Preview 2012 Club Changes

[76woodenspooners]

Tonight marks the winter solstace, the time when the Druids emerge from the night with their pointy hats, chant their mumbo jumbo, dance around the bonfires, and gaze into their crystal balls to see into the future ...

So what is your crystal ball telling you about the 2012 season at the Collingwood club? With Buckley taking over the reigns and Malthouse being "promoted", what are we likely to expect?

Will it be a mass change? Out with the old and in with the new?

Or will the club / Buckley be wanting to maintain maximum continuity, making only the essential changes so as not to rock the boat? (or the results)

Or will it be somewhere in between those extremes?

Will Mick go to Arizona, or will he take a much deserved long holiday with his beloved wife around the steppes of Outer Mongolia? Will the club even go to Arizona, or will Butters instead lead the team to the Kunming Altitude Training Centre in the Peoples Republic of China?

Will Butters even be back? Will our horse flesh guru Hine be back to take the reigns of what must becoming an increasingly more difficult job?

Will our storied backline coach, Mark Neeld take charge of the back 6 for the 2012 campaign , or is he penned in for a senior gig at one of numerous clubs expected to make an end-of-season coaching change?

Who will succeed Buckley as Opposition analyst?

Will Lappin, McRae, Lockyer, Hudgeton and Watters get promoted or dropped or whizzed around on the coaching merry-go-round?

Where will club utility Paul "Where's Wally" Licuria pop up next?

Will our esteemed Captain Maxwell maintain his title? Or will the baton be handed over to heir to the throne - Prince Pendlebury? Or somebody else?

Will club stalwart, Anne Martin, sign on for another season , or will she get poached by Sheeds to go to Team GWS?

Will yet even more get onto the membership bandwagen? Or will people drop off?

Will any of this depend on whether we go back-to-back in 2011? Will the "premiership window" remain wide open, or will it be closing?

So many questions! What is your black and white Crystal ball telling you about 2012?

(This assumes that the Buckley / Malthouse change will happen - there are other active threads that host the debate about that; there are other active threads that host discussion about the end-of-season player list changes)

 

[76woodenspooners]

There will be forces wanting to keep changes to a minimum to smooth the transition between coaches. And yet Buckley will want to stamp his authority lest there be any "... but that's not the way Mick did things" nonsense going on. There'll be no problems between Mick and Buckley because they're both too wise and mature about that - it'll be more of an issue for the playing group.

A big challenge for the club, and it's a challenge it faces now rather than in 5 months time, is how to keep the coaching and support staff personally and professionally challenged and driven and finding a reason to stay? Take Rowdy as an example - if the guy was ambitious (and how do you become successful in sport unless you are?) and the Senior Coach role was closed to him - where else did he have to go?

My prediction is this - none of the current assistant coaches will have their current roles. Bucks will want to keep as many of them as he can, but still make things different and keep them stimulated by shuffling them around. If there are any wholesale changes to the assistant coaches then they'll be done in 2013 (unless the club can't convince them to stay).

An exception to this will be Neeld - you'd think he'd have a good chance at moving onto a senior coaches position in 2012.

In any case there'll still need to be a new assistant coach required to fill the spot vacated by Buckley.

I reckon Nanette is good to go to the Louis Vuitton winter sales now, because come October her and Mick will be on a European Vacation - with Mick dropping in to have a yarn with Arsene Wenger the other Emirates Sponsor affiliates (AC Milan, Hamburger SV, Paris Saint Germain, Olymipiacos). No Mount Humphrey this year for him.

Arizona as a destination will depend on what Butters thinks and whether he wants to stay. If he wants to stay and take the team down to Antarctica, then down to Antarctica they'll go. If he's cosy with Arizona, then Arizona it is. If he leaves, then unless they can replace him with someone who's had experience with Altitude training before then they'd want to keep it simple and go back to Arizona.