Buckley keeping his focus on now

COLLINGWOOD coach Nathan Buckley is firm that he will not consider his coaching future beyond next weekend.

As the end of the homeand-away season nears, the Magpies’ board will meet on Tuesday night with Buckley saying he expected football boss Geoff Walsh and interim chief executive Peter Murphy — who is conducting the fullscale review of the club — to be presenting the findings.

But the soon-to-be out-ofcontract coach yesterday affirmed that whether he will coach next year will not be on his radar until Collingwood’s two final home-and-away matches are complete.

“It’s not something that I’m thinking about until the end of the year,” he said.

Buckley said he is not expecting to know more before Tuesday’s meeting.

“I believe that Walshy [football boss Geoff Walsh] and Peter Murphy are putting together the information that they’ve gleaned from the review and what the club’s plans are going forward [on Tuesday],” he said.

“We’ve said pretty consistently that at the end of the season would be when those discussions take place. So I’m not really expecting anything until after the Melbourne game [in Round 23].”

Buckley said in June that the final call on his coaching future was a “two-way street” between him and the club, saying that while the club had a decision to make on whether he was the man to lead the club forward, “I’ve also got a decision to make whether I am going to put my hand up.”

Finals are off the agenda for Collingwood.

But Buckley doesn’t believe his players will be any less motivated in the last fortnight of their 2017 season.

Jordan De Goey’s season is over with the playmaker facing surgery on his hip flexor, which Buckley said should not impact his preseason campaign. “We don’t expect it to — he’s been playing a little bit sore the last couple of weeks and it tipped over the edge a little bit quicker than we’d thought,” he said.