As always, we have plenty to share with you and look forward to, so let’s catch up on all the news on the history and heritage front at Collingwood.

Feel free to drop me a line at any time (forever@collingwoodfc.com.au), and share our group’s details with your Magpie friends.

See you at the footy.
Carna Woods!

Michael Roberts
Collingwood Historian

Farewell to the Weed
One of the biggest Collingwood stories of the off-season was the passing of 1958 Premiership skipper and all-time Magpie legend Murray Weideman, who died just a day after his 85^thbirthday. Read our tribute to him here.

Murray’s 1953 Premiership teammate Lerrel Sharp has also died since our last newsletter, and here’s a link to his story on Forever https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/players/lerrel-sharp/

Eddie steps down
Eddie McGuire ended his long reign as Collingwood President when he stepped down in February. And while the tributes were plentiful, there was one historical curiosity that we felt was worth mentioning. It’s well known that Harry Curtis is the longest-serving President in our history, having spent nearly 26 years in the role. Eddie was entering his 23^rdyear. But in terms of gamesspent as President within the VFL/AFL, the final tallies were much closer.
Harry Curtis 515
Eddie McGuire 513
Jack Jennings (Geelong) 512

Thanks for everything Ed!

Another landmark for Pendles
And while we’re on the subject of records, our skipper keeps breaking more of them every year. This year, touch wood, he should break the League record for games played at the MCG. Former Tiger Kevin Bartlett holds the record of 200. Pendles started the season on 198, meaning he is on track to set a new mark when we play the Giants at the G in Round 4.

Displays and functions
We set up displays in the foyer celebrating our 2010 and 1990 Premierships in February last year, just before COVID hit. Given that no members of the public have been into HQ since then, we’ve decided to leave both displays up for the rest of this year at least – and hope that some more fans and members will therefore get a chance to see them!

We usually have at least one major historically themed function each year too, but that is also on hold until we can get some more confidence around planning.

Under-19s and reserves
Our research team at the Archives has made huge progress over the past few years with a jaw-dropping body of work – listing all the players known to have played with our reserves teams from 1919 to the current day, and with our under-19s from 1951-91, together with their games and goals. Phil Taranto and Rob Harris have done a staggeringly good job pulling all this together. There’s still plenty of gaps – early records are notoriously unreliable – and we’re continuing to update info as we find it, but it’s well worth a look, especially if anyone you know has ever claimed they played with either team. Now you can check!

As always, if you can fill in any of the holes, please let us know.

2020 Acquisitions
Last year was a big one for significant additions to the club’s collection of memorabilia.

The highlight was Bill Strickland’s 1896 Premiership Medal, donated by family members David and Donna Thornton, but we also added jumpers worn by Murray Weideman in 1956 and Mick Twomey in 1960, our very first membership medallion from 1940-41, some great fan memorabilia and a bunch of wonderful 1950s under-19 photos.

Check out all our new items – and the lovely people who donated them – here!

And always, please contact us at archives@collingwoodfc.com.auif there is anything you’d like to donate!

The highlight was undoubtedly receiving Bill Strickland’s 1896 Premiership Medal, donated by family members David and Donna Thornton. This is a wonderful piece, and a great reminder of the club’s first ever Premiership, back in the VFA days. It’s also a reminder of what a great contributor Bill Strickland was, and I encourage you to read his story here. His name isn’t as well remembered these days as it should be, but he was a hugely influential figure in our club’s early history – our first Premiership captain, our first coach and our first great leader.

We were also very excited to be able to add jumpers worn by Murray Weideman in 1956 and Mick Twomey in 1960.

It is just brilliant to be able to pick up a couple of match-worn jumpers from that era, and especially from two such famous Collingwood names. They came through former Melbourne player Brian Dixon, who had swapped jumpers with Mick and Weed at different times.

We were also beyond happy to finally add the very first social club membership medallion to our collection. It was produced in 1940-41, was followed by another in 1941-42, and then cards were used until the more commonly recognised social club medallions were reintroduced in 1955. So this was a great addition – and many thanks to Georgina Deveraux for her help with it!

Plenty of others must have been sorting out old cupboards and drawers during lockdown too, so we thank:

• Paul Cordeux (general collection of fan memorabilia);
• Neil Bower (for a wonderful mixed lot including a 1970s duffle coat with John Greening’s number on the back, several framed newspaper front pages from the 1953 and ’58 flags, a variety of scrapbooks and other items of ephemera);
• John Elmore, from Corowa, who loaned us a 1930s Sherrin football signed by some of the players;
• Collingwood Power (no, seriously) who donated a pair of ‘McHale’ number plates;
• Barry Gilbert for a signed Gordon Coventry postcard;
• Graeme and Sadie Coombs for a couple of boxes of terrific fan memorabilia, to go with the extraordinary collection of pennants they donated several years ago;
• Darcy Ryan for a box of footy records and magazines; and
• A mystery donor who gave a club official a signed 1959 Grand Final dinner menu during our game in Morwell last year.

