Patrick Carlyon: Collingwood super fan Joffa Corfe has always been a polarising force

For years Joffa was the face that people loved to love or loved to hate, a man who tried to articulate the divide between Collingwood and the rest.

Collingwood cheer squad icon Jeffrey ‘Joffa’ Corfe has been charged over the alleged sexual assault of a Melbourne teen. Picture: Alex Coppel

Every team has one, the fan who grows to be an emblem and barometer of a club’s history and performance.

Collingwood everyman Jeff “Joffa” Corfe had a higher profile than most.

His background mirrored the hardscrabble origins of a club built on pride and hope. He was a talisman who boldly articulated the divide between Collingwood and the rest.

Joffa was the face that people loved to love or loved to hate. A sounding board for fan grievances, Corfe morphed into something more than match-day theatre.

His prominence peaked in 2018 when Collingwood made the Grand Final (and lost). At training in the days before, he signed autographs. Earlier that season, he’d presented the players with an hour-long summation of his life.

Magpies captain Scott Pendlebury said afterwards Corfe was more interesting than his public persona. Corfe had urged the team to “play the Collingwood way”.

“You just see him as a real passionate crazy fan, maybe a bit rough around the edge, but the way he presented to the group was very touching, emotional and impressive,” Pendlebury said.

Corfe, now 60, dropped from view in recent times, after moving to Fiji for nine months, then to Queensland on his return.

His romance with Collingwood had dimmed, in part because he posted charged commentary on social media.

Joffa Corfe celebrates in his iconic jacket.

Now facing a historical sex allegation dating to 2005, Corfe has always projected the larrikinism and authenticity of an unashamedly one-eyed football fan. An epilogue awaits the story of a man who inspired a movie and book.

A father and grandfather, Corfe once described himself as three people: Jeff, as he was born, Joffa away from the footy, and Joffa at the game.

The Joffas were “complex”, he told a Herald Sun journalist in 2006: “The impression people get from Joffa at the football is that he’s a rough-loving typical Collingwood, Preston-born bogan.”

Away from the game at the time, Corfe tended to 55 or so men for 30 hours a week at a Salvation Army hostel. He said he wanted to work with the less fortunate, be a friend.

In a 2015 book, Joffa: Isn’t That Life?, Corfe said beating Carlton was “better than sex”, and detailed issues with low self-esteem and job insecurity.

After being expelled from Box Hill Tech, Corfe worked at a plastics factory, in demolition, crushed rocks and served customers.

Several years ago, he took over as an under-14 football coach, missing a Collingwood match to fulfil his duties.

Of an under-16s coaching role in 2019, he said: “Footy isn’t just a sport, it’s another learning mechanism for these young men, and an opportunity for those leading them to instil important lessons and values.”

Joffa the showman emerged after 1999, with the club’s blessing, when he reinvented the cheer squad and redefined the place of the footy fan.

Joffa had a difficult unbringing. Picture: Mark Stewart

His signature move was to don a golden jacket to denote “GAME OVER” when he felt certain of a Collingwood victory.

At about the same time, he began helping the homeless with the Salvos. He hoped to break the stigma, he later said, over epilepsy (his daughter is a sufferer), hepatitis, mental health and homelessness.

He said he wanted to help young people out of the darkness.

Corfe’s childhood was grim. His father was a drunk; his mother was committed after she tried to burn down the house with seven of her children inside. Corfe moved to and from his mother’s care, until she threw him out when he was just 14.

Homeless, he slept on cardboard. He buddied up with a homeless mate, sleeping in a warehouse, until the mate took his own life.

The constant comfort was Collingwood, a love he inherited from his mother, who would berate Magpies critics in the street. He found rescue from hardship in the tribal rituals of Victoria Park.

Long-listed for Australian of the Year in 2015, Corfe said he was chuffed. “I do a lot of work with homeless people … I just get about town as much as I can to aid those who are against the odds … that’s the major pleasure I get out of life.”

Originally published as Patrick Carlyon: Collingwood super fan Joffa Corfe has always been a polarising force