Side by side: McRae, Pendlebury extend Pies contracts

Collingwood have signed senior coach Craig McRae to a two-year contract extension, while the Magpies have also agreed to extend the career of veteran champion Scott Pendlebury, who has signed to play on next year.

The Magpies have added a further two years to the tenure of McRae, who is now contracted to coach the Magpies until the end of 2026, and what will be his fifth season coaching Collingwood. McRae had been contracted until the end of next year, prior to his new deal.

Pendlebury, 35, meanwhile, has agreed to a one-year contract for 2024, which will be his 19th season with the Magpies. Having played 370 AFL games, the new deal would give Pendlebury the opportunity to become the sixth player in VFL/AFL history to reach the 400-game milestone and the first Collingwood player to do so.

McRae quietly agreed to a contract extension recently and will win a pay rise in his new deal, having presided over a transformation of Collingwood’s on-field performance and game style and won admirers for his positive approach – in both game style and people management terms – after his appointment at the end of 2021.

Collingwood confirmed that the Magpies had signed McRae for 2025 and 2026 while agreeing on a one-year contract for Pendlebury, who will play in 2024 as a 36-year-old, having maintained a remarkably high standard into this season, his 18th and his first since 2013 in which he has not been captain.

“The club is pleased to come to an arrangement with Craig and Scott, who have both been instrumental to the development of our football program,” said Graham Wright, Collingwood’s head of football.

“There is stability with ‘Fly’ as the senior coach for another three terms, and Scott as a key leader of the side for at least another season.

“The commitment from both men today speaks volumes for the future of this football program.”

Pendlebury handed over the captaincy to Darcy Moore for the 2023 season after captaining Collingwood for nine years and a record 206 games. One of the most consistent elite players in the game’s history, he has finished top three in Collingwood’s best and fairest, the Copeland Trophy, in 14 of his 17 completed seasons, including a second-placing last year. He is a six-time All-Australian, a five-time Copeland winner and was the Norm Smith medallist in Collingwood’s grand final replay victory over St Kilda in 2010.

McRae, who inherited a team that had fallen briefly down the ladder in 2021, has coached Collingwood to 28 victories in 38 games, coaxing the Magpies to within a point of a grand final (losing the preliminary final to Sydney at the SCG) last year.

He has Collingwood top of the ladder with an 11-2 record, having defying pre-season predictions that the Magpies would stumble after winning so many close encounters in their rise under McRae last year.
McRae won the Collingwood job in an open process after serving a lengthy apprenticeship as an assistant and VFL premiership coach (2019) at Richmond, as head of development at Collingwood – when he tutored American Mason Cox in the game’s skills – and as line coach for one season at Hawthorn under Alastair Clarkson (2021). He was a triple-premiership player with the Brisbane Lions.

McRae took elements of Richmond’s go-forward game style to the Magpies, but also has added his own stamp to a team seen to be declining in 2021, after Nathan Buckley was within five points of a premiership in 2018 and narrowly lost a preliminary final in 2019. McRae has been strongly supported by his assistant coaches, two of whom, Justin Leppitsch and Brendon Bolton, are former senior coaches.

All of that coaching trio are handled by management giant TLA, which Collingwood’s new chief executive, the influential former premiership player Craig Kelly, founded and ran for decades, departing over summer to take over as his old team’s CEO.

Pendlebury, famed for his ability to seem in slow motion, is the next AFL player with a shot at playing 400 games, with ex-Hawthorn and Port Adelaide great Shaun Burgoyne the last to reach the milestone. Richmond’s Kevin Bartlett, Hawthorn’s Michael Tuck, North Melbourne’s AFL games record holder Brent Harvey and Essendon’s Dustin Fletcher are the others.

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