The Leading Question

The Age

Monday March 12, 2007

Samantha Lane

Nathan Buckley's startling answer to whether he would lead the Magpies was a calculated spur for his teammates, he tells Samantha Lane

IT HAD been a big weekend. And, having watched Sydney and West Coast win their way to consecutive grand finals - something Collingwood had managed just three years earlier - Nathan Buckley was feeling envious and uncharacteristically uncertain about the job he was doing.

So when the Magpie captain rolled up to Federation Square to sit on a football panel a few hours before the Brownlow Medal dinner, he was perhaps a little vulnerable. But giving a six-year-old a scoop? It was unheard of.

"I'm still going to be around," said Buckley to the question about his playing future and captaincy from a junior fan who'd gone along to the footy talk-fest in the city. "I'll still be doing everything I can and everything that I've always done, just without the title."

The bombshell had been dropped and, later, Buckley was even prepared to elaborate: ". . . I have a fundamental belief that the time to change is right."

It took Collingwood president Eddie McGuire no more than 24 hours to have the headlines changed: "It was Bucks . . . musing aloud," he declared. "If I was a betting man I would be betting that Nathan Buckley will be captain of Collingwood."

Officially, it took five months for McGuire's tip to be vindicated. Coffee and sandwiches were served at the Lexus Centre 11 days ago for the "major" announcement that the 2003 Brownlow medallist was going to lead the Pies again in 2007 and that Mick Malthouse's contract had been extended.

But Buckley's ruminations at Federation Square were the furthest thing from a whimsical musing.

"I must admit that at the time I thought perhaps I needed to create a void for these guys to want to stand up," he told The Age, the "void" referring to the captaincy which Buckley has held since 1999.

It was a matter, Buckley says, that he had raised in "a few chats" with his coach. "Perhaps in some way our leadership structure's been quite stale and perhaps it needed a revamp in some ways," he said. "It was saying, 'If that's what needs to happen, I'm prepared to do it.' If that's the best thing for the club, well then, that's an easy decision."

Though history shows it was not necessarily a palatable one for all at Collingwood. A joining of the dots would suggest that if it had been Buckley's decision alone, he would not be leading the Pies for a ninth season. The 34-year-old, 275-gamer will do just that, but it wasn't before Buckley joined his teammates on a training camp in Arizona last year that he was persuaded.

"I'm sure I saw something different straight away," he says. "And I reckon maybe even the discussion of the captaincy and the fact that it was out there was enough to have guys thinking, 'Well gee, this isn't going to be like this forever and who is going to come up and step into the next role?' I felt blokes were asking the question, 'Can I be the next captain?' And that's what you want everyone to be thinking."

Interestingly, Anthony Rocca stepped down as Buckley's deputy, with the realisation that he was never going to be top dog at the Pies the main factor.

Even earlier this year, Buckley was still marvelling at the performances of Sydney and Adelaide during 2006. At how the Crows managed the loss of Mark Ricciuto so well, and how the Swans could have named more than three captains if they'd so desired, such was the richness of their leadership stocks. "It just seemed that the most disciplined teams were there and they seem to have a depth of leadership - a deep base of guys that are prepared to do the things that leaders do. A lot of that revolves around being team oriented and following the game plan when, I suppose, as an individual you might prefer to do something else," he says.

"I know that we've got blokes that are capable of being great leaders, but I was a little bit concerned about where our leadership was going to go."

The Magpies hired a former SAS officer to smarten things up before the 2006 season, and yet in recent times there has been no shortage of Collingwood players behaving badly. Chad Morrison, Brodie Holland, Alan Didak, Chris Tarrant and Ben Johnson all made headlines for the wrong reasons last year.

Before round 18, Johnson and Tarrant's night out drinking ended in a brawl that left a 28-year-old man unconscious and hospitalised. It was an incident Collingwood chief executive Greg Swann described as "embarrassing" and "disappointing".

But the Pies' leadership group decided Johnson and Tarrant should be allowed to play against Adelaide the following Friday. Before the match, Crow Andrew McLeod speculated that, in those circumstances, his club would have dropped even its skipper and that the position Collingwood had taken had the potential to "eat away at a team".

And yet it seems incongruous that a group headed by one of the AFL's model citizens was earning a reputation for being a group of problem children. The incredibly high standards Buckley sets have long been celebrated and his 24-hour commitment is as devout as ever.

"Wearing the right uniform at the right time, being on time, cleaning up after yourself in the kitchen, keeping your locker room clean, the smallest little things that some people think are totally unrelated, I think they build towards the final end. It's an attitude about having respect and being respectful and thinking of your teammates. And if you do that off the field you'll do it on the field," he says.

But it's the wider question of team culture that Buckley has been contemplating over his 14th pre-season in black and white. Now, perhaps more than ever, Buckley is thinking more about how people follow those in charge rather than how to lead.

"The captain's the captain, but I think the strength of the team isn't necessarily about the captain. And that's something that we're going to put a great deal of focus on - the team-oriented thinking from me to the last player on the list.

"It's about respect for the people you're involved with and the people that have been before, the responsibility you have to the club and the bigger picture. I think once you make that connection it's easy to make the right decisions."

Tarrant has since been traded - "It was going to be more difficult for him to turn over a fresh leaf at Collingwood, no doubt," Buckley says - while Johnson has been re-admitted into the leadership group.

Buckley sees him as a captain in waiting. "I thought that three years ago and I said as much to him," he says. Whether Johnson believed it back then is another question.

But if Buckley's ponderings are on the money, then everyone at Collingwood, not least himself, might be a little bit closer to at least picturing it.

MAGPIE LEADERS

Most games as captain/acting captain

156 Nathan Buckley (1998- )

153 Syd Coventry (1925-34)

123 Tony Shaw (1987-93)

116 Wayne Richardson (1970-75)

105 Phonse Kyne (1938-50)

99 Gavin Brown (1993-98)