Collingwood is flying. They have knocked off Fremantle in Perth, Carlton and reigning premiers Melbourne.
They are 8-5 after 13 games and have blown pre-season expectations out of the water under new coach Craig McRae.
The Magpies are performing to a level similar to what they accomplished across 2018 and 2019, but what happened across 2020 and 2021?
Collingwood dropped from a premiership side to a team sneaking into the eight in 2020. 2021 saw coach Nathan Buckley stepping aside as they ultimately missed finals.
Buckley is proud of what his old side has achieved so far under McRae and believes there’s an obvious reason as to why the team is performing to the level it did in 2018 and 2019.
“The team looks like 2018 and 2019 all over again and there’s a reason for that – because it’s pretty much the same team,” Buckley told SEN Breakfast.
So what happened across 2020 and 2021? The former Collingwood coach goes in-depth on the impact COVID had from a staffing perspective.
“Here’s my excuses. We were heavily affected by COVID. We lost a third of our staff and we relied on the diversity of our staff, I believe, more than anyone,” Buckley added.
“I believe that we were negatively affected by COVID more than others for the reasons of diversity and we spread our responsibilities and the contribution for what we did in our environment, and therefore onto the field, more than most.
“That’s a supposition, but that’s the way I felt about it. We felt the loss of other people.
“We were so even across our staffing across the 2010s and then through 2017, 2018 and 2019 we built something that we felt we had a really good balance, we worked really hard and were flying in our pre-season going into 2020.
“COVID hit hard and we lost one-third of our staff, we had personnel issues, we lost key players on the field and we lost momentum and we really struggled to put the pieces back together and we were impacted.
“We still went and won a final in Perth.”
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When asked by Garry Lyon why Buckley thinks Collingwood was more impact than other clubs, he added: “We were probably spread wider. It’s a supposition.”
“I suppose to compare to other clubs is not the salient point. The point was that we knew how much we relied on elements that we lost.
“Other clubs might say the same thing. I feel like we were really heavily impacted by it and clearly, when you stack us up against the rest of the competition, we dropped away worse and had a worse result than we had otherwise.
“Now that’s been slated to different things externally, but I would slate it off to the fact that we valued every member of our staff … and I’m not saying (other clubs) don’t … all I know is we lost important people that provided structure and safety to some of our players and to each other than had an enormous impact on our capacity to do what we had been doing.”
Buckley believes the second factor in the club dropping away after 2019 was a combination of injuries to key players and off-field turmoil with the list management and salary cap issues at the end of 2020 and the spotlight on the Do Better report.
“So COVID was really challenging for us and the (second thing) is we just didn’t have any consistency with our personnel,” he said.
“People wonder how you put all this together, you’ve got to do the basics well.
“You do the basics well when you have trust, when you have connection, when you feel good about your footy, you’re really clear about your role and the personnel issues and the muck in the system, which after 2020 was the list management and the Do Better (report), like early 2021 was a really difficult period and we weren’t able to win through it.”
Collingwood’s injury list currently sees star ruckman Brodie Grundy sidelined, as well as depth players Nathan Kreuger, Jack Madgen, Charlie Dean, Reef McInnes and Tom Wilson.
Buckley also believes the general consensus that he coached too defensively wasn’t the case when the club was at their best.
“If you go back and have a look at how we developed throughout 2018 and parts of 2019, when we went, we went with hands through the middle,” he said.
“Or we spread the ground and we went fast through the middle and we went fast going forward.
“Not exactly the same as they’re doing now, I think Craig McRae has done an amazing job with how he’s pulled it all together, but not dissimilar, we were attacking – I think we were the sixth-best offence.
“We scored really heavily from stoppage in particular and we were able to go forward.”
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The current eighth placed Magpies have the bye this weekend before a favourable run of their fixture opens up with games against GWS, Gold Coast, North Melbourne, Adelaide, Essendon and Port Adelaide following.