A DECISION on who will take over from club legend Nathan Buckley as Collingwood’s skipper isn’t expected until early in the new year, but Tarkyn Lockyer took the opportunity to publicly apply for the job on Tuesday.

“It would be awesome, it would be unreal I reckon. Certainly it would be a tremendous honour and something that I would definitely cherish,” Lockyer replied when asked about his leadership aspirations following a visit by Magpie players to the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Lockyer, 28, captained the side for one match in the absence of Buckley and James Clement last season and maintained he wouldn’t change his approach to the game if given the nod for the prestigious role.

“It doesn’t really change [anything] or it shouldn’t change; the whole reason you’re made captain is because of the way you go about your footy and the way the guys see you,” he said.

“I don’t see any reason why you should change the way you go about it.”

Lockyer said coach Mick Malthouse would ponder the decision over the holiday period, with his decision, he suspected, to be made public shortly before the commencement of the NAB Cup.

Despite the lack of designated on-field leaders in the early pre-season period, Lockyer said the Pies had been training strongly, with the subject even used as fuel for a bit of gentle ribbing out on the track.

“I think it’s something more where you can give blokes a bit of crap when maybe someone speaks up at training you go ‘oh okay skipper or whatever’, but we’re lucky that we’ve got a few guys that can do it,” he said.

“If you have a look at the guys who have left in Bucks, Jimmy and Paul Licuria, they were three wonderful players, but the thing is you can’t really notice any change in the way the guys have gone about it.

“The way we’ve trained in this pre-Christmas period has been pretty good, the intensity has been good, so at this stage no, I don’t think that you’d notice a void there.

“When we get into games we’ll have to see how we go, but in saying that, Bucks missed a fair bit of the season last year and so did Jimmy so we’ve had to cope without them and performed pretty well.”

Collingwood’s players are required to put their names forward if they wish to be part of the leadership group, with one of that number then elevated to the top job.

Whoever that might be – and Lockyer maintained he was as in the dark as everyone else – he can look forward to the use of a strong support group.

“The guy who gets the nod, the rest of us will just try and help [him] as much as we can,” Lockyer said.

“All I can say is that the captain is the face of the club and leads on game day, but it’s up to the whole list and the 22 guys that run out onto the ground to really help.”