Buckley’s insight into why All-Aus panel overlooked Neale, which award he rates highest

All-Australian selector Nathan Buckley has given some insight into how 2023 Brownlow Medallist Lachie Neale missed the side.

Neale was not among the nine midfielders selected in the team, though the umpires deemed him the best player of the season.

Buckley first outlined what makes the Brisbane champion a star of the competition.

“Lachie Neale is a gun. He deserves the status that he has got in the competition and he has always been seen as a top five player, but he is off radar, he is off broadway and he does do it a little bit more by stealth,” Buckley told SEN’s Whateley.

“His unique traits – his clean hands, his fast feet out of stoppage and setting up his teammates, he does that more from the inside than the outside which is not as flashy.

“He is the Greg Williams of the modern era with the way the way he sets his teammates up.

“He’s pretty good by foot. He’s not elite, but he does some flashy things by foot which is done with his elite vision.

“They’re the attributes of his game that I see that put him in that elite status.”

Buckley and the All-Australian selectors however deemed Marcus Bontempelli, Zak Butters, Nick Daicos, Christian Petracca, Connor Rozee, Jordan Dawson, Zach Merrett and Caleb Serong ahead of him when they selected the final side.

The former Collingwood coach says he felt Neale had a lesser year based on his lofty standards, but explained the panel’s reasoning.

“We’ve got Bontempelli, Butters and Daicos as our three premiere midfielders for the year. That was the decision the panel made and I think that’s pretty accurate,” he said.

“Rozee’s a high half forward and played some of his football there. The difficulty with Neale, the way I view it, Bontempelli, Butters and Daicos and probably Caleb Serong, are the ones selected ahead of him in Lachie Neale’s primary role.

“He missed out on the ability to play or have bona fides in other parts of the ground that Rozee and Petracca did to make the field in the high half forward positions.

“Dawson I thought had an exceptional season and he was on the wing for a fair period of time. Merrett you could question and the next guy in line was probably Tom Liberatore.

“We thought that Lachie Neale’s season wasn’t, and his name was mentioned and discussed, we thought as a collective that he was off his lofty standards and that is the challenge of expectations.

“That’s the difficulty of when you set a standard for yourself.”

Of the major AFL awards, Buckley rates the AFLCA Award – won this year by Zak Butters – the highest, saying the coaches don’t get enough credit for their analysis of the game.

“I believe the senior coach’s role in football is underrated and diminished in terms of you are a competitor for one of the clubs and your utterings are tainted by your competitiveness against the other 17 clubs and your self-interest,” Buckley said.

“I think the 18 men that are in that role carry a gravitas and a weight and a care for the game above how they are perceived to have.

“So I think that the Coaches Award is the most valid and significant and accurate award in the game because I think these guys, and their match committees, are the ones that know the players that have the most influence and cause the most trouble to them in any particular encounter.

“So I look at those votes and believe that that award itself is the closest to the most accurate description of the effective players of the day.”

Butters won the Coaches Award from Bontempelli and Daicos.