You only have to spend a few minutes talking football in the company of Nathan Buckley to reach the conclusion that he is the smartest man in the room.
Not in the 'FIGJAM' manner that supposedly marked his playing days. Google the acronym if you’re unclear as to its meaning.
But Buckley gets football. To call him a football savant is a fair and reasonable descriptor. He understands every nuance of the game. On the field and off the field. Which is why he is stepping down as coach of Collingwood after nine and a half eventful seasons.
As soon as aspiring president Jeff Browne said that Collingwood should be looking to get the best coach available, it became clear that the forthcoming boardroom stoush at the Magpies would also serve as a referendum on Buckley’s future and Buckley was too smart and too much of a Collingwood person to become involved in that.
So instead, he joins Bob Rose as one of the greatest figures in the club’s history, but like Rose, also among its most unlucky.
A glittering 260-game playing career with Collingwood (he played 20 games for Brisbane before then) that included a Brownlow Medal, a Norm Smith Medal, a Rising Star Award, six best and fairests and seven All-Australian blazers wasn’t matched by any team success.
The Pies were mediocre over the first half of his playing career and much better over the second but lost both the 2002 and 2003 Grand Finals to Brisbane.
He took over as coach in 2012 in difficult circumstances, which we will get to shortly and a bit like his playing career, there was initially a decline in the club’s playing fortunes, given he inherited a team two years off winning a flag.
He was given a vote of confidence to continue as coach after a searching review of the football department following the 2017 season.
Collingwood came good – seriously so – in 2018 and were 90 seconds and a clutch Dom Sheed mark and goal away from winning the flag. They were every chance of going one better in 2019, except for an inexplicably poor game against GWS in the preliminary final.
A season and a half later and with his best shot at being a Collingwood premiership coach now gone, he has walked away. The timing is right for him and the club.
Now for the referendums and the post-mortems. Buckley took over a team fresh off a losing Grand Final and 12 months off the 2010 premiership win (he was an assistant to Mick Malthouse in what was his only taste of AFL premiership success), but it was an awful handover, ill-conceived in thinking and sloppily managed in practice.
Firstly, Malthouse didn’t want to finish up and arguably, was still in his prime as a coach. And several of the key members of the side, from a football and cultural perspective, were fiercely loyal to Malthouse.
Buckley was clearly on track to be an AFL senior coach – and an exceptional one at that – but in 2012, he wasn’t ready. But president Eddie McGuire was so fearful of the prospect of the Magpie icon wearing the polo shirt of another club, that he fast-tracked a succession plan that none of the main players were all that comfortable with.
He learned on the job, but it was a tough apprenticeship. It is instructive that Sam Mitchell, in many ways a similar sort of player to Buckley, is undertaking his own coaching pathway and is determined not to follow the same path.
From a Collingwood football perspective, it is the right choice. The Pies are two to three years off any sort of finals challenge. Whoever leads the club down that path needs to be locked in for the next five years and a coach who has already been in that role for nearly a decade, and part of the club for nearly 30, is likely not the right person for that.
Alastair Clarkson and Hawthorn must be having similar conversations.
Buckley’s departure won’t bring an end to the tumultuous times at Collingwood. The board spill and the proposed extraordinary general meeting are yet to happen. Whether Jeff Browne makes his move now so that he and his people can make the call on the new coach – if they are elected - remains to be seen, but it makes sense that they do.
The brightest future belongs to Buckley himself. As mentioned earlier he has the capacity and the intellect to do pretty much whatever he likes in the game. Watch any Channel Seven game from 2008 and see how his razor-sharp observations elevate the broadcast. You can imagine come the finals, that he will be in a commentary box somewhere.
As Buckley said, coaching Collingwood is one of the most high-profile roles in the game. He handled the spotlight magnificently and treated us in the media with courtesy and respect. In every conversation with him, you were made to feel the equal partner.
But the feeling here is that he will thrive (look away, Eddie!) wearing a different set of colours. The Age’s Jake Niall made the excellent point earlier today that he would make a fantastic coach of one of the AFL’s northern outposts because he would understand and embrace the ambassadorial role that would come with it.
Footy is beginning to follow the US and European model of giving coaches a second chance. Brett Ratten got his with St Kilda. Michael Voss and Matthew Knights are in the mix for future roles but Buckley would be ahead of them in the queue if he has the passion to saddle up again.
Buckley also has the smarts to work elsewhere in footy if he has the inclination. He could make it work as a GM of footy or a list manager. You can bet that a cup of coffee with Gillon McLachlan – when these things are allowed once again – will be high on both their agendas. AFL HQ isn’t as bloated as it used to be, but there would be a position for Buckley at the League if he wished.
His future is as bright as it wants to be. And so too is that of Collingwood, once the club decides who the president will be going forward.