Nathan Buckley opens up on internal struggle during ruthless AFL career

Collingwood legend Nathan Buckley has admitted the way he treated his teammates during his illustrious AFL career was “disgraceful”.

The 280-game Brownlow medallist, who went on to coach the Magpies for another 218 games, has opened up in a wide-ranging and self-reflective interview on The Imperfects podcast.

Buckley made a name for himself during his playing career as one of the most hard-nosed midfielders in the competition, when his intensity on the field was matched only within his persona off it.

The 52-year-old captained the Magpies between 1999 and 2007, during which time he drove the standards of his teammates with a cold and unforgiving ruthlessness.

It was a leadership style of indoctrination that he now admits he regrets because of how unapproachable it made him to his peers.

But beneath that steely outer layer of brutality hid an insecurity concealed so deeply within that it became almost involuntarily kept.

Speaking on The Imperfects, Buckley said he recalled having tears streaming down his face during a training session, effectively crippled by the pressure under which he put himself, but not even knowing why it was happening.

The seven-time All-Australian speaks about himself during his playing days as almost a different person, in a “different life”.

“The guy that had tears running down his cheeks was thankful that it was raining periodically, because he never wanted to show weakness, never wanted to show vulnerability,” Buckley said on the podcast.

“And I reckon if people did know, they’d be like, ‘Err... freak’.”

Buckley described his former self as “metronomic”, even during the early part of his coaching career, and said asking for help was so foreign to him that it wasn’t within his capability.

“My frequency was (so high). When I was in that mode, I would have been that difficult to approach,” he said.

“I would have had that much armour around me that people probably got to the point where they knew they weren’t going to get to me, they were just going to bounce off this armour that I’d put on, and this intensity — and that’s if they can get anywhere near me.

“It was partly a protective mechanism.

“I didn’t see it (as me struggling). And there were coping (mechanisms): drinking heavily on a weekend, because if I couldn’t control it all, then I wanted to forget it, so I went down that cycle — ‘I want to control everything, but then I want to control nothing’.

“There were a lot of ineffective, damaging behaviours that were in there. Probably the way around you viewed yourself, as much as anything. But a lot of numbing and coping strategies to try and handle that intensity of performance.”

It’s so obvious to him now, looking back, but Buckley said not even his coaches could get him to drink the water to which they were leading him.

“I had coaches that were continually trying to have this conversation with me,” he went on.

“The one that was consistent was my attitude; on-field attitude towards my teammates. And my very visible disappointment, vitriol, whatever you want to call it.

“My body language was terrible at those early stages, and it was disrespectful to myself, to my teammates, to the team, to the club, to the AFL, to the position and the benefit that I had of running around on the middle of the MCG.

“To behave the way that I behaved was disgraceful, really, when I step back.

“I’ve never actually voiced that specifically.”

He said it wasn’t even something he was consciously doing, such were the metronomic settings of his inner computer-like system.

“I clearly wasn’t conscious of the impact (of what I was doing), because if I really cared and was conscious of the impact, it would have been something that I would have changed,” Buckley said.

“But, one, I didn’t have the awareness, and two, I probably didn’t care enough, because I thought that I was justified in seeing the world the way I saw it and being the way that I was. Otherwise I would have changed it.

“What I learned from that in retrospect is, as a coach or a parent or a leader or a mentor, you can give someone the right information, but it just might be at the wrong time. They might not have the ability to absorb the information you’re giving them, or the direction, or the advice.

“So, it’s so important to be consistent with the feedback that you give. And it might be the 20th time over a two-year period that you’ve given that same bit of feedback before that feedback meets the person where they can receive it and then do something about it.”