We also thank former under-19s player Geoff Moloney and his wife Glenda for a superb group of photos from an under-19s trip to Warracknabeal in 1952. They were awesome – especially the ties! (if anyone out there still has one, please let us know)

And an extra, belated thank you to Ann Maree Hart-Trewin, who donated a wonderful old silk banner featuring a Magpie logo from many, many years ago. It’s magnificent!

As always, please contact us at archives@collingwoodfc.com.auif there is anything you’d like to donate!

Well, what a strange old season that was. We’ve never seen its like before, and hopefully never will again. Covid-19 has hit the club’s operations hard, so we weren’t able to produce our usual updates during the year, but we’re back again now with our end-of-year review. Hope you enjoy it.

We hope you’ve all managed to stay safe and sound throughout this craziest of years, and continue to stay that way over the summer. We can only hope that, by the time we return next year, we’re a lot closer to a new normal than we have been for the past eight months. Fingers crossed.

Until then, enjoy the Christmas period and stay safe – and Carna Woods!

Michael Roberts
Collingwood Historian

All hail Pendles
What a year it has been for our skipper. He is now the lone holder of the club’s games record, with 316 and counting, having broken Tony Shaw’s old mark of 313 in the final home-and-away game of the year against Port Adelaide. He also eclipsed Nathan Buckley’s record for having captained the Magpies the most times of any player in history. Plus he finished second in the Copeland, despite missing four games, making it a staggering 12 top-three finishes in the past 14 seasons. That is a club record, and he now sits fourth on the all-time AFL list, behind Gary Dempsey, Kevin Murray and Bob Skilton. He also now has a total of 207 Brownlow votes in his career – the most of any Magpie and the seventh best overall (the six above him on the list have all won Brownlows). What a player.

Curiosities from a weird season
* Hawthorn’s lowest score in the last 50 years has been 3.9 (27) twice. The first time was against Collingwood in Round 21, 1975, in which Peter Moore played. The other was in Round 6 this year – in which Peter’s son Darcy played! 
* When Pendles was a late withdrawal against the Eagles in Round 8, it became the first game since 2009 that both he andSteele Sidebottom had missed the same game.
* Our VFL/AFL ledger against Carlton is now even at 127 wins each (though we’re still in front on the overall count, 135-131). This year also became the first time we’ve kept Carlton goalless in a half since 1909.
* Our unbelievable win against the Eagles in the Elimination Final – up there with the best against-the-odds finals wins of all-time – was only the second time we’ve won a final by a point. The other time was the famous first semi of 1981, when we beat Fitzroy 133-132.
* We have now played finals at no fewer than 12 different venues: MCG, Waverley, Brunswick Street, East Melbourne, Football Park in Adelaide, the Gabba, The Lake Oval (South Melbourne), Perth Stadium, Princes Park, Stadium Australia at Homebush, Subiaco and the WACA. (We’re yet to play a final at Adelaide Oval, Carrara, Docklands, the SCG, Giants Stadium or Kardinia Park)
* We know there are mitigating circumstances with the shorter quarters, but this was still the first time since 1916 that we’ve gone through a whole season without reaching 100 points in any game.
* Josh Daicos became the first Magpie since Leon Davis in 2008 to be awarded the AFL’s Goal of the Year, for his preposterous banana from the boundary against the Swans. In doing so, we think he became the first ever Father-Son winner of the award, in combination with dad Peter’s equally preposterous effort from the boundary against Richmond in 1991. Spooky! 

Farewell to Magpie champs
Former captain and Copeland Trophy winner Terry Waters sadly passed away during the year, as did long-kicking specialist Colin Tully, cult figure Bruce Gonsalves and key forward Kevin Pay. Read our tribute to Terry here. Stories about Colin, Bruce and Kevin can be found on their respective pages on Forever.

Functions and displays
We managed to set up our displays celebrating the anniversaries of our 1990 and 2010 Premierships just before Covid-19 put a stop to things. Which means nobody has been able to see them! Given that, we’ll likely leave those displays up until at least some of our fans have been given the chance to have a look.Obviously the virus also put a stop to our planned functions for 2020. We’ll have to see what next year looks like before deciding what might happen with those sorts of things again in 2021.

History rewritten
Two extraordinary research finds over the summer have rewritten important parts of Collingwood history. We now have one lessplayer than we thought, and we also have a new joint winner of the Leading Goalkicker award for 1964 after a bizarre Grand Final scoring error. Read about the case of too many Smiths here, and the Grand Final mistake here.

