Nathan Buckley sees Travis Cloke as untouchable and Jason Dunstall’s AFL trade suggestion as laughable.
While Collingwood president Eddie McGuire could see the logic behind Dunstall’s idea of trading Cloke, the Magpies coach was much more blunt in his dismissal.
“It’s laughable – Trav’s a leader of the football club, he’s one of the best power forwards in the competition and he’s part of our plans and our future,” Buckley said.
Dunstall said on Monday night that he was not suggesting Collingwood should “just chuck Cloke out”, but floated the idea of trading him now while he had strong value.
“It’s not an insane thing to say,” McGuire said on Triple M.
“It wont happen, but that’s where your list management is … it’s not come up at any football meetings at Collingwood.”
McGuire also rejected Dunstall’s notion that Collingwood might be three or four years from a premiership.
Cloke was a late withdrawal from last Friday night’s upset win over Geelong and Buckley doubts he will be ready for their season-ending game on Sunday against Essendon.
While Cloke is going nowhere, there is growing speculation that GWS star Adam Treloar will join Collingwood.
“Treloar is a player who finds himself on the back page more often than not over the last couple of weeks,” Buckley said.
“We’ll be looking at improving our list any way we possibly can and that will look at the whole range of players that we think are going to do that.
“Adam Treloar would be one of those.”
After starting the season with an 8-3 run, the Magpies are 12th on 10-11 and will miss the finals for the second-straight season.
But Buckley is bullish about what lies ahead.
“There’s an underlying sense of frustration that we were near enough, but not good enough, often enough during the year,” he said.
“But we were really encouraged by our response last week and we want to see more of the same on Sunday.
“We’ve seen some really positive signs around what we’ve been able to achieve over the last 12 months.
“We’ve been more competitive against the better teams.”
