Former Collingwood recruiter Matt Rendell is not at all surprised that list manager Ned Guy’s tenure at the club has come to an end.
The Magpies announced on Thursday that Guy had stepped down following an off-season which resulted in Adam Treloar, Jaidyn Stephenson, Tom Phillips and Atu Bosenavulagi moving to other clubs.
The former player manager took over as Pies list boss at the end of 2017 and will stay on in the role until after the Mid-Season Draft in early June.
Rendell personally believes that Guy did not watch a great deal of footy outside of the AFL.
“It wasn’t surprising. I haven’t spoken to anyone about it or anyone at Collingwood. It was a disaster, not of his all own making, the last trade period,” Rendell said on SEN’s The Captain’s Run.
“That was a list management monumental stuff up not only of one, but two or three years. Everyone has to take responsibility of that list management group.
“He was trying to manage the outcome the best he could. He didn’t have much cards to deal with because everyone knew it was a fire sale.
“Ultimately, the footy manager is responsible. List manager does all the ground work, but the footy manager signs off on TPP (total player payments) and salary cap stuff. He has to sign off on trades and contracts.
“Ned’s background is in finance and I think that’s why they got him in, to try and fix up the TPP, but it didn’t quite work out that way.
“My experience was that he didn’t watch much footy. People are coming into the club in recruiting and list management, you have to love watching all sorts of footy. I watch AFL, VFL, women’s and under 18s, I’ll go to the local clubs and watch them play. Any grade of football I’ll watch them.
“I don’t think Ned was that keen on watching a lot of footy. From that point of view I thought it was a really poor appointment by Geoff Walsh, to tell you the truth.
“And no surprise it has ended up like it has.
“The biggest problem for Collingwood is they’ve got one recruiter, Derek Hine, to do all the heavy lifting.”
Fox Footy’s Tom Morris also put forward his opinion of the situation, empathising with Guy who was thrown into a very tricky situation when the 2020 trade period kicked off.
Morris is adamant that Guy should not be solely to blame for what he describes was an “unmitigated disaster” for the Pies.
“I think Matt Rendell started out pretty well talking about Ned Guy and how it’s not only his fault. I think that’s pretty clear cut,” he said on SEN’s Dwayne’s World.
“Clearly, the list manager has to have a significant responsibility over what happens in that trade period, but I think this is an entire club issue that has been festering for quite some time.
“To say Ned Guy he has got a finance background sort of gives this idea that he’s just like a banker sitting at a desk and crunching numbers. I think that’s a bit unfair on Ned Guy. He was a very accomplished player manager.
“He is quite personable and easy to get along with. I don’t think his communication was that bad. I think he just got caught up in a storm that was probably partly his doing, but also largely others’ doing, and it just created this situation where he couldn’t get out.
“Given he was the frontman in a trade period where the club was trying to offload these players, he had to be a good communicator to sell the message. If he wasn’t, then it had to be Nathan Buckley, and if it wasn’t Buckley, it had to be someone else.
“In the end, they couldn’t find anyone that could spin it enough that we could all believe it and it became a complete unmitigated disaster.
“I’m not too harsh on Ned Guy. There’s other people involved who deserve as much criticism as him.”
Guy will remain in the role until June 2 before current football boss Graham Wright takes over on an interim basis until a replacement is found.