Is Nathan Buckley Too Normal to Succeed?

[Neil Appleby]

Well written article from the Guardian Australia today. It's difficult to argue with most of it to be honest.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2016/may/11/nathan-buckley-might-just-be-too-normal-to-succeed-as-an-afl-coach

[Jez07]

Very good article.

[jackcass]

Interesting take.

[John Wren]

thanks neil for the link. interesting read and not without foundation.

[3rd degree]

Any training reports Neil ? I miss them like we all do!

[Jez07]

It's perhaps the best written article on Buckley.

The psychology of coaching is very underrated. The best teams are those teams that have diverse characters within that team.

Nathan is not suited to be able to gel those characters together in one cause.

[thompsoc]

No that is wrong.
It really is about leadership.
And that is a strange brew.
Plenty of psychopaths are leaders.
Ultra competitive people often go into leadership.
Sometimes people become leaders by default like Rosy Batty.
The issue with Bux is that he is ultra competitive.
He works harder than anyone.
He is meticulous in everything he doe's.
But he lacks vision and he is incapable of any empathy with others.
Cold and distant can sometimes get you through a crisis.
Some of the worlds greatest leaders have been bastards.
Go ask Mao and co.
The trouble is Bux is not a natural leader, he does the right thing with Keefe and Thomas but I don't believe there is any love there.
MM was a bastard in my opinion but when he backed a player he put his whole soul into it ....see Licca.
Leadership is a strange beast and I reckon you are mainly born with it.
Some jobs require different types of leadership but for footy I don't think Bux has it.

[qldmagpie67]

A very good article thanks Neil. Mayne he's to nice a guy to be a coach who knows but everything the journo says about the successful coaches makes sense.
He could have added Leigh Matthews he was as ruthless a coach as a player and his team characterised his persona

[qldmagpie67]

[John Wren]

perhaps some of you are not giving buckley enough credit to be able to either change or demonstrate traits which weren't always on show during his playing days. if buckley was still as you think he is we'd have known well before now. the likes of swanny, i presume, would have been long gone most likely of his own volition. it is very easy to make character judgements based on something you saw many years ago. how many of you are the same people you were a few years ago?

[The_Staunton]

There could be some merit to that theory

In terms of being a great player, you see the game a certain way, if I do X, Y is the outcome....

So for Buckley, the game is simple - effort, structures, game plan...if I practice kicking the football 500 times my kicking gets better. It doesn't take into account lateral thinking or "hunches" in the way maybe some other coaches work. Also "our structures will hold up" isn't going to work if the structures aren't something the players won't or can't understand. Hard to understand some of the players "efforts" on Saturday, when all you can go back to is "but we trained it on the track"...

However, and I say this as someone that does want a new coach - you are always at the mercy of psychological analysis in articles when you are at the mercy of plain bad luck. I'd say the senior coach these days has to be an amateur psychologist and people manager - you look at the personalities MM managed (and he didn't always get it right) in that 2010 team. So Buckley inherits a team with "issues" and his response is "suck it up princess, lets go to work", while they are all bleating for MM to return as per the "normal" approach to coaching and life...

[Redlight]

This sort of stuff is the bread and butter of the press when there's blood in the water, there's a ton of opinion, speculation, half-truth and mistakes in there.

For a start;

"Being part lunatic is certainly no impediment to AFL coaching success. Clarkson and Ross Lyon have a healthy dose of it"
Not serving him very well at the moment, is it? Maybe he became too normal over the Christmas break.

"(Malthouse) he always had something up his sleeve. He’d sit peering through binoculars, plotting and scheming. Opposition supporters always expected the unexpected."
What? The constantly made criticism of Mick was that he had no plan 'B', that he was too set in his ways and too committed to playing the boundary. Some even went as far as to say that his failure to have 'something up his sleeve' cost us the flag in 2011.

"Anyone with a hint of spunk is now playing elsewhere. Many of them are playing very well indeed."
So, those 'players with spunk' consist of Heath Shaw?

"He can’t control his President going on radio every morning and crapping on about the all-encompassing magnificence of a football club that’s won two premierships in six decades."
The 'go to' put down of Collingwood haters everywhere. I think the fact that we're still the biggest show in town despite that unfortunate fact is a perfect proof of the club's 'all-encompassing magnificence'.

"On Saturday, the six-time best and fairest winner was out-coached by a man who played local Tasmanian football."
Apparently you can only lose by being 'out coached', there are no other factors. Gotcha.

So what's left in that article? Let me summarise, "Can Buckley coach? We don't know".

Now, where did I put that Walkley Award?

[Jez07]

It's why coaching your own side is critical.

Luke Beveridge took St Bedes/Mentone from C Grade to an A Grade flag before he immersed himself in the AFL system.

Alan Richardson also coached at East Burwood with great success before he also immersed himself in the AFL system.

[HAL]

Where did Luke Beveridge take St BedesMentone from C Grade to an A Grade flag he immersed himself in the AFL system?

[inxs88]

Guys! In reality 80% of Collingwood's problems between 2014-2016 is INJURIES! Simple as that