https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au The complete history of Australia's greatest sporting club Tue, 30 Jan 2024 23:13:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.21 https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/the-coaches/ Sun, 19 Mar 2017 02:42:25 +0000 http://cfc-forever-staging.qodo.com.au/?p=11003 Jock McHale. McHale is arguably the most famous name in Collingwood history. He’s certainly been the game’s most fabled coach, not just for his longevity and games record, but also for his achievement in piloting the club to no fewer than eight Premierships. It’s no wonder that the AFL has named its award for each season’s leading coach after him. But the club has also had plenty of other outstanding coaches along the way, such as Phonse Kyne, Bobby Rose, Tom Hafey, Leigh Matthews and Mick Malthouse. Not all of them have enjoyed the ultimate footballing success (Rose, in particular, was desperately unlucky). But every one of them has given his all. That applies even to Collingwood’s two most short-term coaches. Ron Richards filled in while Neil Mann was coaching the Victoria team in 1974, and is officially credited with a coached-two-won-two coaching record. The other historical anomaly came in the 1930 Grand Final, when Jock McHale was sick in bed at home. While no coach was appointed for the day, Treasurer Bob Rush delivered a famously stirring half-time speech so is sometimes credited with having a coaching role on the day (though not officially by us or the AFL). Good trivia questions, those two. Of course there were no coaches in the club’s earliest days, with off-field preparation usually handled by the captain, in conjunction with the head trainer. Match-day moves were the province of the skipper. The club’s first coaches were senior or recently retired players. It was not until 1977, when Tom Hafey came across from Richmond, that Collingwood finally looked outside its own nest for a senior coach. But no matter their background, every single one of Collingwood’s coaches has put his heart and soul into the job, devoting huge reserves of time and energy into taking the Pies as far as he could. All that work is aimed at one thing – returning the Magpies to the top of the tree. As fans, we always hope that moment is going to come next season. So do our coaches.

Years	Senior Coach
1904	Bill Strickland
1905-06	Dick Condon
1907-08 (part)	Ted Rowell
1908 (part)	Bill Strickland
1909-11	George Angus
1912-49	Jock McHale
1950-63	Phonse Kyne
1964-71	Bob Rose
1972-74	Neil Mann * (Ron Richards filled in as senior coach for two games while Neil Mann was coaching the Victorian side.)
1975-76	Murray Weideman
1977-82 (part)	Tom Hafey
1982 (part)	Mick Erwin
1983-84	John Cahill
1985-86 (part)	Bob Rose
1986 (part)-95	Leigh Matthews
1996-99	Tony Shaw
2000-11	Mick Malthouse
2012-21 (part)	Nathan Buckley
2021 (part)	Robert Harvey
2022-	Craig McRae

]]> https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/the-coaches-leigh-matthews/ Thu, 20 Nov 2014 00:23:33 +0000 http://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/?p=9414 Coach: 1986-1995 Games coached: 224 In the mad minutes after Collingwood broke the longest and most embarrassing drought in its history in 1990, its chairman of selectors Ron Richards summed up the feeling of so many at the club and of its legion of supporters in one sentence. Asked what had made the difference after 32 years, Richards said: “We broke the drought because we employed the greatest footballer of the post-war era and watched him become the greatest Collingwood coach.” Sure, there was a bit of hyperbole in this comment. After all, Jock McHale won eight premierships as a coach, while Matthews’ flag return from 10 seasons as Collingwood coach was one – albeit one of the most important in the club’s history. But, in many ways, the sentiment was not too far off the mark. Matthews helped to transform a football club anchored by the failures of the past into a modern team committed to one another and divorced from the pressure that had attached itself to so many other black and white sides. The former Hawthorn champion was all about the present – and the future – rather than the past. He urged his team to make their own history, not to be burdened by a past that was not of their making. Matthews was appointed as an assistant coach to the great Bob Rose for 1986 – having first been approached by Rose during Hawthorn’s 1985 series – with the view that he would take over for the 1987 season. But after three losses to start the 1986 season – amid a tumultuous time on and off the field at Victoria Park – Rose called Matthews on the Sunday morning and told he was ready to hand over the reins immediately. Matthews was excited by the challenge, but realistic. He told the media: “I make no promises whatsoever … Talk of premierships and the (top) five are pretty much folly. Let’s just take it a week at a time.” He insisted he would look to build a side based on defence. And he wanted to indoctrinate the professionalism that had driven Hawthorn through the 1980s into those already at Collingwood, and those who come in the future. Matthews had a win in his first game as coach