and wonder why it never changes, I’d ask are you really a Collingwood fan?

1958, the last time a Collingwood person coached Collingwood to a premiership.
 

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It means every other club changes when things don’t work. For some it turns out successful, for others they move on to the next.

But if you want the club to keep doing the same thing that nots working forever and wonder why it never changes, I’d ask are you really a Collingwood fan?

1958, the last time a Collingwood person coached Collingwood to a premiership.

Seriously ? You are going to try to link 1958 to the present day? I could equally argue we are DUE for a Collingwood person to coach us to a flag.

When you have Buckley’s recent record, there’s is only one clear and unambiguous reason to change a coach and that’s when he’s lost the players.

We heard similar hollow arguments about Buckley poor coaching before, that were proven wrong when we made the GF in 2018.
And instead of focusing on his recent success in building a hyper competitive team making a GF and PF in successive years, you want to go back and talk about his 9 year reign.

If we were uncompetitive you would have point.
Buckley has done the hard yards and fallen just short- he deserves time to win the ultimate.

After all we’re due for a Coll person to win a flag.
 
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Bucks made a huge change in making us a skilled ball team and not just a full grunt team that willed it forward.

We have now gone the other way and we can’t win when the going gets tough. Even with head starts.

We need to change the balance of the team to succeed.
 
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Seriously ? You are going to try to link 1958 to the present day? I could equally argue we are DUE for a Collingwood person to coach us to a flag.

When you have Buckley’s recent record, there’s is only one clear and unambiguous reason to change a coach and that’s when he’s lost the players.

We heard similar hollow arguments about Buckley poor coaching before, that were proven wrong when we made the GF in 2018.
And instead of focusing on his recent success in building a hyper competitive team making a GF and PF in successive years, you want to go back and talk about his 9 year reign.

If we were uncompetitive you would have point.
Buckley has done the hard yards and fallen just short- he deserves time to win the ultimate.

After all we’re due for a Coll person to win a flag.

Actually football as a whole is going away from club champions coaching their old clubs to success.

Very few recent premiership coaches played at the club they coach. Beveridge did but he played for three clubs and is seemingly a much better coach than player.

A lot of good coaches come from successful clubs as players. Collingwood never won a flag with Buckley as a player and his coaching career is headed the same way.

Collingwood would have been far better off letting Buckley go for the North job. At least then, even if he failed, he could have come back to Collingwood with some experience of another club
 
Jun 6, 2016
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I view it the other way. To me, our system is the issue. Teams have worked out how to slow our transition, resulting in a really crowded forward 50 which really doesn't suit our team.

Don't disagree, but not entirely, and on top of that great news - we don't have the talent to rely on, we rely on system.

That system is swarm and spread to view it in layman terms. Outnumber in the phone box AND outnumber on the outside - requires more gut running than most systems, it's been predictable since post 2017 - that didn't matter. Very hard to defeat, really hard but equally as difficult to execute.

That means it can't be executed week in week out and we haven't looked like doing that since 2018, to win the whole box and dice we'll literally have to execute it to perfection on the day, if we get there. Almost zero chance of that happening.

The planets are literally gonna have to align to pull this off, so close in 18, and the ship has probably sailed. Or the horse has bolted of you're Good Horse

We deserved to win it purely on the back of that tactical plan, but didn't deserve to on talent, not solely anyways. Buckley's almost Houdini trick.

Oh well another half a dozen years in the middling wilderness, on the bright side at least we won't be teased and frustrated until the next (faux) window comes along.
 

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Actually football as a whole is going away from club champions coaching their old clubs to success.

Very few recent premiership coaches played at the club they coach. Beveridge did but he played for three clubs and is seemingly a much better coach than player.

A lot of good coaches come from successful clubs as players. Collingwood never won a flag with Buckley as a player and his coaching career is headed the same way.

Collingwood would have been far better off letting Buckley go for the North job. At least then, even if he failed, he could have come back to Collingwood with some experience of another club

Or not - it’s all conjecture.

So stick to the facts - a GF and PF in the last 2 years is not a reason to sack a coach, whether Buckley or anyone else for that matter.
 
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A better man manager than he was

Tactically naive

Still too inflexible at times.

About mid tier, which is not good enough in your 9th season

He would not still be a senior coach had he coached at any other club, let's face it.

