‘You can’t sit on your hands’: Nathan Buckley vows to make early-season changes

A deflated Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has declared he won’t sit on his hands, promising to make personnel and even game plan changes after his side slumped to its third loss of the season.

Despite, on average, being nearly three years older and having 50 more games experience under their belt than the Giants, the Pies went down by 30 points at the MCG to leave them 1-3 and 13th on the AFL ladder.

Speaking to reporters post-game, Buckley declared: “We’re not in a hole but we need to address this right now and turn it around.”

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The Pies coach suggested there’d be tweaks made across various areas ahead of his side’s next clash against the West Coast Eagles.

“You can’t be 1-3 and sit on your hands,” Buckley said.

“We think we’ve picked the best sides to get results – and we haven’t.

Collingwood press conference | 11:38

“We’ve got to look at changes. Whether that’s the way we play, whether we strip things back, the way we prepare, personnel – there’s plenty of things that will be assessed in that regard.

“We’ve got six days to turn it around and get over to Perth. There’s still some things we’re doing OK, but not enough clearly.

Four-time premiership Hawk Jordan Lewis said Buckley would be caught in a frustrating conundrum.

“That’s what you struggle with as a coach. You go through the whole pre-season thinking ‘this is the way the game is going’,” Lewis told Fox Footy’s Saturday Stretch.

Brodie Grundy‘s Magpies are 1-3. Picture: Quinn RooneySource: Getty Images

“But good coaches understand that there’s a period within the first three to four weeks that they get a chance to see whether it works. If it doesn’t, you’ve got to change.

“Alastair Clarkson nearly every year would change something either Round 3 or 4 because the game is not going the way he thought it would.

“It can reinvigorate you as a player, because you probably feel out on the field that the way you’re playing isn’t working. You can sense that, you can feel it and clearly the ladder suggests it’s not working.”

Collingwood lost the contested possession count by -15 to the Giants. Frustratingly for Pies fans, the team had an extra four inside 50s than the Giants yet had five less scoring shots.

Buckley lamented his side’s inefficiency forward of centre and lack of intensity at the contest.

“We’re pretty disappointed. We got belted up at contested ball, which we pride ourselves on,” Buckley said. “That hasn’t been consistent over the first month of the season, so that’s something we need to look at.

Deliberate call irks Pies fans | 00:44

“It looked like in the third quarter we had our game going and for all intents and purposes we were going to be able to grind the result out. But when we encountered some resistance there through the middle part of the last quarter, we ran out of puff.

“The last 10 minutes was really disappointing. But the game was there to be set up in the first half and we weren’t able to do it.

“Not clean enough, not hard enough and not enough weight of numbers to be able to control the game and get it on your terms.”

Buckley said he was disappointed his side got “ground out” of a game for the second week in a row, following the Magpies’ close post-siren loss to Brisbane in Round 3.

“There’s enough evidence there now to really query our consistent contested intent, which has not been a question for this group,” he said. “We’ve got to ask ourselves that, that will come up in review.

“That’s a baseline expectation for all of us. Whether that’s in the air or on the ground, we’ve got to be providing more intensity more often if you want to match, let alone surpass, opposition that you’re going to come up against.”