COLLINGWOOD coach Nathan Buckley is confident out-of-contract duo Jordan De Goey and Darcy Moore will remain at the club.
De Goey's manager Ben Niall told SEN last Thursday there was a potential for a "godfather" offer from another club, given the versatile midfielder/forward's strong form over the past month.
"If he can stay, then obviously we would like to facilitate that. If he gets a godfather offer, then what do you do?" Niall said.
"So, in that sort of situation, where we're not looking to leave, we'll have a conversation with Collingwood, we'll try to get a deal done, but we have to be realistic that if there's a huge gap, then you've got to look at it."
In response, Buckley told 7mate's Talking Footy he's confident De Goey will continue to enjoy playing his footy at Collingwood.
"Let's be transparent with this. A couple of days ago, Jordy said, 'I love Collingwood, I want to stay at Collingwood’, so the manager needs to come out and say the 'godfather' thing just to have a bit of leverage," Buckley said.
"Now that's all part of the fun and games. Jordy's been first-class. He's wedded to the playing group, and the leaders in particular have stepped him through the last few years of his career, have really helped him on and off the field.
"There's a really tight bond between him and the playing group."
On Moore, Buckley said the key position player was annoyed to be on the sidelines rehabilitating his hamstring injury, but the club was not planning for him to be elsewhere next year.
"We haven't looked at any potential that he's not [going to be playing at another club].
"When 'Darce' is injured and not playing, it's not a nice place to be at the best of times.
"When the side is winning, it adds a bit of a niggle the other way, you want to be a part of it and you want to be of worth. He's a driven young man who wants to have as much influence as he can, so he's quite frustrated."
Collingwood is flying this year, part of a logjam of teams with eight wins in the top half of the ladder. This time in 2017, the team had five wins and was languishing in 13th position.
Buckley said the current coaching group was working well together, and a more experienced playing group was helping its rise up the ladder.
"There's no doubt you learn on the job and you learn as you go along. I find now, the group we have at the moment has a good chemistry around how we go about it,” he said.
"There's a lot of questioning, there's a lot of toing and froing, 'is there a better way?', two or three per cent here where we can improve. We put that in our training, we put it to our playing group, then we explore whether we can be better.
"That's not just this year, it has been over the last couple of years. Things take time and we've got a bit of work to do, but we're in decent shape."