and would oversee a debut season where the Magpies would win 12 games and miss the finals only on percentage. In a sign for the future, the club’s under 19s side, comprising players such as Gavin Brown, Damian Monkhorst, Mick McGuane and Gavin Crosisca, won the flag. Yet all the good work was undone the following season as Collingwood slumped to 12^th, winning only seven games. Matthews would recall how some questioned his coaching that season – “there were some unhappy people … mainly in 1987 when things were going bad. Then I doubted – everyone doubted.” The next two seasons brought finals campaigns, but more frustration. The Magpies finished the home-and-away season second in 1988, yet went out in straight sets with losses to Carlton and Melbourne. And a year later Melbourne once more proved a stumbling block in an elimination final as Collingwood finished fifth. Few people saw what was coming in 1990, but Matthews knew his team – one he had carefully and sometimes ruthlessly constructed – was building towards something special. In the first year of the rebadged Australian Football League, Collingwood had an outstanding home-and-away season, finishing second to Essendon, and yet Matthews’ team was able to produce an even more remarkable finals campaign. Having drawn with West Coast in the qualifying final, the coach inspired his team onto a big win in the replay and a comprehensive victory over Essendon in the second semi-final. Matthews kept his players insulated from the external pressure that was building on them. He would explain: “We’ve probably had to divorce the team from the club a bit … The club’s been here for a hundred years and it will be around for another hundred, but the team is the players who are here now.” In a sense, Matthews had purged the ‘Colliwobbles’ tag from the minds of the players. And it paid dividends as the club won its first premiership since 1958, with a dominant performance to restrict Essendon to only five goals in the Grand Final and to win by 48 points. That night, in the ebullience of the moment, president Allan McAlister basically guaranteed 38-year-old Matthews the Collingwood coaching job for life. McAlister told the premiership gathering at the Southern Cross: “(Matthews) won’t get away from us until he is too old and decrepit to do anything for anyone else.” But the next five seasons failed to produce another flag. A premiership hangover cost the club in 1991; it was unlucky in its finals campaigns of 1992 and 1994; and it missed out entirely on September action in 1993 and 1995. At the end of 1995, that “job for life” guarantee was gone. Matthews was told that after 10 seasons – and despite bringing about the most cherished of all the club’s premierships – the board wanted to go in a different direction. He was philosophical, saying: “I can see where they’re coming from, so there’s animosity. Sometimes you just need a change and sometimes the easiest position to change is the coaching position.” McAlister, who was also about to leave the club, told the media he had no regrets about his statement from 1990. “Of course, I don’t. That was after a flag. Be realistic. Indeed, I’m so sad today.” Matthews still had plenty of football life left in him. He would “get away”, coaching the Brisbane Lions to three successive premierships (2001-03), including wins over Collingwood in the latter two years.]]> https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/nathan-buckleys-debut-in-black-and-white/ Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:26:09 +0000 http://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/?p=4090 March 26, 1994 Buckley played his first match in Black and White after a much-publicised move to Collingwood following a brilliant debut season with the Brisbane Bears in 1993. And while Buckley’s Magpie debut game was more a workmanlike performance than displaying the wonders that would come not too much later, it was the start of a relationship that still has at least three seasons to run. Buckley, the player, would become one of the greatest in the club’s history, stretched out across 260 games in Collingwood colours. Buckley, the coach, is still very much an unfinished product, with much promise and the certainty that he will run through until at least the end of the 2016 season. Incredibly, there have been only two years of the past 20 that Buckley has not been at Collingwood – the two seasons he spent in the media and at the AIS Academy in 2008 and ’09. Not even those former Magpie officials (chief among them, Graeme Allan) who fought so doggedly, and to the borderline of AFL rules, to secure him, could have imagined Bucks’ stay would be so long. There had been some collateral damage in the Buckley trade. Collingwood had to compile a list of 10 “untouchables” who were off limits and the rest of the playing list was effectively on the table. That meant the Magpies ended up relinquishing the popular Craig Starcevich and promising young player Troy Lehmann as well as their first draft choice for the readymade star. In hindsight, two decades on, it looks to be one of the trades of the century, even if then coach Leigh Matthews later conceded the zeal with