SOMETHING very strange happened in the final 11 rounds of the 2014 home and away season.
The Collingwood Football Club, simply, quietly disappeared.
Players either fell with injury or weren’t capable of dealing with elevated responsibilities, supporters dropped off, expectations plummeted.
From equal second on the ladder with an 8-3 win-loss scoreline, the club sunk to finish 11th on the back of a 3-8 sequence to close out the year.
The spin doctors at Collingwood are world class, and president Eddie McGuire and CEO Gary Pert have masterfully staved off what could easily have been carnage. Announcing a fan summit after a shock and embarrassing loss to the Brisbane Lions in Round 21 was a public masterstroke.
Internally, the situation has been different, much more heated. McGuire, as is his right, went on an in-house rant in the same week, demanding answers to why so many players fell to injury for a second consecutive year. At one stage of his blow-up, no one felt safe in his job, particularly high performance manager Bill Davoren.
No matter what slant the club powerbrokers place on season 2014, it can properly be viewed only one way – as a failure.
Ninety minutes before the Pies began the season, back in mid-March in an Etihad Stadium match against Fremantle, Pert made a statement which is now blowing up in his face.
"I would suggest not only playing in finals for the next three years, but I would expect us to be top four and winning a premiership during that period of time,” Pert said of the expectations on his club.
The narrative around Collingwood’s passage through 2014 remained positive all the way through to the day the club reached its 8-3 scoreline, after a win against Melbourne on June 9.
That night, coach Nathan Buckley said there was a “lot of upside to us … in the short and medium and long-term”.
Asked if he felt Collingwood was a premiership contender this year, he said: “We fully believe our best footy in 2014 is good enough to beat any team … we think our best footy is pretty good.”
Ten matches later, McGuire publicly wrote off the year when he announced the fan summit would be held.
A win against GWS the following week was then lauded as something it wasn’t. Yes, it was gutsy, as Dane Swan, Brent Macaffer and Clinton Young were all out of action by early in the third quarter. But that’s all it was, as GWS was also depleted of key manpower.
One of the more damning statistics relating to Collingwood this year came last Friday night, when just 48,973 spectators attended the Round 23 match against Hawthorn.
Technically and mathematically, the Pies were still a chance to make the finals on entering that game, yet as they had done throughout 2014, some fans couldn’t be bothered. For each of the previous four seasons, Collingwood had managed to attract crowds of 70,000-plus on an average six occasions. This year, that happened just twice.
McGuire rightly points to unfavourable scheduling of matches, particularly three consecutive Sunday twilight matches, for the fan-fadeout. But as bosses of other clubs have been muttering privately, “Welcome to our world, Ed.”
The highly regarded Davoren survived the scrutiny, with club records showing that injured players missed less matches in 2014 than they did in 2013. The many soft tissue ailments are of major concern, though, as the club continues to delve deeper and deeper into its review of 2014.
On taking over from Mick Malthouse at the end of 2011, Buckley took stock and allowed 2012 to play out without great personal imprint.
That changed at the end of that year, when Sharrod Wellingham, Chris Dawes and John Ceglar were moved out, and Quinten Lynch (then 29), Clinton Young (26), Jordan Russell (26) and Ben Hudson (33) were recruited.
At his post-match press conference after the Pies had lost to Port Adelaide in the 2013 elimination final, Buckley said the Magpies needed to ask themselves questions relating to culture, environment and personnel.
Days later, out went one-time favourite sons Dale Thomas, Heath Shaw, Alan Didak and Darren Jolly. In came Jesse White, Tony Armstrong, Taylor Adams and Patrick Karnezis.
When Collingwood secured the 2010 AFL Grand Final, much was made of the average age of its successful team – 24 years, 57 days. It was younger, even, than the Baby Bombers of 1993, and the youngest premiership side since Hawthorn of 1978.
If Tyson Goldsack stays with Collingwood, there will be 12 players on Collingwood’s list from that 2010 success, with four at other clubs.
Of the 12 remaining, it must be asked: who is a better player, at the end of 2014, than he was then?
We’ll give the exercise a crack. We’ll answer “yes” on Dayne Beams, Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom, Goldsack and Macaffer, and “no”, for a variety of reasons, some of which Buckley has no control over, to Nathan Brown, Alan Toovey, Heritier Lumumba, Ben Reid, Dane Swan, Travis Cloke and Jarryd Blair.
The recruitment of Lynch and White have bombed, and that hasn’t been surprising to a lot of football watchers.
With injury forcing Nick Maxwell into retirement and Buckley himself leading Luke Ball down that path, Pendlebury is suddenly a young captain with no obvious outstanding leadership support.
Three players – Cloke, Pendlebury and Swan – will collectively soak up $2 million, give or take a couple of hundred thousand dollars, of salary cap space next year, which means it is unlikely Collingwood will be able to attract a big-name player to assist Pendlebury.
Season 2014 was disastrous for the high-benchmarked Collingwood.
Given Pert, only seven months ago, was talking publicly of consecutive top four finishes and a premiership before 2016, the Magpies have in the past six weeks cleverly managed to avoid massive supporter backlash.
But should 2015 also result in an August finish, there will be no such luxury. McGuire knows the fan summit trick won’t work two years in a row.
