In the end, the pressure was just too much for Eddie McGuire and the Collingwood club

Outgoing Collingwood president Eddie McGuire fights back tears as he announces his resignation on Tuesday. Picture: Alex Coppel

There was never going to be any clear air for Eddie McGuire or the Collingwood Football Club.

The storm belting the president, who had already signalled his intention to leave at the end of this season, his 23rd in charge, and the club wasn’t going away.

If anything, it had intensified over the past week, and unless there was a circuit breaker the club’s entire season — every game — would be engulfed by this largely self-inflicted and never-ending crisis. Players, fans and sponsors, could sustain only so much pain.

Quitting the club he saved in the 1990s was never going to be a snap decision, even in the midst of this crisis. His announcement was the result of an accumulation of pressure rather than one specific piece of criticism or attack.

The realisation there was no ­escape had been building within McGuire for days, and by Tuesday afternoon he had finally accepted what many others had known for more than a week.

Perhaps naively, McGuire had hoped there would be some credit for both him and the club for commissioning the Do Better report. But whatever slim chance there was for this was blown away by his bungled “historic and proud” commentary at the press conference on Monday last week.

Again naively, McGuire hoped his apology the next day, in which he admitted he got it wrong, would be enough to staunch the bleeding. But some wounds are so deep they can’t be plugged and he and the club have been haemorrhaging.

Almost daily the pressure mounted as Collingwood premiership player Heritier Lumumba, whose complaints sparked the ­racism inquiry, and other former players and commentators kept the pressure up.

By Monday night, McGuire had started reaching out to other prominent football identities, canvassing the prospect he was considering quitting. More calls to more figures were made on Tuesday morning.

Since his “historic and proud” gaffe, he had received the backing of powerful figures, AFL chief Gil McLachlan and even Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.

Even as McGuire was beginning to draft his farewell speech, listing his many achievements at the club, the Premier doubled-down on his backing, declaring the president was “equal” to the task of fixing the racism within the club.

“You don’t run from problems, you work your guts out to try and fix them,” Andrews said.

“The Eddie McGuire that I know is equal to that task, and I can tell you in my discussions with him, he is very, very committed to doing that work. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fast. It’ll take time.”

But McGuire had already resolved his time was up now, not at the end of the at 2021 season. It was both in his personal interests and those of his club for him to go.

Hawthorn president and former premier Jeff Kennett has claimed McGuire was a victim of the “tall poppy syndrome”.

“I am profoundly disappointed that an individual has been judged on one moment in time and the language he used,” Mr Kennett told The Australian. “Throughout his life he has been a generous individual who has helped many disadvantaged people and groups.

“Those who have attacked him do not come within a bull’s roar of what he has achieved over two decades at Collingwood.”