which the club chased Buckley left a sour taste for some players. Buckley had even been heckled by Collingwood players a year earlier when he played against them in Round 12, 1993, especially from Graham Wright, Tony Francis, and, of course, Tony Shaw. “‘Wrighty’ was yelling out ‘I hate you, I hate you’,” Buckley recalled before his first game with Collingwood. “That’s part of the game. It’s business, and out on the field you’ve got no friends on the opposition side.” But the intensely driven young footballer desperately wanted to play for a traditional Victorian club. And while there were suitors aplenty armed with chequebooks ready, willing and able, many suspected it had always been Collingwood who was at the head of the negotiations. As Patrick Smith wrote on the eve of Buckley’s first game: “Distraught wooers of Nathan Buckley, their hearts broken and cheques torn up, will tell you that under the centreman’s Brisbane Bears’ jumper last season beat a heart of Black and White.” Buckley’s recruitment to Collingwood was one of the trade stories of the 1990s. After one season playing for the Bears, he was always going to head to a Victorian club in 1994. What’s more, he wanted to play for a team steeped in history, and the Magpies fitted the bill perfectly. He gave a succinct explanation of his mindset in a “Hero Poster” published in the Herald Sun on the day of his first game, against Fitzroy (who would merge with Brisbane within a handful of years). Asked by Oula, 11, from Spotswood Primary School, why he had left Brisbane, Buckley answered: “I chose to change because I was keen to play for a Victorian club with tradition.” And he gave an indication of his confidence and ambition when he answered questions from Lauren, 12, and Jamie: “Life’s a competition, and once I had the chance, I felt compelled to do it. It’s something I do well.” Buckley wasn’t worried about the pressure or the expectations that would have weighed down others, nor even the suggestion from some that he alone would put the Magpies back in the flag frame. With refreshing honesty that some saw as over-confidence, he would say: “I’ve said 100 times before that the expectations I have of me can’t be outweighed by whatever other expectations might exist. I like to win. “I’m excited with the prospect of playing for a club that has such a tradition of playing important games every week, playing in games when something is riding on it and your reputation has to be proved every time.” His former Brisbane coach Robert Walls predicted Buckley would thrive on the challenge: “He’ll love the big games; the big crowds; the MCG; the 90,000 fans; it will bring out the best in him.” The first time he wore the Collingwood No. 5 jumper wasn’t at the MCG nor were there 90,000 fans in attendance. It was Victoria Park, and 25,602 fans, including this reporter, went to cover the first chapter in Buckley’s life as a Magpie. The chapter would end on a winning note, but only after a bitter struggle against an old rival. If Buckley wanted footy tribalism, this walk down footy memory lane would be right up his alley. He had played earlier in an intra-club at Glenferrie Oval, matched up at centre-half-forward on Michael Christian. There were other non-official games – one against St Kilda in what was Nicky Winmar’s return to Victoria Park after the racial storm from a year earlier, a Foster’s Cup clash with North Melbourne (another team that desperately wooed him), and a clash against Aboriginal All-Star team in Darwin, where he had played some of his junior footy. By the time he ran out for his first official game, the fans were excited by what they had seen in the pre-season and what they could expect to see in the coming decade or so. Members of the so-called “Collingwood unofficial selection committee” – grass roots fans who went by the names of Alf, Brian, Lou, Jack, Bruno and Johnny – were clearly excited, telling one newspaper reporter that “Boom recruit Nathan Buckley’s been a fantastic get. We’re talking Brownlow Medal this year for him. Best recruit since Phil Carman, and a nice bloke with it.” Who knows if it was them, or others, who launched a Brownlow plunge on Buckley that month, backing him to win $55,000, cutting his quote from 25/1 to 14/1? He wouldn’t win the Medal, but he would more than win over Collingwood supporters and his own teammates in the coming weeks and months. Even before that first game, the Herald Sun’s Mike Sheahan forecast that Buckley and Saverio Rocca would become Collingwood’s “most lethal combination” since Barry Price and Peter McKenna in the 1960s and ’70s. Matthews would say of Buckley leading into that first game – “He is not the perfect player. He knows that…that’s what he works at all the time.” Buckley would be overshadowed by an unlikely figure in that opening game for Collingwood, kept relatively quiet by a kid called Tom Kavanagh, who was the son of Brent Crosswell, who had caused his own share of trouble for Collingwood in two Grand Finals – in 1970, for Carlton, and in 1977, for North Melbourne. Fitzroy coach Robert Shaw took the punt on Kavanagh playing on Buckley, and for at least for three quarters, it paid dividends. Collingwood had