Collingwood won 20 games in the 2011 home-and-away season, losing to Geelong on two occasions, before once again being beaten by the Cats on the final day in September.
Despite being the dominant side all year, the Pies couldn't get past Geelong in the grand final, which was also Mick Malthouse's final game in charge of Collingwood.
Speaking on the new Sacked podcast from the Herald Sun, Malthouse opened up on that season and what it was that cost the Pies a premiership, but said it had nothing to do with overconfidence.
On grand final day, Malthouse played an injured Ben Reid on Tom Hawkins, and conceded on the podcast he may have waited too long before making a switch, although he said that in a perfect world, he would have gotten a retired star to do the job on the Geelong powerhouse.
“If you had your life over again, I would talk Simon Prestigiacomo out of retirement,” Malthouse said.
“He may have said no.”
Famously, Prestigiacomo withdrew himself from the 2010 grand final due to injury, and retired at the end of that season at 32 years of age.
Nathan Brown was Prestigiacomo's replacement, although he suffered an ACL injury, and instead of picking defender Tyson Goldsack, Malthouse went with Alex Fasolo in the side in the 2011 decider.
“Would it have changed the result?” he said.
“It’s a hard call to say that it would have, but who knows?”
Malthouse also spoke about his decision to train on the MCG before the qualifying final, which led to the injuries to Alan Toovey and Reid, who would miss the QF win over the Eagles, before playing injured in the Pies' other two finals.
“I don’t know why I wanted to train at the MCG … (as a training venue it) was a bloody monster to me,” he said.
“For some reason we trained at the MCG to familiarise ourselves … well, we’ve only played their 14 times (that year).
“How ridiculous am I! (Collingwood director of sports science) David Buttifant came up and said ‘we’ve just lost ‘Reidy’ and ‘Toovs’.
“I said, ‘What, at training? What did they do? Did they fall down the stairs?”
Collingwood would trail by just seven points at three quarter time of the grand final, before a five-goal to zero final term saw the Cats win their third flag in five years.
