Jake Nails it - It will be a long time in the wilderness

Wokko · Come and take it. Joined: 04 Oct 2005

For a few years it was all Geelong, St Kilda, Bulldogs and Collingwood. Out of this group, it's only Geelong still up (and you'd think very close to hitting the wall).

Now we have Hawthorn, Fremantle, Sydney and Geelong. Next year or the year after we may have Collingwood, Bulldogs, Brisbane, Gold Coast as the top 4. Or maybe GWS. It's all swings and roundabouts and only one or two teams stay up for extended periods.

The sky isn't falling, it's just darkest before the Dawn.

John Wren · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2014 9:43 pm

Piesnchess · piesnchess Joined: 09 Jun 2008

Yes, we will be a team of baby Magpies next season, and we need at least two senior guys coming in, how about brad sewell, and mitch clark. ?

The_Staunton · Joined: 30 Jul 2007 Location: Hobart

watt price tully · Joined: 15 May 2007

35forever · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 2:12 am

Wow! I hit 'send' twice by mistake and somehow it added the above 8 times. Oh well, let me use this to tell you all what the reasoned, well thought out responses to the above will consist of:

1. "Too long, didn't read." Oh come on, you read enough to get the gist then decided to bitch about length once you realised it didn't agree with your own opinion. If you really want an argument to die the best response is none at all.

2. "You are suffering from some variety of mental illness" Yeah, that's a good argument, you clearly read rhetorics at Oxford, didn't you"

3: "The 2011 side wasn't that good" At least it's an argument, but not a good one. The numbers bear out my view as would a clear memory of those distant days. Even in good years Collingwood has had an inability to garner great percentages, but that year we had 180% right at the end of the year. The 'dead rubber' of rd 24 didn�t help but it was still our highest percentage in decades, probably ever. We also picked up consecutive minor premierships for the first time since the 1920s. Dale Thomas was called "Arguably the best player in the league" by more than one pundit, and Pendlebury and Swan were first & third in the Brownlow. We won by 100+ several times, and kept winning big despite a ridiculous draw, even when Adelaide had us 40+ points down late in the third quarter we rallied to win by over 40 points, one of the greatest turnarounds in the games history. Superlative after superlative was heaped upon us, and a glorious future was predicted by every pundit in the game.

4: "Buckley will have us on top in a few years". Yeah right. And what has he got planned to fix the shockingly poor morale at the Westpac? As far as I know he doesn't even acknowledge that there's a problem, despite mentioning our culture last year. Lets face it, Greek Yoghurt has more culture than Bucks.

35forever · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 2:12 am

Oh my fuc*ing god! I have never read such shite in all my life!!! ANY excuse to defend the absolute failure of a coach who will see us down with the bottom dwellers for years to come! Stuff me you people are deluded! Have none of you ever read a damn thing about the history of footy!?
The guy has taken us from outright leaders and the best side in Collingwood history to missing finals in just three years, now he's telling you we will be crap for the next few and you are lapping it up like pathetic, brain-dead baa-lambs!
He can't possibly fail to be right! And he's setting things up so he can keep his job for the next few years despite nothing but failure! What a bunch of palookas!!!

None of you remember a damn thing about Collingwood in 2010-2011. EVERYONE in footy was foretelling an incredibly bright future at Collingwood with a flag on the board and young stars aplenty! NOONE said we were old or slow, NO ONE mentioned a damn thing about a rebuild under Buckley. We were flag favourites at the start of 2012 and all Buckley had to be was vaguely competent and he'd ride us to flag after flag. Unfortunately he HASN�T been vaguely competent, he has been brain-snappingly INcompetent, and is only getting worse as time rolls miserably on. Now it's 3 years of rebuild when we have at least half a dozen absolutely Elite players in the side and half a dozen more who could become elite in the right hands.

If Hawthorn started 2015 by dumping Roughy, Hodge, Breust, & Mitchell and then sacking Clarkson so Grant Birchall could take over as coach it would be nearly as big a monster of a clusterf*ck as what Collingwood did in 2012, NEARLY. Y'see, no one is predicting that Hawthorn will be the outright flag favourites for the next few years like most of the commentators were predicting for us in 2011-12. None of this rubbish about half the squad needing to retire, no, they were saying that about Geelong!

