How Collingwood stirs emotions like no other club
Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, Collingwood certainly stirs the emotions of football fans. A foundation club who has dominated the league for long stretches, no other club boasts so many rivals or grand final near misses.
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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Collingwood stirs the emotions of football lovers.
The Magpies were a foundation member of the Victorian Football League. Collingwood was the most successful club in VFL until Carlton in 1987 and Essendon in 1993 overtook its premiership haul. And no other club boasts so many rivals, or grand final near misses.
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FORMATION
Collingwood wasn’t Collingwood’s first football club.
The modern Magpies started life as Britannia, the first club to call Victoria Park home.
It formed at Collingwood’s Crown and Anchor Hotel in 1877. Britannia wore red, white and blue and played at the Richmond Paddock and Willow Flat before heading to Victoria Park in 1882.
But the Victorian Football Association (VFA) never accepted the working class Britannia side into what was then the elite Aussie rules competition despite strong results in its local competition because of a rule limiting the number of VFA teams to 12, and Collingwood’s low socio-economic status.
The Collingwood Football Club arose when Britannia disbanded in February 1892. A week later, a mass rally drew tens of thousands to the Collingwood Town Hall — residents, business leaders and politicians united by a desire for a homegrown Collingwood team in the VFA.
The new club played Carlton in its first VFA match on May 4, 1892. Four years later, it played and beat South Melbourne in the first recorded grand final in the elite competition, held because the two sides were deadlocked at 14 wins and 85 goals for at season’s end.
Then, in 1897, Collingwood joined Carlton, Melbourne, South Melbourne, Essendon, Fitzroy, St Kilda and Geelong to form the breakaway Victorian Football League.
The Magpies gained their first VFL premiership in 1902, beating Essendon by 33 points.
GOLDEN YEARS
Collingwood had three distinct eras when it was the envy of the VFL competition, but one of those periods bore very little premiership fruit.
Its first golden era began with that 1902 flag. The Magpies went back-to-back in 1903 with a two-point win over Fitzroy, and took home the flag again in 1910. They also lost grand finals in 1905, 1911 and 1915.
Its second purple patch came as World War I drew to a close, with premiership wins in 1917 and 1919 that linked to an incredible run of success through the 1920s and ‘30s, when it dominated the competition and the Brownlow Medal.
Collingwood appeared in 13 out of 20 grand finals across the two decades, winning six of them — four in a row from 1927 to 1930 (a feat that’s never been equalled) and in 1935 and 1936.
Collingwood’s 1936 victory, in the VFL’s 40th grand final, was Collingwood’s 11th VFL premiership — a pretty good strike rate.
Syd Coventry was its first Brownlow medallist in 1927, and its players took out six Brownlows overall between then and 1940 — Albert Collier, brother Harry Collier (1930), Marcus Whelan (1939) and Des Fothergill (1940).
The link between these first two incredibly successful eras was Jock McHale.
McHale played 261 games for the club from 1903 to 1920, including a then-record 191 matches in a row from 1906 to 1917, the 1910 premiership as a player and the 1917 flag as captain-coach.
McHale coached a then-record 716 games — all for Collingwood — from 1912 to 1949 with 467 wins (including seven premierships), 237 losses (including eight lost grand finals) and 10 draws.
He built his coaching career on the notion that no player was more or less important than any other, to the point that he and each player earned the same pay each week.
McHale retired after 1949. Another Magpies coach, Mick Malthouse, finally overtook McHale’s record number of games coached in 2015, but Malthouse had coached four sides to reach that milestone. McHale was a one club man.
The next golden era lasted for 30 years from the early ‘50s until the early ‘80s, although it yielded only two premierships.
Phonse Kyne succeeded McHale as coach in 1950, and led the Magpies to second place behind Geelong in the 1952 grand final. McHale is credited as one of the architects of Collingwood’s 1953 premiership under Kyne, breaking a 17-year drought with a stirring eight-point victory over Geelong led by club greats including Bob Rose and captain Lou Richards.
It was the last game McHale would ever see. He had a heart attack the next day and died on October 4, 1953, aged 70.
Collingwood traded blows with Melbourne through the 1950s and into the ‘60s, with the Dees having the upper hand. Collingwood won in 1953 and 1958, but Melbourne took out the ’55, ’56, ’60 and ’64 flags against Collingwood in a string of victories.
Collingwood’s greatest premiership drought began after 1958.
The side lost final after final in the 1960s and ‘70s, and ironically Lou Richards dealt the cruellest blow of all when, after the 1960 grand final loss, he coined the term Colliwobbles.
It was a slight corruption of “collywobbles”, an old term for an intestinal disorder.
It was a footy disorder that struck repeatedly — against Melbourne in 1964, in the one-point loss to St Kilda in ’66, Carlton’s come-from-behind win in 1970, in the drawn grand final and loss to North Melbourne in 1977, in a nailbiter against Carlton in 1979, in an 81-point drubbing by Richmond in 1980 and against the Blues again in 1981.
Collingwood was always close to the top but when it counted, the club was all at sea. That changed in 1990, the first year of the AFL.
THE AFL ERA
The Magpies saw in the AFL era in 1990 with a bang — its first premiership in 32 years with an eight-goal triumph over Essendon. After so many years of pain, the Magpie Army erupted in joy.
Captain Tony Shaw, coach Leigh Matthews and leaders including Damian Monkhorst, Mick McGuane, Tony Francis and Darren Millane became club legends.
One year and one day later, on the morning of a team reunion to celebrate the 1990 flag, Millane was killed instantly in a drink-driving crash in Albert Park, aged 26.
The ‘90s were largely lean times for Collingwood, and times of change as Eddie McGuire succeeded Allan McAlister as president and initiated a new era of financial prosperity.
After 107 years at Victoria Park, Collingwood switched its home ground to the MCG in 1999 and established training and administration facilities at Olympic Park.
Some of the Colliwobbles pain continued in the 21st century with losses to Brisbane in 2003 and 2004, Geelong in 2011 and West Coast this year, taking Collingwood’s grand final loss tally to 27, a league record.
But there’s always the 2010 grand final victory, Collingwood’s last, when it thumped St Kilda by 56 points after a draw the previous week.
And the Magpie army hopes desperately that Collingwood can go one better in 2019.
COLLINGWOOD
VFL/AFL Premierships: 15 (the last in 2010), runner-up 27 times
VFL/AFL games played/won/lost/drawn: 2485 games, 1504 won, 951 lost, 30 drawn
Longest serving captain: Nathan Buckley, 161 games from 1999 to 2007
Longest serving coach: Jock McHale, 714 matches from 1912 to 1949
Longest serving player: Tony Shaw, 313 games
Brownlow medallists: Syd Coventry Sr (1927), Albert Collier (1929), Harry Collier (1930), Marcus Whelan (1939), Des Fothergill (1940), Len Thompson (1972), Peter Moore (1979), Nathan Buckley (2003), Dane Swan (2011).
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