only played seven of its 1990 premiership team that day. A number of them had moved on, or been moved on, while others were nursing injury and form concerns. One of them, the ever popular James Manson, had transferred to Fitzroy and was playing his 18th game for the Lions. Manson’s unusual kicking gait sometimes proved a frustration to Magpie fans, but nowhere near as much as his 50m-plus goal (yes, it really did happen) for the Lions against Collingwood that day. It was one of the most enjoyable goals he would kick in his footy career. One of the Pies’ 1990 heroes was making a brave comeback from a debilitating illness that day. Graham Wright was playing his first game since being diagnosed late in 1993 with Guillain-Barre syndrome, which had brought about a short-term limited paralysis and a loss of 11 kilos. And on a day that reached more than 30 degrees – prompting Magpies fitness conditioner Mark McKeon to call on the AFL to institute night or twilight matches in early season games – Leigh Matthews wondered post-game whether it had been the right thing to play Wright. He said: “You shouldn’t say it, but I suppose if it’s over 25 degrees, we really shouldn’t play him.” The Fitzroy team had two future senior AFL coaches in their side that day – Paul Roos and Ross Lyon – while the Magpie team would produce Buckley and Tony Shaw as future coaches. Buckley wasn’t the only first time Magpie that day. Jon Hassall played his debut match, while Brett James, Jon Ballantyne, and Stephen Ryan, recruited from Norwood, Footscray and Richmond, also turned out in Black and White for the first time. A kid called Andrew Tranquilli was buttering up for his second game, and he would make it a memorable one, kicking a goal. It was a strangely fluctuating match of many twists and turns. Collingwood led by two points at the first change after a scrappy first term, then Fitzroy responded with seven goals in the second to lead by 14 at half time. Midway through the second term, it looked as if there would be a big upset in the offing, with the Lions leading by as much as 26 points. Then the Magpies edged into the margin, and by three-quarter-time had cut it back to a more manageable, but still difficult 14 point deficit. As the Collingwood team gathered to hear Matthews’ final speech just in front of the Ryder Stand side wing, the Collingwood crowd began to chant and urge the home side onto a special final term. Almost on cue, Buckley began to break clear of his tag, and some outstanding play from the recruit saw him kick the first goal of the final term after only one minute had elapsed. The chant got bigger, and fans were pleased to see the new boy was earning his keep. If there were two turning points, one of them came from Matthews and the other from some undisciplined play from Fitzroy forward Darren ‘Doc’ Wheildon. The first one came in the third term when the coach switched Jason McCartney from centre half-back to centre half-forward, He responded with one of his best performances in a Black and White jumper. The second was when Wheildon “flattened” James after he had taken a mark and the resulting 50m penalty saw James fire the ball off to McCartney, who kicked one of his three goals of the final term. Fitzroy didn’t throw in the towel, though. We should have expected nothing less from a team The Age described as: “a team that refuses to be bowed by defections, disasters, and dire predictions of financial destruction.” McCartney’s second goal 12 minutes into the final term finally gave the home side the lead for the first time since the eight-minute-mark of the second quarter. And then Paul Williams’ fifth goal came from a free kick and it extended the lead to nine points. But the Lions gained one back when the busy Matthew Armstrong set up Ross Lyon for a goal. But Collingwood’s most effective player, Mick McGuane, swept the ball away from the next centre bounce and McCartney outpointed Roos and kicked the sealing goal from outside 50m. The Magpies held on to win the match by 11 points, all due to a seven-goal final term that was partly inspired by Buckley’s best quarter for the match, and some brilliance from Williams and McCartney. Matthews said: “They (Fitzroy) started well and we just never quite picked them up to the very end. We were just fair today, just reasonable.” That might have summed up Nathan Buckley’s game, though it was said a lack of opportunity was as much a cause as the close checking of Kavanagh. It was a start, however, and his 18 touches and 1.3 gave those there that day a glimpses of what was to come from Buckley. And even now, 20 years on, there is still more to come from him at Collingwood. Round 1 1994 Collingwood    3.1, 6.5, 10.10, 17.12 (114) Fitzroy             2.5, 9.6, 13.6, 16.7 (103) Goals Collingwood: Williams 5, McCartney 3, Rocca 2, Ryan 2, Buckley, McGuane, Richardson, Shaw, Tranquilli Fitzroy: Armstrong 3, Boyd 2, McGregor 2, Sartori 2, Hogg, Lyon, Dunstan, Manson, Wheildon, McCarthy, Sporn Disposals Collingwood: Brown 24, McGuane 21, Buckley 18, Fraser 15, Watson 15, Williams 15 Fitzroy: Roos 27, Armstrong 26, Boyd 22, Sartori 18, McCarthy 18 Crowd: 25,602 at Victoria Park on Saturday 26 March, 1994]]>