Eddie McGuire opens up on the tough times at Collingwood and how things changed for the Magpies
IT’S been a tough couple of years at Collingwood. Just ask president Eddie McGuire who has been there for every up and down. In an exclusive Grand Final column, Eddie details the Magpies’ stunning year of resilience.
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THIS weekend could be a fabled one in the history of the Collingwood Football Club.
It has been a tough road over the last couple of years, a lot of pressure on a lot of good people, so this is pure joy.
There have been so many remarkable stories of resilience at the club this year, there has been no shortage of inspiration for our premiership assault.
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Every time someone has hit the deck, they have found a way to get back up.
I was down in Moe when Tyson Goldsack did his knee in March. He just thought he had over-extended it, but the next morning I get a phone call that he had done his knee.
For all intents and purposes, his career was over. Suddenly, he is back.
Adam Treloar did a double hamstring. No one has ever seen it before, but he gets surgery, comes back and is playing great football.
Tim Broomhead broke his leg sticking it out against the goalpost.
When all these things unfolded, you wonder what on earth is going on.
Of course, no events on the football field can compare to the family tragedy Travis Varcoe has faced after the recent loss of his sister, Maggie. Jeremy Howe’s mother passed away two years ago which also devastated everybody around the club.
But the resilience that each of those players has shown has served to make us bigger and stronger.
We are living the dream at the moment.
We are not getting ahead of ourselves, not hoping that the dream will come true because we have to go out and play good football, but we’re there and we’re a chance.
There is just a great feeling around this football club at the moment.
In the last few years, the leadership that has been shown by our coach Nathan Buckley, our captain Scott Pendlebury and by Geoff Walsh in the football department has been first class.
We were probably grinding our gears a bit in the last two years trying too hard.
Nathan said, “Let’s concentrate on the 95 per cent that we are doing well, not necessarily on the five per cent that we are not doing well. We’ll address that, but let’s not make that the burden to carry”.
As a result of that we have enjoyed ourselves.
“Loose as a goose” is what John Bertrand said 35 years ago to stop the America’s Cup challenge going to the bottom of the ocean.
At 110 per cent, things break, so we needed to learn how to give ourselves a little bit of a chance.
The Tigers have been able to espouse a similar philosophy and it has worked for them as well. It’s been a very good lesson for all of us, myself included.
I am just really confident that our club is in a great space. Everything is in place now. If we are good enough, we will win.
We know that we are up against a team that has knocked us over twice already this year, so we have to be at our very best.
Clearly we need to get the scoreboard pressure on early.
For our club this weekend, we hope everyone does enjoy it, if you are a Collingwood person or not.
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The West Coast Eagles are a fantastic football club, we have the utmost respect for them. We loved being a part of their one-eyed 60,000 fan base over there a couple of weeks ago in Perth because that’s what we normally are.
But on Saturday, the Collingwood fans will be ready to go. I thought last week against Richmond they were the 23rd player, they exploded at the MCG.
I have no doubt that when the Pies run on to the ground, our 22 players will know that the entire Collingwood nation is going to be behind them - 126 years of black and white.
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