I think he's tactically brilliant, back in 17 everyone banged on about his 'vision', discovered it 2018 - he turned an average list into almost premiers on the back of it.

I doubt there'd be many that could do that with such a list. Clarko and Dimma come to mind. He's good enough to be a premiership coach, just doesn't have the cattle to execute the 'vision' - you could argue different IF we had every player available and playing to potential. But that never happens.
 
Well I am glad you are concerned. Dejavu. I have been concerned since the start of 2012 when he was given the below team (numbers in brackets are my rating out of 10 for the player at the time) and we know what he did with this team...

B: C.Tarrant (9) N.Brown (8) N.Maxwell (8)
HB: H.Shaw(9) B.Reid (9) H.O'Brien (8)
C: S.Sidebottom (8) S.Pendlebury (10) D.Beams (8)
HF: A.Didak (9) T.Cloke (8) D.Thomas (8)
F: L.Davis (8) C.Dawes (8) A.Krakouer (8)
R: D.Jolly (8) D.Swan (9) L.Ball (8)
INT: S.Wellingham (7) B.Johnson (7) T.Goldsack (7) L.Brown (7)
Emerg: J.Blair (7) A.Toovey (7) B.Macaffer (7)
Chris Dawes 8 oh my word. 5 at best
 
Is he prepared to publicly tear strips off players who make fundamental errors during a game?
I don’t know that it’s necessarily a good thing that he did - but he can certainly do this. Thinking of him man-handling Witts on the bench v Hawthorn a few years back
 
How long has he been at the club feels like forever might be a good time to bring in a new fresh mind.

EDIT; wowee hes been at the club 16 years thats crazy

Starting to think that might not be the Worse Idea
 
Jul 12, 2004
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I think he's tactically brilliant, back in 17 everyone banged on about his 'vision', discovered it 2018 - he turned an average list into almost premiers on the back of it.

I doubt there'd be many that could do that with such a list. Clarko and Dimma come to mind. He's good enough to be a premiership coach, just doesn't have the cattle to execute the 'vision' - you could argue different IF we had every player available and playing to potential. But that never happens.

He’s had 9 years, at what Point do Buckley fans accept he is responsible for the list. Or do you all believe Hine did all the recrutiing and Buckley never had any input or say hey we really need some tall forwards this year...

Malthouse boundary game plan everyone hated was because that was the best plan for the list he had. If Buckley can’t adapt his game plan to the players he has nor has any ability to recruit players to fit his dream game plan, then he’s clearly A pretty average coach.
 
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Buckley embodies everything that has gone wrong with football. The game has become one of process and structures. In fact, Buckley was one of the instigators of this when he came in to football as a professional footballer, focussed on training and perfection, the transition to recruiting athletes and being worried about beep tests rather than football ability.

The game has transitioned to what Buckley and co wanted it to become, a scientific analysis with laptops and numbers. He is coaching exactly the right way, analysis, process, structures...rinse and repeat.
 
Jun 6, 2016
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He’s had 9 years, at what Point do Buckley fans accept he is responsible for the list. Or do you all believe Hine did all the recrutiing and Buckley never had any input or say hey we really need some tall forwards this year...

Malthouse boundary game plan everyone hated was because that was the best plan for the list he had. If Buckley can’t adapt his game plan to the players he has nor has any ability to recruit players to fit his dream game plan, then he’s clearly A pretty average coach.

He is in part responsible for the list, Hine and his merry men also.

Tactically the way we played in 18 was uber difficult to defeat, and equally difficult to execute, it's taxing. We haven't played like that since.

There's few that would be able to pull that game style off, he and the Pies recruited for that plan. The game has probably passed that style, doesn't make him a poor or average coach.

In saying that our window is now shut, and he won't be winning one for us............................. What could've been. Sigh.
 
The bloke he replaced was a proven premiership coach Who took a bottom side to two grand finals within his first 4 seasons. Buckley took a grand finalist to the bottom rungs of the ladder.

But I‘ve put the challenge out elsewhere, who was the last premiership coach who coached for 10+ years before winning their first flag as an AFL coach?
Conversely, who was the last coach to be sacked following consecutive top 4 finishes?
 
Given by this time next week we will be two games out of the 8, there won’t be any top 4 let alone top 8 finishes in 2020.
So to summarise, you have no issue throwing up overtly specific trivia challenges to everyone else but when challenged yourself, can't answer the question.
 
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