"I don't know whether the culture, the working-class history of our club, tells," Shaw said. "It shouldn't. It shouldn't influence recruiting. But everyone says about our midfield — they're workmanlike. How did we get to that stage again?"
Notwithstanding all this, Collingwood made grand finals in 2002 and '03. These proved mixed blessings, filling the coffers again and peppering up morale, but failing to gain a premiership and incidentally blunting the club in the draft.
Then, for two years, injury interfered severely. Once, to use injury as an excuse was considered undignified, but in the modern game, injury cuts painfully deep. Injury detonated season 2007 for Melbourne and St Kilda.
Other factors told at Collingwood. In the restrictive new football market, other clubs were reluctant to do business with it, out of sheer spite, or for fear of awakening the giant.
Ruckman and Brownlow medallist Len Thompson thinks this reflects a wider phenomenon by which the Magpies, despite their lack of success, remain a favourite scalp. "If you offered other clubs 22 matches against Collingwood at the MCG, they'd say: "Hallelujah, we'll be there for it,' " he said. "That's a commercial fact."
But another insider doubts that his club has tried hard enough in the market. "You've got to want them first, and then you've got to go after them," he said. "You've got to take a risk."
Sydney did with Hall and Everitt, but, he argues, Collingwood did not with Lockett, Everitt, Nathan Brown, perhaps Fevola and even Steve Johnson, who was turned away on medical grounds, but is blitzing again at Geelong.
But McGuire is steadfast. "Rather than spending our time trying to get Nick Riewoldt from St Kilda, we've got Marty Clarke out of Ireland and the best young kids from Sydney," he said.
But Collingwood will not close its doors, mind and chequebook entirely. McGuire would not rule out further pursuit of Riewoldt or Judd or Jonathan Brown again, but not by countermanding the recruiters and draining the club.
After the 2003 grand final debacle, the Magpies began again, focusing intently on youth. This year, nine have been blooded. Counterintuitively, Collingwood made the finals anyway. "It seems to me that for the first time, we're trying to build a team in the right way — from the bottom up," Roberts said.
It further appealed to him that for the first time under coach Mick Malthouse, the Magpies were not necessarily taking only solid, dependable types, but looking for a bit of swagger and panache. Dale Thomas, preferred to Xavier Ellis, is the prize example. Chris Egan, preferred to Matthew Bate and Angus Monfries, is another. The jury is still out, but at least it is sitting.
Everyone has been forced to adjust their thinking. McGuire said that suddenly, the idea Buckley might not be around next year did not seem quite so shocking.
The blueprint is still far from finished. All agree that the Magpies need an AFL-quality second ruckman before the debilitation of Josh Fraser is complete.
Thompson noted the crucial role of pairs of ruckmen in every premiership since the turn of the century, but also how Melbourne's season would begin to peter out every year when Jeff White became exhausted. Expect the Magpies to press hard for homesick Darren Jolly.
Collingwood's coffers are overflowing, and so are its grandstands: both are at record levels.
The Lexus Centre, with the great Rose as sentinel, stands as testament to the club's all-conquering status off the field. Understandably, McGuire is not looking back.
"We've rebuilt three times in the eight years I've been at the club," he said. "I'm just worried about this group now."
Yet the plebeian past refuses to recede. When a squad of 40 for the All-Australian team was announced this week, there was not one Magpie among them. McGuire fumed. Again, his team had been acknowledged as good but not great.
Possibly, the most recent time the Magpies plainly had the best team was in the vintage year of 1970 (but, of course, they did not win the premiership).
The most recent time Collingwood won the minor premiership was 1977. Since, 11 other clubs have won this interim prize, Essendon seven times.
It is an imperfect guide. Only 13 times in those 30 years has the minor premier proceeded to win the flag. Port Adelaide finished on top three years in a row for one flag. The Brisbane Lions never finished on top but won three flags.
The Magpies won the 1990 premiership - their sole triumph in nearly 50 years - when neither the minor premier nor the best team.
Nonetheless, a kink remains. In the past 30 years, at least six teams -Carlton, Hawthorn, Essendon, West Coast, the Kangaroos and Brisbane - have enjoyed identifiable periods as the supreme force in the competition, regardless of premierships won. Collingwood has not.
Feats of coaching bloody-mindedness have taken the club to half a dozen grand finals in that time, but none of them were parlayed into an era. The Magpies begin the 2007 finals in their usual place - as outsiders.
Collingwood supporter and historian Michael Roberts says three phases can be loosely identified in those 30 mostly unprepossessing years. In the first, at the start of the '80s, Collingwood spent cavalierly on other teams' stars: Teasdale from South Melbourne, Edwards and Sandilands from Footscray, Cloke, Raines and Morris from Richmond, Brewer from Melbourne, Irwin and Allan from Fitzroy.
"Very rarely has the assembly of a collection of stars worked," Roberts said. "South Melbourne's 1933 Foreign Legion was an exception." One who was involved at the time says: "Everyone wanted to win a premiership. No one wanted to build a club."
Current president Eddie McGuire offers this retrospective on chequebook recruiting: "I've never seen anyone who won Tattslotto become Kerry Packer."
