“Even this week,I was really focused on today. I wanted to get the job done as best we can and it was awesome to be able to play the way we did and get the result,” he said.
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“My initial feeling has been to get to this point,take some time for myself and,I said on Wednesday to my boys,I have still got a long life to live,have still got passions to chase.
“Collingwood will always be a passion and I will always want to see it as an organisation,and the people within it,prosper. I will be supporting from afar but now there is a little bit of open space and a little bit of blue sky. I think we all want that - it’s just a matter of what you fill it with.”
Buckley said the foundations of a promising Magpies unit were there,pointing to the fresh blood of the likes of Max Lynch,Jay Rantall and Trent Bianco.
“Pendles[Scott Pendlebury] isn’t going to be there forever. Steele[Sidebottom] isn’t going to be there forever. Jeremy Howe and Tay Adams are still to come back,Brodie Grundy didn’t play tonight,so we look a lot deeper now than we did six weeks ago. That’s due to experience and due to exposure,” Buckley said.
Demons coach Simon Goodwin lamented his team’s lack of pressure and poor ball use,particularly inside attacking 50. The Demons had only 44 tackles and conceded 124 marks,including 12 in their own forward 50.
“We have to tidy up our ball[use] going in on entry,we need to compete better forward of centre and we need to defend to a high level to win games of footy,” Goodwin said.
Magpies forward Darcy Cameron said Buckley would complete the team review on Tuesday,and then Robert Harvey will take over as caretaker coach after next week’s mid-season bye.
The Magpies can now formally begin the processof finding Buckley’s successor.
Buckley said he had not given any thought to whether he would coach again,but the football world has not seen the last of him,whether that be at a club or in the media.
As the six-time Copeland Trophy winner said pre-match:“It’s the end of something but the start of something else. That’s the cycle of life. I am not gone yet,mate.”