With Collingwood’s 2016 season having drawn to a close, the club has made the following changes to the structure of its football department for the 2017 campaign.

Graeme Allan, a vastly experienced and successful football administrator well known to Collingwood, will oversee the club’s entire football program – male and female – as General Manager of Football.

With this, Neil Balme is currently considering a role as Director of Coaching which will be dedicated to the welfare, support and education of the significant number of coaches now in the male and female programs.

Marcus Wagner, currently Football Operations Manager for the AFL program, will have the scope of his brief widened to include oversight of the VFL and the recently arrived Collingwood women’s team.

As part of an expanded recruiting department, Derek Hine, General Manager of List Management, will report to Allan who returned to Collingwood earlier this year as GM of Next Generation Academies and Teams (NGAT).

With much of the planning and structure around the NGAT in place, Allan turns to a role vastly different in nature but similar in name to the one he held with the club through the late 1980s and 1990s.

Oversight of the Collingwood netball program, which previously sat with Allan, has been taken over by GM of Netball, Stadia and Community, David Emerson.

Changes to the panel of assistants supporting senior coach Nathan Buckley have also been made.

Defensive coach Ben Hart and forward lines coach Steve Grace have departed.

Hart, inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame this year, was with Collingwood for five seasons and Grace for three.

"'Harty' and 'Gracie' were fabulous assets for the football program. They gave wonderful service to Collingwood, built strong relationships with players and staff and leave with the club’s best wishes," Buckley said.

In response to recent media reports, the Collingwood Football Club would like to note the following:

The Collingwood Football Club was made aware by Graeme Allan, prior to his recruitment, that he is one of the subjects of an AFL investigation that relates to his time with Greater Western Sydney.

Collingwood was also made aware at this time that both GWS and the AFL had concluded or were concluding separate investigations into the matter.

From our discussions on this matter with various parties, Collingwood found no reason standing in the way of employing Allan.

The club would like to make it very clear to all that if, at any stage, information received about any member of staff that brings into question their behaviour Collingwood will deal with that information with the appropriate authorities.