Notes from the game: 2016 Round 11 Port Adelaide

The Pies serve up tripe.



I'm not going to write about the game. It was too dreadful. I can't bring myself to watch the replay.

Someone else's speculation

I heard a talkback caller on SEN today. He captured a view that coincides largely with mine. I think he said he was about 55.

The 2011 Collingwood team was the best he'd seen in his lifetime, better that 2010, 1990, 2002, 2003. From the moment Buckley took over he started shedding players, picking up others in his image (either of himself or of what he thought he needed to mould the team he wanted). Since his inauguration, the team has slid down the ladder (4, 6, 11, 12).

At the half-way mark of his fifth year as senior coach, Buckley coaches a team currently sitting 12th. Finals seem improbable. Tellingly, he has faith in his own game plan, choosing to refer to that rather than the performances of the players after the win over Geelong. But the game plan fails to stand up under scrutiny. At best it has delivered 3 games out of 11 this year (no one could possibly credit the Richmond game as a win, let alone as a win due to the game plan). If the game plan is beyond his players, what's the point.

I realise that the above may not be what the caller said, but it's pretty clear that it's what I heard.

My additions

There's another way of looking at this. Collingwood played 3 impressive preseason games, so maybe you can say that his plan has been demonstrated in 6 games out of 14. But no sooner does that thought arrive than the following rider overtakes it: nobody counts preseason games. Further, Essendon and Brisbane were hardly opposition. So, as delightful as a win over Geelong might have been, really, down in the trenches, Buckley's game plan has been confirmed once in 14 games; the jury is out on 5 of the games; and it has been an unmitigated disaster in 8 games. Most of our losses have been out-an-out drubbings.

For me, far more tellingly, those 8 games have been unwatchable. I can live with losing. I can't watch crap. I've walked out early on the majority of games including the "win" over Richmond.

The wrap

Time for a new plan. Or a new coach.