Collingwood won the flag in '10 and made the grand final in '11
regardless of what money the senior players were on, buckley and co. were brave to dismantle a successful team in order of future, long term success
If they win another one it may be looked at as brave. If they don't it will be stupid. They could have easily kept the best players and added to the team just like Hawthorn have been doing over the last 4 years. In 2010 they had one of the youngest teams to have won a flag for a while. It's not that they were all ready for retirement and thus should have been turfed out.
Heres a list of players Collingwood delisted/traded/retired the three yrs after their premiership. 2010 Anthony, Bartram, Blight, Cook, Corrie, Fraser, Lockyer (ret), Medhurst (ret), Obree (ret, Prestigiacomo (ret), Rusling (ret). 2011 L Brown (ret), Davis, Dick, Farmer, McCarthy, Stubbs. 2012 Buckley, Ceglar, Dawes (trade), Rounds, Tarrant (ret), Ugle, Wellingham wanted to go home trade, Wood, Yagmoor, Tom Young.
There is just four players who played in the premiership in 2010 who are gone by the end of 2012 Dawes, Davis,Wellingham and Leigh Brown yet they are tracking backwards.
The conclusion was the list they had was ageing well the top 25 players or so, and they could take them no further. Thus they entered into a rebuild phase.At the end of 2013 older players were delisted/retired/traded.
Didak 30yo, Johnson 32yo, Jolly 32yo, Krakouer 30yo, Russell 27yo, Shaw 29yo left for money, Thomas 26yo r f/a who had big injury issues. plus Paine traded to brissie ,Ben Richmond a rookie.
Up until this point what have they lost what is so wrong about what they have done since the premiership in 2010.
To me they were smart enough to see the list they had had done all it was going to do, they had no choice but rebuild and they have managed to do it without bottoming out.
They havent just willy nilly slashed players from their list