Karma got to the Magpies. Brownlow medallist Teasdale broke down with a knee injury as soon as he arrived. Raines damaged an ankle and lost pace. This was at the height of a recruiting war between Collingwood and Richmond that ultimately proved ruinous for both clubs.
In the second phase, the Magpies rebuilt more soberly, using their 1987 under-19 premiership team as a foundation. It led to the 1990 premiership, predicted to be the start of an era. Instead, Collingwood faltered, crumbled and endured its bleakest decade of all, missing the finals for seven years in a row. Darren Millane's untimely death in 1991 hung like a pall.
"In the '90s, it took us a long time to get used to the new recruiting, the new requirement for people to go out and research kids," Roberts said. "We were still looking to do the Nathan Buckley deals, the Barry Mitchell deals. We still operated like we were a big club of the '70s and '80s, even though the landscape had changed; we were one of the last to twig."
The McGuire/Mick Malthouse coup precipitated change. Still, progress was erratic. Abandoning Victoria Park, though necessary, was for some traumatic. "And luck does come into it," Roberts said. "We had the clear No.1 draft pick, everyone agreed, in Fraser. He turned out to be a very good player, but not a Riewoldt or a Judd or a Hodge."
Judgement sometimes was awry. In 1999, Collingwood traded pick No.3, which would have brought it Matthew Pavlich, for pick seven, used to select reclusive Danny Roach, who played one game. A series of father-son picks backfired.
Star quality was an issue. The Magpies had and have Nathan Buckley, but no other superstars since Peter Daicos, and he was alone in his generation, too.
Concession-blessed Brisbane - their nemesis in '02 and '03 - had a superstar on every line. But stalwart and 1990 hero Tony Shaw wonders how West Coast can turn up Chris Judd, Ben Cousins and Daniel Kerr in seemingly a fell swoop. At Collingwood, of course, average players can seem like stars, confusing assessments.
Some propose that the Magpies, still hostage to their own blue-collar history, eschew flair. It is improbable, not impossible.
"I don't know whether the culture, the working-class history of our club, tells," Shaw said. "It shouldn't. It shouldn't influence recruiting. But everyone says about our midfield - they're workmanlike. How did we get to that stage again?"
Notwithstanding all this, Collingwood made grand finals in 2002 and '03. These proved mixed blessings, filling the coffers again and peppering up morale, but failing to gain a premiership and incidentally blunting the club in the draft.
Then, for two years, injury interfered severely. Once, to use injury as an excuse was considered undignified, but in the modern game, injury cuts painfully deep. Injury detonated season 2007 for Melbourne and St Kilda.
Other factors told at Collingwood. In the restrictive new football market, other clubs were reluctant to do business with Collingwood, out of sheer spite, or for fear of awakening the giant.
Ruckman and Brownlow medallist Len Thompson thinks this reflects a wider phenomenon by which the Magpies, despite their lack of success, remain a favourite scalp. "If you offered other clubs 22 matches against Collingwood at the MCG, they'd say: "Hallelujah, we'll be there for it'," he said. "That's a commercial fact."
But another insider doubts that his club has tried hard enough in the market. "You've got to want them first, and then you've got to go after them," he said. "You've got to take a risk."
Sydney did with Hall and Everitt, but, he argues, Collingwood did not with Lockett, Everitt, Nathan Brown, perhaps Fevola and even Steve Johnson, who was turned away on medical grounds, but is blitzing again at Geelong.
But McGuire is steadfast. "Rather than spending our time trying to get Nick Riewoldt from St Kilda, we've got Marty Clarke out of Ireland and the best young kids from Sydney," he said.
But Collingwood will not close its doors, mind and chequebook entirely. McGuire would not rule out further pursuit of Riewoldt or Judd or Jonathan Brown again, but not by countermanding the recruiters and draining the club.
After the debacle of the 2003 grand final, the Magpies began again, focusing intently on youth. This year, nine have been blooded. Counterintuitively, Collingwood has made the finals anyway. "It seems to me that for the first time we're trying to build a team in the right way - from the bottom up," Roberts said.
It further appealed to him that for the first time under Malthouse, the Magpies were not necessarily taking only solid, dependable types, but looking for a bit of swagger and panache. Dale Thomas, preferred to Xavier Ellis, is the prize example. Chris Egan, preferred to Matthew Bate and Angus Monfries, is another. The jury is still out, but at least it is sitting.
Everyone has been forced to adjust their thinking. McGuire said that suddenly, the idea Buckley might not be around next year did not seem quite so shocking.
The blueprint is still far from finished. All agree that the Magpies need an AFL-quality second ruckman before the debilitation of Fraser becomes complete.
Thompson noted the crucial role of pairs of ruckmen in every premiership since the turn of the century, but also how Melbourne's season would begin to peter out every year when Jeff White became exhausted. Expect the Magpies to press hard for homesick Darren Jolly.
Collingwood's coffers are overflowing, and so are its grandstands: both are at record levels. Understandably, McGuire is not looking back. "We've rebuilt three times in the eight years I've been at the club," he said. "I'm just worried about this group now."
Yet the plebeian past refuses to recede. When a squad of 40 for the All-Australian team was announced this week, there was not one Magpie among them. McGuire fumed. Again, his team had been acknowledged as good but not great.
