Dermott Brereton recalls inaugural Collingwood-Essendon Anzac Day clash
Dermott Brereton grew up thinking there was only one rivalry in footy. Then he played on Anzac Day for the first time and his view changed forever. The AFL great recaps the 1995 epic which started a great rivalry.
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I grew up in the ’70s thinking that there was only one rivalry: Carlton versus Collingwood.
There were other teams, such as North Melbourne, that seemed to have enough ability to make a Grand Final seemingly every year. There were teams such as Hawthorn that seemed to be full of brutes that powered their way to premierships.
I was a kid who loved Collingwood, idolised Peter McKenna, Len Thompson and, ultimately, fabulous Phil Carman, while all my mates seemed to barrack for Carlton.
And they beat us in what was then regarded as the greatest Grand Final comeback in 1970.
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Even when League Teams came on the television late on a Thursday night, the intro had footage of a Carlton-Collingwood brawl. The enemy was both feted and despised.
Never did I imagine that the AFL, and even Collingwood, could develop a rivalry with any other club that would come close to the emotional consequences that a Carlton-Collingwood clash could inspire.
But it has. And very fortunately, I had a view from within.
My final season in the AFL was with Collingwood in 1995. Allan McAllister was club president and the great Leigh Matthews was coach.
Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy had approached the AFL and the RSL with the Bombers-Magpies fixture idea. Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton threw his weight behind the concept and we were off the ground.
In my previous 14 years playing footy I had never seen a club president address the team at anything other than a presentation night or public event. But in the week leading up to the clash, McAllister spoke to us privately in a very small room underneath the old stand at the spiritual home of the Collingwood Football Club, Victoria Park.
I had only heard presidents talk of their clubs, their hopes, their dreams and the sell-ability of the club’s future. But this was different.
McAllister spoke of honour, bravery and patriotism. He was magnificent.
He spoke of the people who had touched him in his life and how the wars had affected them. He spoke of how much honour there was for this club to be represented on this day and what it meant in an historical sense.
After the speech, I missed the rest of the build-up.
My first-born child, my daughter Keely, was born 48 hours before the big day. I missed the last training run because of the birth and on the second last night before the game I managed to sneak away for a couple of hours’ sleep in the guest chair in the birthing ward.
I questioned whether I would be able to play but we were pretty “light on” in several areas.
Firstly, it was Round 4 and we were 0-3.
The tall forward stocks were low as the talented but unlucky young West Australian Lee Walker had again hurt himself the week before against Geelong.
We had a very young full-forward in Saverio Rocca, a first-year talent in Aaron James and just myself to round out the forward line.
It was lucky for me because Matthews was virtually compelled to play me for my experience alone.
Back in those days we never came on to the ground for a warm-up so we were in the rooms for about 2½ hours, oblivious to how many people were coming through the gates.
I remember stepping on to the ground from the rooms under the Great Southern Stand and looking behind me. “Wow, there’s a few in here,” I said to a teammate.
Unfortunately, I didn’t do the occasion justice and played poorly.
In what was already a tired body that had lost its pace and mobility, I recognised early on in the game that my reflexes were dull and, even at that stage, sluggish.
I remember I was manned up by Mark Harvey and Tim Darcy. We’d locked horns many times earlier in our careers at different clubs, ‘Darc’ and I, but now I felt as though they had a physical advantage.
So with that knowledge in mind, I saw the young Rocca play the game of his life and monster promising young Bombers backman Dustin Fletcher.
It was one of the great games by an individual our code has seen on that day.
In the last quarter we were down by a goal and the ball was coming long to the front of the goalsquare.
Rocca was coming back with the flight of the ball and it was apparent that Fletcher could not quite make the same position to spoil. Darcy edged to my left to make the contest but I sensed him slide that way so I took his run and called Saverio in.
It took a lot of trust for a youngster in just his third season to trust a vocal “call-in” while he had nothing but eyes for the ball. But he did, taking the mark and then kicking the goal to level the scores.
Moments later Nathan Buckley pierced the corridor with seconds to go. By now Rocca had at least three opponents on him and Bucks drove the ball towards him.
The way he was going no one would have been surprised if he beat all three but unfortunately he couldn’t, the ball was cleared and the siren went.
In hindsight, Bucks could have taken another bounce and hit the goal line himself. Either that, or chipped short to James, whose man had peeled off to triple team Rocca. It was a missed moment but I think, in an historical sense, the draw helped solidify and give this annual game its first moment of mystique.
In the rooms after the game Leigh didn’t want us to get morose. He told us to sing the song because he wanted us to keep the faith and that the game wasn’t a loss.
It was a lacklustre rendition and my mind was in such a haze I had to double-check the scores to see whether or not we’d won.
It was a pleasure to play that day.
The game was brilliant and while my childhood ambition was to play in a Carlton-Collingwood game — it didn’t happen — I did get to play in one of the greatest home-and-away matches of all time, the first Anzac Day clash.
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