But in comes Buckley and changes everything, this isn't like Scott taking over the Cats, Scott replaced a coach who wanted to leave and did very little except keep morale up. Buckley has utterly destroyed the morale at Collingwood, it is dead, kaput, history. It was dying at the start of 2014, and it was probably the retirement of beloved leader Maxwell which busted the poor old camel's back, coming as it did after Pendles was handed the Captaincy without consulting the players. Half the guys that have retired probably didn't need to. The soft tissue injury toll ended careers prematurely, and losing those leaders has killed the confidence we had in spades in 2011.

For those still clinging to Buckley's bare-faced lies, explain the round 12 plummet into the abyss with the glide angle of a block of flats? What the hell WAS that except a crisis of morale? Confident sides simply don't do that. We had plenty of injuries before that week and were winning games regardless. What changed? Did we adopt a different game style? no. Did we change the training regimen? no. Did we suddenly lose a bunch of players? no. So WHY did we lose to Footscray? Why were we flogged by the same Essendon side we bashed early in the season? Why were we flogged by the bloody Lions? Why were we completely unable to kick a score? Why did we miss most set shots?

It won't even help that our continued failure will bring us some tasty draft picks. Look at Melbourne, Richmond and Carlton who've got number ones up the wazoo, if you don't have the staff to develop these kids into star players they will end up as Sculleys or Watts's, unfulfilled potential.

Hands up who thought Brodie Grundy would have a lousy year?

Hands up who thought Swanny would go from two votes away from a second Brownlow to averaging 20 odd possies and getting the 3 votes ONCE for the year.

Hands up who thought we'd miss the finals for the first time in 8 years?

Hands up who thought they'd read that Beams, Hertier, and Goldy were considering their positions?

It's MORALE, and it's REAL. Buckley can NOT repair it, he's the one who broke it, or is that the players fault too? And what does he offer us for the future? Working on resilience and looking at running patterns. Who thinks that will suddenly turn us around? What we are doing then is allowing a guy who NOT ONE PERSON thinks is a champion coach to dictate the make-up of our side for the foreseeable future. What that will get us is more years of misery even after Buckley has finally been dumped.

Finally, why is it that when given the chance to speak to power NO ONE said a word about the morale of the playing group? Am I to believe that I'm the only Collingwood supporter who believes that we have a serious problem in that area? (I live in Queensland and simply couldn�t get to Melbourne with two days notice). Why do you think we only got two days notice in the first place? That joke of a meeting turned out PRECISELY as I said it would. A farce full of pre-prepared answers to questions they knew were coming.

Wake up and smell the horseshite people, it's getting up around our ears now! Grab your shovels and dig hard, and don't expect anything but shitty years ahead, my god, the coach has actually ADMITTED that's what was ahead, and people here are mindless enough to buy his excuses like five dollar flat screens! Meanwhile the Magpies that won the 2010 flag are disappearing like Sperm Whales on a Japanese holiday!

Time to TAKE BACK OUR CLUB!!!

joffa corfe · PREMIERS 2010 Joined: 13 Nov 2003

I'd sooner support my club than shit bag it all the time
Thank you Smile

Pies4shaw · pies4shaw Joined: 08 Oct 2007

Member 7167 · Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:25 am

To be quite honest I do not even read 35forever posts. It is the same all negative anti club, anti Bucks bull crap. Basically it is an adversarial stance on everything the club is doing. What's the point. Same goes for a few other "perceptive fellow" contributors.

Like many Nicksters, I realise the club has its issues but I also believe that the coach and the administration are working through these issues. It is not a matter that Bucks can do no wrong but to be quite honest I think Buckley has some great qualities as a man and as a coach and it is very difficult to truly asses the situation when considering the injury and other issues the club has been embroiled in.

I am here to support my club and I will always give them the benefit of the doubt in a 50/50 situation.