Donations
Even though the Archives team hasn’t been able to meet since March, we’ve still been busy trying to grow the club’s collection of memorabilia.
Perhaps the most significant item we’ve added was the1896 Premiership Medal presented to our captain Bill Strickland, which was donated to the club by family members David and Donna Thornton. We were also very excited to be able to add jumpers worn by Murray Weideman in 1956 and Mick Twomey in 1960.
We’ll have more information about the year’s donations in our pre-season newsletter next year. But in the meantime, if you’ve been using lockdown to sort through old drawers and cupboards, please contact us at archives@collingwoodfc.com.au if you’ve found anything you’d like to donate!

Spread the word
We want more people to sign up to this group. So please, if you know anyone with an interest in Magpie history, send them this link and get them to join here!

It was obviously a disappointing end to the season, but at least we managed to show that the meteoric rise of 2018 was no fluke. We just have to find a way to go two steps better now in 2020.

Remember to stay in touch with us via forever@collingwoodfc.com.au and also keep spreading the word, by encouraging your friends and Magpie mates to join our little group here. 

Have a great Xmas, and see you in the new year – when we have some very exciting things in the pipeline!

Carna Woods!

Michael Roberts
Collingwood Historian

Pendles’ 300th

From a historical perspective, the biggest event of 2019 was our skipper becoming just the third player in Collingwood history to play 300 games with the club. He finished the year on 301 games, with a career tally of disposals just under 8000 – the ninth highest tally of all time. Obviously he’ll need to stay fit and healthy but, if he does, then any number of other records could fall his way in the years ahead. Next cab off the rank will be the club’s games record of 313, currently held by Tony Shaw, that could fall next year. Fingers crossed he gets there – we love seeing new marks being set!

Other 2019 highlights

• Brodie Grundy became the first ruckman to win back-to-back Copeland Trophies since Peter Moore in 1979-80. Before him, Len Thompson did it twice (1967-68 and 1972-73), while Murray Weideman, Phonse Kyne and Albert Collier are other big men to have saluted in successive years.

• Speaking of Grundy, this year he became the first player in VFL/AFL history to have 25 disposals, two goals and 50 hitouts in a match (against Footscray).

• Scott Pendlebury finished runner-up in the Copeland, giving him an extraordinary career record of 11 top-three finishes – the best ever at Collingwood and the fourth highest for any club best & fairest winners. He also passed Dane Swan as our highest ever Brownlow Medal vote-winner (194, ninth highest across all clubs). The man is a freak. Read more about his achievements here.

• Our sensational one-point win over West Coast in July was just our 30^th such margin in more than 2500 VFL/AFL games. It was the third time we’ve done it against the Eagles, the others coming in 1992 and 2002. And it was our fifth this decade, having already won by similar margins against Melbourne (2010), Essendon (2012, Jarryd Blair), Richmond (2016, “Is it Grundy?… It’s Grundy!”), and Sydney (2017).

• When Rhyce Shaw was appointed North Melbourne’s senior coach this year he became the 28th former Collingwood player to have been appointed full-time coach of another VFL/AFL team. The list includes big names like Syd Coventry (Footscray), Alby Pannam (Richmond), Bob Rose (Footscray), Kevin Rose (Fitzroy), Des Tuddenham (Essendon) and Mark Williams (Port Adelaide). The first one to do so was the brilliant but controversial Dick Condon, who coached Richmond in 1908.

• Our scoreless last quarter v Geelong in the Qualifying Final was the first time we’ve gone scoreless in the last quarter of a winning final since the 1928 drawn semi-final against Melbourne. It was also our first scoreless final term in any game since 2006.

• Our VFLW team produced a landmark bit of history by becoming the first of our women’s football teams to bring home silverware when they won the VFLW Premiership over the Western Bulldogs in September. Great work girls! Read the story here 

Looking for 2010 memorabilia

Next year we’ll be celebrating the 10^thanniversary of our 2010 Premiership – and we’ll be marking the occasion with a special display in the foyer. So if you have any interesting or unusual mementoes from that year that you’d be willing to loan us for all of 2020, please get in touch with us at forever@collingwoodfc.com.au

New display cabinet in foyer

We were able to add another display cabinet to the foyer area late in the year, celebrating all those teams that have been ‘connected’ to Collingwood over the years, from Collingwood Juniors and the reserves and under-19s through to the current day women’s football and netball teams. The short-lived Collingwood Warriors soccer club even cracks it for inclusion! Have a look next time you’re at the Holden Centre.

Big thanks to Club 42, who donated this “Collingwood Family’ cabinet.

