With much of the pre-game focus on the two rival coaches rather than the teams, an expansive Buckley said on Wednesday morning that he felt some empathy for the ex-Magpie mentor.
Speaking at his club's recovery session at St Kilda beach, Buckley said he felt for Malthouse, who finished up with the Pies against his will in 2011, only to resurface with the Blues 12 months later.
"I do feel for Mick in some ways. I understand he has said himself that he doesn’t want it to be about him, but it's pretty hard to avoid it given his recent connection with the club and then going to the arch enemy," he said.
"Try as he might he won't be able to avoid that, but that happens on the other side of the fence. The real action is going to be on the field come game day and the players can't help but pick up there's going to be a lot of eyes watching."
He was quick to hose down any speculation of animosity between the pair, saying that there was little external understanding of the arrangement that saw the coaching baton at Collingwood passed from Malthouse to Buckley at the end of 2011.
"There's plenty of people keen to drum that up and make it an adversarial relationship," he said.
"I have nothing but respect for Mick, I played under him a number of years as his captain and worked under him as an assistant coach in the plan to eventually become senior coach."
He said they caught up recently at the annual meeting of the AFL Coaches Association and will again at the Peter MacCallum Cup breakfast on Thursday morning.
But there won't be much conviviality on match day. There's nothing unusual about that, Buckley explained. Making nice with the enemy on game day has never been his thing, be it a player or a coach.
"It’s the AFL environment," he said. "I'm a competitor and we’re a competitive club and we love to win."
The Blues upset the Pies twice last season and Buckley said it was hard to get a handle on what Carlton will bring on Sunday given that Malthouse is still introducing a new game plan.
"Clearly the Carlton players would have some confidence going into this match," he said.
"A change of coach brings about a change of game plan in most instances and that has been pretty well documented over the pre-season.
"I'm sure Mick is fairly cagey in that department and I am sure he will use elements of what the Blues have done against us in the past and elements of his own style.
"As he said himself, he is still bedding that down and it makes them hard to scout in that regard going into this game, but we are really worried about what we will bring and our effort and intensity in the first part of those games wasn’t good enough and that's clearly going to be a focus for us."
He said the focus would be on winning contested possession and clearances, areas where the Blues held the edge when they met last year.
The Pies were terrific in that aspect of the game on the weekend and it has been a major focus at Collingwood because the club's first three opponents this year – North Melbourne, Carlton and Hawthorn – excelled in those categories last year and it was not a coincidence according to Buckley that those sides went 6-0 against Collingwood in 2012.
Buckley is forecasting few changes this week, with several of his players on the sidelines such as Dale Thomas, Clinton Young, Alex Fasolo all in the selection mix but facing another week of match conditioning in the VFL. Ben Reid and Ben Johnson suffered knocks against North Melbourne last Sunday but are expected to be available.
Ashley Browne is an AFL Media senior writer. @afl_hashbrowne.
