As the Magpies' football chief Rodney Eade flagged at least one forced debut next week, and possibly more, to cover for season-ending injuries to Dayne Beams (knee), Ben Reid (hamstring) and Travis Cloke (ankle), Buckley said he and his fellow club honchos decided last year that regeneration was needed to genuinely challenge for a premiership - but had declined to publicise that because he did not want the players to become complacent.

"I don't see how absolute top-end performance can come about with mediocre expectation," was the coach's justification of not disclosing the outcome of last year's post-season review. He told ABC radio the Magpies' preliminary final exit in 2012, and elimination final exit last year, had forced a brutal evaluation. "Is this list, with our age profile, going to contend for a premiership in the next couple of years and the resounding answer, when we all sat around the table, was no . . . so we needed to take an opportunity to regenerate, whilst giving ourselves a chance to succeed in the short term."

"We would liked to have performed better in the second half of the year but I'm excited about what the future holds for us. We've found some young players that we didn't know we had, and we've had some young players come on that we knew that we had and were on their way. That's surrounded by a nucleus of elite talent," he said.

While Buckley acknowledged the club's hope that free-agent signings Quinten Lynch and Clinton Young would fill the gap left by now-departed established players "hasn't come to fruition as much as we would've liked" he insisted the Magpies would not eagerly pursue established players from rival clubs to help their cause, because they were "very confident of what we're capable of in this next two, three-year period".

"The die in cast for us in many ways. We will look for any opportunities that are going to make us better but we've consolidated on a path that we think is going to ripen and evolve over the next three-to-five years," he said.

The coach said he was bracing for renewed criticism of Collingwood's unprecedented plan to install him in place of premiership coach Mick Malthouse at the end of 2011, but dismissed such criticisms as "the emotive element coming back in".

"There'll be people potentially saying 'I told you this wouldn't work', but that would be ignoring the facts of the matter," he said.

"The last time this club won a flag, prior to 2010, was 1990, and [after that] it was 12 years until it won its next final. We don't want the same thing to happen. We don't want to be that club that goes and wins a flag one year and has to wait 12 years or 32 years for your next one.

"You need to make harder decisions earlier to be able to give yourself a chance to remain sustainably successful, and that's our challenge."

With some  players publicly resigned to the club missing the finals, Eade agreed that selection for next week's match against GWS would partly be done with an eye to the future.

"The answer's yes, but in many ways your hand's forced anyway. You can't play Cloke, Beams and Reid so you're going to have to put kids in because there's a few senior players out already," he told Triple M. "We'll try and go out next week and win the game . . . but it'll be on the back of some guys who are playing their first game."

Eade cited Corey Gault, a 23-year-old key-position player, as a likely contender to debut against the Giants.

Eade's belief the next fortnight would be "a test of character" for the players was echoed by Collingwood veteran Luke Ball, who is yet to declare whether he intends to play on next season.

"The season's not over - we've got two games to go - but we've probably got a choice to make. We can keep going like we are and go through a pretty miserable six months in the off-season or we can dig in . . . and salvage something from the year," Ball told 3AW.