Collingwood President Eddie McGuire Very Confident Mick Malthouse Will Be At The Club In 2012 Post by: Ronny Lerner 26 August, 2011 - 10:51 AM

(The Slattery Media Group)

Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has told Triple M’s Hot Breakfast that he was ‘very confident’ outgoing coach Mick Malthouse would stick with the club in his director-of-coaching role next season.

The Herald Sun reported on Friday that Malthouse would not be at Collingwood next year in any capacity and that an official announcement won’t be made about that until after the Magpies’ 2011 campaign.

But Eddie insisted that ‘nothing has changed’ since Collingwood’s succession plan was announced in July 2009 and that Malthouse would not coach another club next season.

“Mick Malthouse has a three-year contract at the Collingwood Football Club post this year,” Eddie told Triple M’s Hot Breakfast.

“He knows very much at the moment what’s in front of him and what the agreement is, he knows what the role is, he’s had that in front of him for a fair while now to contemplate and as far as I’m concerned it’s business as usual as regarded in that contract, as we announced two years ago.”

“He will not coach anywhere next year, take that to the bank.”

However, Eddie couldn’t guarantee that Malthouse would see out the full three years of his commitment to his yet-to-be-determined role and even left the door open to the possibility of the three-time premiership mentor coaching another club in 2013.

“The year after (2012) hopefully he’ll be at Collingwood,” Eddie said.

“He will coach until the last siren (this season), from there we’ll assess how he’s going.”

“The intention is for him to be the director of coaching at the Collingwood Football Club, we’ll let things evolve.”

“If the bloke is out on his feet and he hasn’t got a shot to fire, you’re not going to flog him.”

“If a club wants to come and buy Mick Malthouse out of his contract in a year’s time, then I’ll take the meeting.”

Eddie also denied there was friction between Malthouse and the three other key figures at the club - himself, incoming senior coach Nathan Buckley and CEO Gary Pert.

“Mick and I have never been closer,” Eddie said.

“I’ve never said any of this (publicly) before, Nathan Buckley came to me about four months ago and said ‘I now want him (Malthouse at the club) more than ever’.”

Will Malthouse stay at Collingwood next year?

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