Why Nathan Buckley will coach Collingwood in 2010
For one reason RESPECT. Nathan Buckley commands respect when ever he speaks. When Nathan Buckley speaks players will listen. In my short experience at Collingwood Football Club on what was back then the Supplementary List, I experienced first hand what Buckley is like as an athlete and a leader of a football team. The presence he has is amazing. The professionalism and dedication he had for playing for the Magpies was second to none, only Robert Harvey in my opinion would come close.
Buckley is a ready made AFL senior coach, and things are already falling into place for him to return to Collingwood and take the senior coaching position. Mick Malthouse has just signed a deal that will take him up to the end of the 2009 AFL Season, by then Buckley will have had basically 3 years of coaching experience (including 2007 when he missed most of the year with that hamstring injury and spent a lot of his time with Malthouse and the coaching staff). He has just begun his position as the AFL High Performance Coach at the Australian Institute of Sport where he will help mould the careers of the best youngsters in the land. That coupled with the relationship that he still maintains with Malthouse will only further enhance his coaching aspirations.
