FOUR weeks ago, two big football clubs could not have been happier when they peered into 2016.
This AFL season was going to be their best in a long time, and the fresh air of October to early March had stimulated senses to the point where fairytales seemed like they could come true.
Big-name players had been sought and gained, particularly in the case of one of the clubs. There was encouraging NAB Challenge series form, one club completing a clean sweep of matches, the other securing a win over last year's premiers.
The best players from both organisations were fit, we were told, and ready to have career-best seasons.
As the days ticked over towards the official start to 2016, it was a surprise to no one when the two clubs adhered to the now common practice of extending the deals of their soon-to-be off-contract coaches.
Collingwood re-contracted Nathan Buckley to the end of 2017. Richmond, after what we were assured was a rigorous review, pushed out Damien Hardwick's arrangement till the end of 2018.
Both clubs won't be backing away from those decisions. But if they are to be honest with themselves, after witnessing what their teams have displayed in the opening three matches of the season, and more pertinently, what their coaches are now saying publicly, they would be viewing matters far differently.
That off-season air must be mesmerising, as both clubs had finished 2015 in disappointing circumstances, the Magpies winning just two matches after the half-way point and the Tigers badly eliminated after the first week of the finals for a third consecutive season.
That was the reality – both clubs were significantly off the fast pace.
Richmond and Collingwood have locked away Hardwick and Buckley before they should have, or needed to.
Apart from gaining respite from a media they don't respect anyway, it serves little gain to act in such a way.
This is not to say Hardwick and Buckley should not be coaching their clubs beyond 2016. They may both be the perfect long-term fit.
However, in attempting to stave off media questioning, both clubs have backed themselves into sharp corners.
And it is not as if the media pressure – which does dominate the thoughts of way too many supposedly experienced football officials in ways that it shouldn't – won't come anyway.
This is particularly so after both men have offered public comments in the past week that have deviated dramatically from previously stated offerings about their clubs.
Hardwick's observation after a bad loss to Adelaide last Saturday that the Tigers may need to "take a little half-step back to go two steps forward" was counter to the messaging coming out of Punt Rd in the off-season.
This, remember, is a club that kept reminding us that it was unlucky not to get a finals double chance last season. It is a team which clearly, despite the views of outsiders, felt it was close enough to have an immediate crack at a premiership that it aggressively targeted, and was bitterly disappointed to miss out on, Dan Hannebery, Paddy Dangerfield, Adam Treloar and Harley Bennell. It fought hard for, and secured, Chris Yarran, a move that has not worked to this point.
So rattled is Richmond after its ordinary 1-2 start to the season that it refused to make players available to the media after the weekend's loss to Adelaide.
A downcast Damien Hardwick after Richmond's loss to Adelaide. Picture: AFL Media
And then, with that being the case, alongside Hardwick's curious "step-back" comments, the coach felt the need to front for two radio interviews the next day in an attempt to regain control of the narrative about the Tigers.
He failed, despite the confidence in one of those interviews where he said, "We'll still make the eight."
Buckley is clearly shellshocked by the events of the opening three rounds. He was blunt when he said on his regular television gig, "We're not getting it done. It's a coaching issue as much as a playing issue."
Buckley and his president Eddie McGuire loathe comparisons of Buckley's four years as coach with those of previous coach Mick Malthouse.
In many ways, their loathing is valid, for the Magpies have deliberately set off on a very different path under Buckley.
But facts are facts and no one can be sure where that path is headed. Having made consecutive Grand Finals in 2010 and 2011, Buckley has steered the club to a preliminary final, elimination final, 11th and 12th. The past two finishes have come after the club was 8-3 at the half-way point of the season. Since round 11 last year, Collingwood has won three of 14 matches.
The media pressure both Richmond and Collingwood desperately sought to bypass is indeed apparent anyway. It was always going to be if results weren't good, and both clubs find themselves in the precise positions they too cutely tried to bypass simply for the sake of it.
Hardwick and Buckley are feeling that media pressure too.
Hardwick is a media loather, quite possibly hater, from way back, and he got angry at sections of it that attacked his captain Trent Cotchin.
That's fair. Everyone who works in the media is fair game. But the most effective way to divert media focus away from negatives is to stop losing games in the manner in which the Tigers did against, strangely enough, Collingwood in round two, and to stop sending the type of mixed messages contained in the "half-step back" comment last Saturday.
Buckley is as good a football observations commentator as there is, and more articulate than many who work full-time in the media.
He too has angrily reacted to issues, in rightly highlighting specific factual flaws in a report about drug use at his club but also in making an unnecessary wide-sweeping comment about certain identities supposedly needing to stop making themselves the news via their commentary.
The two men are now openly engaging in battles against the media, the part of the football industry from which their boards sought to protect them when extending their contracts off-season.
There would have been nothing wrong with Richmond and Collingwood letting their coaches play out the previous contracts without the guarantees of futures beyond those deals.
Sometimes, uncertainty about a future leads to something special being created in the present.
Both clubs seem a very long way from anything special right now.
Twitter: @barrettdamian
