In the aftermath of last night’s trade exodus, Collingwood supporters have been left furious and wanting answers from the club’s higher ups.
And according to Fox Sports' Tom Morris, such disharmony is being matched by senior figures within the club.
"However disillusioned Collingwood fans are this morning, it is matched by those inside the club. A level of frustration with senior figures that requires plenty of work to reverse before it impacts 2021," Morris tweeted on Friday morning.
Tom Phillips, a man who made the wing position his own, went to Hawthorn for the bargain basement price of pick 65, almost equivalent to a bag of cheezels.
Jaidyn Stephenson, a top-10 pick in the 2017 draft and won the Rising Star award, was packaged up with three-game youngster Atu Bosenavulagi and sent to North Melbourne in exchange for second and third-round draft picks.
Adam Treloar, who had five years to run on his current contract, was traded to the Western Bulldogs in the last minute of the deadline for essentially a future second round pick.
The fans have every right to be upset – on the final day, Collingwood offloaded three players that should be entrenched in their best 22 and were in their grand final team two years ago.
What makes Pies supporters feel even more upset is that the club officials are dancing around the issue, as opposed to being honest about the situation at hand.
Collingwood president Eddie McGuire broke his silence on the situation this morning on Triple M’s the Hot Breakfast.
“It’s the toughest thing when you’re a supporter, because you love your players and your players love you,” he said.
“These days it’s really tough… it’s been a very hard year for everybody. I hate this period."
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley unquestionably described it on Twitter last night as his ‘toughest day in footy.’
“Managing contracted players who love the environment out of the club is a lose/lose situation in the short term,” he said.
“The decisions weren’t popular, but they were necessary.”
What Buckley failed to address was why offloading these four players were necessary.
Collingwood list manager Ned Guy addressed the media last night following the deadline and his quotes did no favours to ease the disillusion and the tension between the club and its supporters.
When asked about Collingwood’s documented salary cap issues, Guy shrugged it off.
“I think it’s a bit of a beat-up, the salary cap issues,” he said on Fox Footy.
“I don’t think it’s a fire sale at all, I think we just wanted to replenish the list and to be able to get in the first round (of the draft) you’ve got to be able to give something up.
“It’s part of the plan we all put together and one we executed today.”
The responses on social media to this have been critical to say the least.
“He’s making himself look like an idiot dancing around it and trying to spin it as a positive,” one tweet said.
“More spin than Nathan Lyon,” read another tweet.
The Treloar situation is undoubtedly the messiest of the lot, with Guy also confirming on Fox Footy that he would’ve still been at Collingwood if his star netball partner Kim Ravaillion wasn’t heading to Queensland to resume her Super Netball career.
“We had some conversations with Adam and (manager) Tim (Hazell) originally around whether his family was going to move to Queensland and whether he wanted to do that,” he said.
“It evolved from having that conversation to he thought he’d look at another opportunity… That was the catalyst for the discussion.”
The way the club has handled Stephenson’s departure has also been a talking point of concern, with the 2018 Rising Star winner telling SEN yesterday that he was shocked and hurt by what happened.
“I heard nothing from the club so I gave Bucks a call myself to see what was going on and he pretty much said for a trade as aggressively as you want,” he said.
“There wasn’t a very clear reasoning… He just said he doesn’t know if I’ve allowed myself to open up to the group, which I don’t necessarily agree with.
“But if that’s how he saw it, he’s the coach and that’s his prerogative… I was obviously very happy playing at Collingwood.”
For all their offloading, Collingwood will now walk into next month’s AFL Draft with picks 14, 16, 65, 70, 75 and 92.