Collingwood came agonisingly close to a Premiership last year, with Dom Sheed clinching a win for the West Coast Eagles in the final two minutes of the match.

Speaking on SEN's Time On, Magpies coach Nathan Buckley told Sam McClure that despite the heartbreak, the Pies can hold their heads up high.

“There are plenty of teams that have lost games at the pointy end of the year.

“For us, the first Semi-Final was the first game where, if you lose you’re out of the year.

“For us to be able to go through the Semi Final and Prelim on those cutthroat occasions and then to win the game … was a great thing for us."

Despite coming as close as you can to a Premiership without winning, Buckley believes there's still room for the Magpies to improve - without changing their entire gameplan.

“I think everyone wants to improve, everyone wants to be able to handle that pressure.

“I think losing Grand Final sides… go searching for that 10 or 15 per cent improvement and might trick themselves, might beat themselves.

“For us I think we could roll out a very similar plan to last year and still have a lot of growth in us.

“We’re not going to try and be something we’re not, we’re not going to try and reinvent a wheel that hasn’t been fully completed yet.

“We know there’s still a lot of growth from the plan that we had in place last year, for next year. We’ll see what that brings.”

The Magpies kick off their 2019 AFL Premiership season against Geelong at the MCG on Friday March 22nd.

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