Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley recently sat down with collingwoodfc.com.au to discuss his observations of the pre-season to date and his outlook ahead of the 2019 season.

Here are the key quotes from the interview.

“Our story’s not done, we're going to chase, don't let anyone else tell us what our story is,” – Buckley at the 2018 Copeland Trophy

Buckley on the pre-season so far

“We’ve begun a pretty strong pre-season campaign heading into the 2019 and (we’re) looking forward to continuing to build on what we felt became instinctive for us last year, which is really to look after one another to explore our best footy.  

“We believe in the program that we've put together and don’t feel like we need to reinvent it. But at the same time we need to aim a little higher with their expectations, I suppose, and their expectations are to get the best out of ourselves and to find out what that looks like when it all comes together.”

“The thing that has impressed me about our group is that we’ve been able to move on and be positive, and focus on every session. And I’ve seen a number of individuals step up and take more responsibility.

“And to see them believe in what they’re doing, to believe in each other and then invest accordingly has been the standard feature in our pre-season to date.

“We’ve still got a couple of months to round it off, and really looking forward to ramp that up so we hit the season pretty hard.”

Buckley on the expectations for 2019

“It's not an easy competition, you know. There’s plenty of sides that are going to have bona fides to be a top-four side, for instance.

“We start the season pretty hot with some challenging games, so we'll get some good feedback early. 

“Those first couple of weeks in the home and away just give us a chance to test ourselves against teams that we respect.”