If you’d like to support the Archives’ work by donating a cabinet, please contact me at forever@collingwoodfc.com.au

Hafey’s Heroes function

Thanks to all those who turned out in July for a great night celebrating the Hafey’s Heroes years. Rick Barham, Kevin Morris, Ray Byrne and Peter McCormack were on-stage guests and had us all in fits of laughter with their memories of that crazy era. Special thanks to Maureen Hafey, who made a brief appearance on stage and wowed everyone. The Hafey’s Heroes display will remain in the foyer until the end of the year.

This year’s donations

While Murray Swinton’s scrapbooks, which we highlighted in our last newsletter, were the largest of the donations we received this year, we were also gifted many other wonderful items. And we’d like to thank the following, who all generously gave items to become part of the club’s collection: Di Lemmon (some wonderful old player postcards from the 1960s!), Julie Watkins (scrapbooks and a 1950s cup, saucer and plate), Ronald Kite (a 1977 Grand Final cardigan), Danny McGoldrick (Yakka tracksuit top), Michael Mackey (Yakka training top), Diana Johnstone (cheer squad and general memorabilia), Melissa and Alan Miller (bottles of port), Ray McQuillen (magazines), Jo Luciani  (a wonderful polystyrene boater hat from the 60s!), Jan Truscott (a Darren Millane guernsey from 1988) and Margaret & Peter Clasohm (Peter Daicos testimonial print). And a special thank you to the legendary Joffa, who donated the first and most famous of his gold jackets – the one that started the whole tradition. Thanks Joffa!

Thanks to all our donors. If you have anything you’d like to add to the club’s collection, just contact us at archives@collingwoodfc.com.au

Archives volunteers needed

There are times when we need extra volunteer help at the Collingwood Archives – with things like the physical movement of items, general record-keeping, or research. We also need people with IT/web/computer/podcasting expertise. If any of that interests you, then let us know at archives@collingwoodfc.com.au

• Web design/IT/computer/photo expertise;
• The physical handling and movement of items (so must be physically capable);
• General admin/record-keeping;
• Research.

• This will be the 16^th time we’ve faced off against Geelong in the opening round of a VFL/AFL season, and the first time since 1982 at Waverley.
• This will be the first time in 80 years we have done so at our home ground. The last time was the opening round of the 1939 season.
• This will be the sixth consecutive Magpie-Cat opening round match-up (1939, 1961, 1967, 1978, 1982, 2019) where the Pies are coming off a Grand Final loss!
• All 16 Magpies-Cats openers have come after the Pies had featured in finals the year before.
• Collingwood’s last win over Geelong in a season-opener was back in 1978, at Kardinia Park. That win was soured when former President Tom Sherrin died in a car accident on the way back from the game.

• Returning Magpies: We’re excited to be welcoming Dayne Beams back to the nest again in 2019. He’s just the ninth player to leave the Pies and come back again later. Can you name the others? (answer below)
• Father-sons: Will Kelly’s drafting has given us another father-son on the list, alongside Darcy Moore, Josh Daicos and Callum and Tyler Brown. We’ve had 41 sons of Magpies fathers play senior footy for us going into the year. Can Tyler or Will add to that number?
• 2019 anniversaries: It is, of course, 100 years since our 1919 flag – the so-called ‘Peace Premiership’. And 90 years since our famed 1929 team, The Machine, became the only side in VFL/AFL history to go through a home-and-away season undefeated.
• 2019 omen? In every decade bar one, at least one of the grand finalists from the year ending in 8 (eg, 1968, 1908 etc) has gone on to play in another grand final the next year (the exception was 1978-79). So history says either the Eagles or us will be back there this year! (thanks to Lloyd Fisk for this little gem)
• Pendles to join elite club? Scott Pendlebury sits on 277 games going into the 2019 season, in equal third place on our games record tally with Wayne Richardson. Can he make it to 300 in 2019? (we’ll need to make finals for him to have a chance)

This group is all about celebrating the history and heritage of our beloved footy club. It’s a group for those who bleed black-and-white, and who are interested in more than just what goes on each match day.

We’ll bring you advance info on historically-themed club events and activities, hopefully share some quirky info and stats with you, and just generally keep you informed about everything that’s going on in the world of Collingwood history. We might even have some exclusive product offerings along the way.

Don’t worry – you won’t be bombarded with emails talking about the good old days. We’ll just stay in touch from time to time, and do our best to keep our heritage and culture both interesting and relevant to what we do today.

I’m passionate about this club’s heritage – celebrating the journey we’re on, and everything that’s happened along the way. If you share that interest, even to a small degree, then sign up on the link below – because even though footy is big business these days, I still believe that history matters. In fact, it matters now more than ever. And the more of us who get involved, the easier it is to get that message across.

Carna Pies!

Michael Roberts
Collingwood Historian

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