Buck’s different version of truth

FORMER Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has refused to respond to specific allegations made against him and the club by ex-player Heritier Lumumba.

Buckley said his version of events was “very different” to Lumumba’s and would not comment on claims that a pornographic image was shown to Collingwood players during a 2014 team meeting by an assistant coach.

“I’m not going to go into detail of what is in there (Lumumba’s dossier). There’s a lot that’s not right in there,” Buckley told SEN. “If you start denying one and talking about another, it creates a highlight of an issue that I reckon across the board that is not the truth that I know to be true.”

Buckley said about other allegations: “I’m not going to say Heritier is right here or wrong here. That is his perspective of the truth. But there are other versions of the truth that are a long way away from the way that he perceives it.

“Mine is very different from what he presents. But the context becomes important.”

Lumumba’s claims include that during an eight-hour mediation session “Buckley was adamant that I was the problem – I had ‘gone rogue,’ ‘flown off the handle’ and ‘thrown (him, Eddie) McGuire under the bus’ (after his King Kong gaffe)”.

The 2010 premiership player had wanted to present the document to Collingwood as part of a Do Better report truth-telling process but withdrew from formal talks with the Magpies last month, declaring that the club “cannot be trusted to pursue genuine reconciliation with its past”.

Buckley maintained that he and the club had apologised to Lumumba and said that he did not know what it would take to satisfy the premiership player in his quest.

“I’ve apologised to him, the club has apologised to him,” he said. “For the environment that he has been in. Not just Heritier, but the other Indigenous players that have come through.

“Heritier hasn’t been satisfied with that, and that’s why we’re where we’re at now, I think.”