Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury says he and many of his teammates were deeply concerned that senior coach Nathan Buckley would lose his job during the club’s tumultuous 2017 campaign.
Buckley was due to come out of contract late last year, and his tenuous position was a continual talking point until he was handed a new two-year deal in the lead-up to the last round of the home and away season.
“Every player was worried every week,” Pendlebury said on the Jock & Journo podcast.
“I wouldn’t have been shocked either way if in round three or round three he had got the arse.
“No one knew what was going to happen and that’s pretty unsettling for a playing group.
“There was just so much pressure on this football club and credit to how [Buckley] handled himself last year.
“I thought he was brilliant.”
Pendlebury says his faith in Buckley never wavered.
“I was incredibly confident that we had the right man, we just needed time as a side and get a better run with injuries,” he said.
“I’ve always been an advocate of re-signing him and I think we should’ve done it earlier last year, because … every day there was a camera here waiting.
“Whether we won or lost, there was cameras here, there were people getting hounded. It was the subject of the football club, regardless of how well or poorly we were playing.
“The difference this year is it feels we’re back to being a football club [where] not everyone’s talking about us every single day.”
With the Pies sitting inside the top eight, having won six of their first 10 games this season, Pendlebury is delighted with how things have turned out.
“It’s always better when you’re winning. I think that fixes a lot of problems,” he said.
“But it’s the way we’re playing that we’re enjoying the most. You can see the way that we’re playing, there’s excitement, there’s run and dare, there’s creativity.
“[We can] turn the game into a real arm-wrestle, but we’ve added flair.
“We’re in a good space, but we’ve just got to keep coming back to how we want to play football, because I think a lot of players’ strengths a shining within our team.”
Scott Pendlebury and Nathan Buckley have enjoyed a great working relationship for many years (AFL Photos)
Other topics in the latest episode of the Jock & Journo podcast include:
- The worst beard in footy (1:00),
- Why Roaming Brian is banned (2:20),
- Re-living Rat Pack antics (4:15),
- Left-field All Australians (6:45),
- Paul Seedsman or Tom Phillips? (11:00),
- The emergence of our defence (13:30),
- The ‘secret weapon’ among our coaching ranks (20:55),
- Pendles on ‘unsettling’ 2017 (25:45),
- Delegating baby duties (33:00),
- Tom Langdon takes his moment (34:45) and more.
