Buckley inspires in the face of pressure
COLLINGWOOD midfielder Travis Varcoe has praised Nathan Buckley for his handling of the hype that surrounds him as coach of the biggest club in the country.
Varcoe made the move to the Magpies at the end of 2014 and is yet to play a final under Buckley, but that looks like changing in 2018 after his side’s solid start to the season.
If they are successful in reaching the eight it will be the first time the coach has led his former team to September action since 2013, with the external pressure surrounding him in recent years reaching feverish levels.
But Varcoe said the sixtime Copeland Trophy winner could not have been more impressive throughout what had been a lean period.
“For anyone who is involved in a footy club, when you’re winning it is a lot more relaxed and the pressure is not on as much,” he said.
“But to Bucks’s credit, and I think about this all the time, I don’t really know too many people who could be in that high-pressured senior coaching role that he is and get hammered as much as he does being a Collingwood legend.
“The way that he handles himself away from the cameras, and when they are on him, is first-class.”
Having played 39 matches in his first two years at Collingwood, Varcoe managed only eight games in 2017 with hamstring injuries restricting his ability to get any continuity in his football.
But he is reaping the rewards of an uninterrupted summer and says when things get tough he often thinks of Buckley’s situation.
“When things get hard for me, I think, ‘well you could be getting hammered at every angle’, and with Collingwood being the big club it is, he has had to deal with that throughout his career and then as a coach,” Varcoe said.
“He holds himself so well, and he obviously looks more relaxed (this year), but the winning contributes to that.
“I don’t think he has done anything amazingly different but the win-loss ratio probably allows him to not have that external pressure. You never, ever want to see your teammates or coaches go through those hardships, but it is definitely something that I sit back and look at and think, ‘how does he do it?’”