It’s there in black and white as the Magpies stare down woeful record against Lions

This is Collingwood’s 45th grand final — including two draws — and its chance to either add to the 15 premiership cups in the trophy cabinet or to the 27 torturous times.

Captains Darcy Moore and Harris Andrews with the permiership trophy at Friday’s grand final parade.Picture: David Crosling

Collingwood bring the show. The big show. Enormous highs and crushing lows. Love them or hate them, and there’s only two options if you are a Victorian, there is no side like them for crowds and occasion, and it is no coincidence that most of the biggest grand finals in football history are black- and-white affairs.

Brisbane, given their relatively short history, aren’t too sluggish themselves. The barnstorming team won three premierships in the early 2000s — two of them against the Pies.

They have been a constant in finals series of recent years but it is almost two decades since they last played a grand final. The Magpies have not been here since losing to West Coast in 2018.

This is Collingwood’s 45th grand final – including two draws – and its chance to either add to the 15 premiership cups in the trophy cabinet or to the 27 torturous times that coined the Colliwobble.

When they win the earth trembles, when they lose it’s the birds stop singing because no club has a more passionate fan base (or polarising presence).

The form guide for the 2023 premiership is fascinating. Brisbane have dominated Collingwood this decade, beating them in the last six meetings, the closest the Pies got in that time was a 1-point loss in round 3 of 2021.

The biggest margin, 85 points, came later that year in round 22 tat the Gabba. That’s an ignominious head to head record.

Brisbane, however, have only won one of its past 16 games at the MCG while the Pies love the stadium and have won 26 of 32 games under coach and cult hero Craig “Fly” McRae.

That does not bode well.

Lions Dwayne Zorko says the G is “just another ground” and that they have learned from recent losses at the venue, adding that everything is different in a grand final, but he is hardly going to say anything else.

The Pies, ladder leaders, enter the game confident that if they stay in the battle they have an extraordinary ability to win close games.

The clutch kings demonstrated that with a heart stopping one point victory over a gallant Giants outfit last Friday at the MCG.

Banking on the match officials tendency to put the whistle away in the last quarter the Magpies forced stoppage after stoppage, flopping repeatedly on the ball in the last minutes to bring the game to a stand still.

If they get in front in that last quarter they know how to hang on.

Brisbane are 2023’s clearance kings, leading the competition in that stat while their opponents are ranked eighth. The Brownlow Medals in Lachie Neale’s wardrobe indicate just how good he is at the scrimmage, but Jordan De Goey is no slouch either and was probably the difference in their preliminary final. Both have some excellent wing men.

Game styles are fluid, but the Pies forwards push up the ground while the Brisbaners hang further back. Perhaps the reason for that is Brisbane, again, lead the way for inside 50s in 2023 while the Pies rank seven.

This season the Lions have got better at defending turnovers and mastered the two-speed attack, swift when the opportunity is there and stealthy when the going more difficult.

Magpies, meanwhile, mastered the art of scoring from half back, notching a quarter of its goals from defence, but some detect a weakness at winning back possession in that part of the ground.

Both sides have nurturing coaches with impressive records.

Pies forward Jamie Elliott credits McRae with turning around his career.

“He basically taught me running patterns and how to play as a small forward because that was his craft and he taught me everything I know to be an AFL footballer,” he said.

McRae learned his craft at Brisbane, joining the club when they were still the Brisbane Bears in 1996, he retired after 196 matches in 2004 and was a key part of the 2001, 2002 and 2003 repeat.

In his first season as head coach in 2022 he lifted the club from 16th the previous year to fourth and this year to the top of the ladder.

Chris Fagan joined the Lions in 2017 and has steered them to five consecutive finals appearances.

Leigh Matthews, who has coached both clubs to premierships, says the pair share a pastoral approach to the craft.

“Chris Fagan is probably a decade older than Craig but they’re very, very similar,” he said. “Both former school teachers, what you’d call the friendly uncle type of personality that people gravitate to. I think that’s where modern coaching is going.”

Perhaps it is because they have been there so often, but Magpies are a constant in the great grand finals of the past 100 years. Born in the depression of the 1890s, the working class club became the league’s most successful winning a string of premierships in the next half century, including four consecutive wins in 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930.

Their rivalry with the establishment Melbourne club reached its height in the 1950s before the corporatisation of the grand final.

In 1970 some 121,696 fans showed up for the famous clash between the Blues and the Pies.

The Pies-Demons clash of 1956 attracted an official crowd of 115,802 – more than the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games soon after. When officials closed the gates to pressing fans they broke them down as frustrated fans rioted and mounted police charged in a futile attempt to restore order. So many got inside the ground that they spilt onto the ground and the umpires had to use the police to push them back behind the boundary line before starting the game.

A photograph from the match shows Melbourne’s Neil Hassa Mann and Collingwood’s Ian Ridley competing for the ball in the crowd as a policeman tries to make space for them.

The MCG seats just over 100,000 these days and does not allow fans to sit around the boundary or barge their way in, but only 34,000 tickets are made available to members of both clubs.

The Pies appearances in the last round of the year as infamous as they are famous. They may have stopped Melbourne matching their four-peat in 1958 but that started one of the most cursed periods any club has endured.

Collingwood played eight grand finals in the 23 years and lost all eight. In 1970 Carlton came back from 44 points down at half time to beat them. In 1977 North Melbourne rebounded better from a draw the week before to claim victory by 27 points in the replay. In 1979 Wayne Harmes desperately chased down an errant kick off his own boot and controversially paddled it to Blues teammate Ken Sheldon in the goalsquare to kick an important goal with 10 minutes to go. Carlton won by five.

The 2023 grand final is the first since 2014 in which first has played second, it does not guarantee a close game or a sensational one, but the AFL will be hoping for a closer contest than the ones witnessed in the past four years where almost every game has been a deflating blow out.