Collingwood Forever

Graeme Dunstan

From Fish Creek.

Wes McGaw

Ian Cooper

Most footballers have to go through serious levels of pain and discomfort if they’re to carve out a decent career. But it’s highly likely that no Collingwood player has ever had to endure the frustrations and hurdles that burly defender Ian Cooper had to overcome. ‘Strop’, as he was widely and affectionately known, missed the best part of five years…

Rod Oborne

Rod Oborne didn’t quite reach the heights his early promise forecast at Collingwood, but the stylish half forward/utility still managed to make a real impression across six-and-a-half senior seasons. A winner of the Magpies’ best first-year player, a runner-up to Peter McKenna in the club’s goalkicking award in only his second season, and one of those rare footballers capable of…

John Walker

Few, if any, former Collingwood players can claim to have had a bigger influence over the shape of modern West Australian football than John Walker. Long after his brief VFL career was over, the Magpie one-gamer would find himself running the WAFL and would go on to play a key role in the founding of the West Coast Eagles. But…

Ian McOrist

The Collingwood Football Club was still a pretty conservative place in 1972. So it was quite a shock to the system when Ian McOrist turned up to Victoria Park during the 1972 pre-season with long hair, no shoes, torn jeans and wearing a peace medallion around his neck. “He is unorthodox on and off the field – something that has…

John Vickery

Ex-Coleraine.

Laurie Kaine

Ex-Coleraine.

Paul Stevens

Ex-Watsonia.

Daryl Salmon

A half-back recruited from Ecklin South.

Mike Delahunty

A product of Monivae College, Mike was the brother of Hugh and of media personality and Victorian Cabinet Minister Mary Delahunty. Do you know more about Mike Delahunty’s time at Collingwood? If you have any further information, please email the team at Collingwood Media on forever@collingwoodfc.com.au.

Gary Tredrea

The father of Warren, he was recruited from Reservoir High Old Boys and later moved to South Australia.

Henry Coles

A cheeky, talented rover originally recruited from Kingsbury, Coles topped Melbourne’s goalkicking in 1978 with 33 goals.

Robert Rose

So much of the focus on Robert Rose’s life centres on the tragic turn of events that followed one night in February 1974, but what should never be lost was what came before it, and what fine young sportsman he was. For a moment, forget about what might have been, and think about what was. Robert Rose was born to…

Alan Atkinson

ALAN Atkinson represented Collingwood at senior level on 134 occasions, but the high-flying, speedy wingman will always be best remembered for one moment in one game. In a way, that’s a little unfair, given what he was able to produce in his Magpie body of work, but that’s the nature of football. Atkinson’s magic moment came in Round 21, 1973,…

Peter Eakins

FOR A footballer who played only 32 games for Collingwood across three injury-interrupted seasons, Peter Eakins undoubtedly left his mark on the Magpies. Unfortunately it wasn’t necessarily the one that he or the club had planned. For while he played in a Grand Final in his debut season of 1970, and won the club’s best first-year player, the headlines that came…

Peter Pettigrew

Rover from East Reservoir.

Ron Wearmouth

Think Ron Wearmouth, and the Collingwood rover’s trademark features immediately spring to mind for those Magpie fans who remember him fondly. His blond, flowing locks; his energetic bursts from contests; his cheeky on-field manner that could sometimes get him into trouble; and a knockabout nature that endeared him to teammates and those in the terraces. If a measure of a…

Robert Dean

THE ability to play well in a final is an art form; the ability to consistently do it in a losing team – particularly at Collingwood during the 1970s – was even more precious. Robert Dean was a case in point. He played in a winning finals match in only his 22nd game for the Magpies. But it was the only…

Bob Heard

What is it that makes a player a cult figure? Sometimes it’s the way he plays, sometimes it’s his off-field personality, sometimes it’s just a freak of nature and the crowd perversely ‘adopting’ a player as a favourite. But a player’s physical dimensions can also have a lot to do with it. Often they’re mighty midgets like Ronnie Wearmouth and…

Jeff Clifton

If you believe in omens, then Jeff Clifton was always going to be a Collingwood player. For a start, he came from a club called Floreat Park, and Collingwood’s motto is Floreat Pica (‘May the Magpie Prosper’). Plus it’s not widely known, but Collingwood’s first feeder club back in the 1890s was based on a local club called ‘Clifton’. So…

Doug Gott

THE enduring image of defender Doug Gott for many Collingwood supporters comes from his final game of VFL football. In a dramatic final term of the 1977 Grand Final – played out before 108,224 fans and beamed live across Victoria – Gott went down with a serious knee injury and was stretchered from the field. He hobbled out to see the…

Max Richardson

When Wayne Richardson came to Collingwood in 1966, the Magpies soon discovered that they had found themselves a bona fide champion. What they didn’t yet know was that there was still to be a bonus to the deal just around the corner – his younger brother Max. Max started with South Fremantle (the club where his father Arnold had played…

John Greening

The Collingwood teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s were some of the most exhilarating the football club has ever put on the park, featuring stellar names such as Len Thompson, Peter McKenna, Des Tuddenham, Wayne and Max Richardson, and Barry Price. But the best of them all, at least in terms of pure talent, might just have been…

Denis O'Callaghan

IT’S rare when the winner of Collingwood’s best first-year player doesn’t front up to the club for the start of the following season. It’s even more unusual when that player cites farming – not football – as the reason for his absence. But that’s precisely what happened with Collingwood’s reliable defender Denis O’Callaghan, who took out the recruit of the…

Ross Dunne

Few players in Collingwood history are more closely linked to one single, solitary kick than Ross ‘Twiggy’ Dunne. That kick came in the dying seconds of the 1977 Grand Final, when Twiggy marked 20 metres from goal with the Magpies trailing by six points (having led by 27 just 30 minutes earlier). Under almost unimaginable pressure, Twiggy coolly went back…

Con Britt

YOU could forgive Collingwood fans for almost doing a double take when the ball went forward during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Des Tuddenham stood out wherever he was. He was hard, tough, had a ginger tone to his hair and he loved to crunch packs. The only problem, at least in terms of player recognition goes, is that the…

Brian McKenzie

The Collingwood teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s were dotted with some of the biggest names and most talented players in the club’s history. But those teams still owed much of their success to the contributions of the ‘quiet achievers’ – the players who didn’t command the headlines of their more famous teammates but who played vital roles…

Lee Adamson

Anyone who ever saw him play would not be surprised to learn that the most dramatic moment of Lee Adamson’s career came at the VFL Tribunal. After all, Lee was a hard-at-it defender who was as tough as nails and loved making life hard for his opponents. But in this instance Lee was an innocent and hard-done-by victim – falsely…

Barry Price

In these days of team defence and zoned structures it seems quaintly old-fashioned, but few sights electrify fans more than that of a player streaming through the centre of the ground and planting a pinpoint pass on to the chest of a leading full-forward. It feels like old-fashioned footy: simple, yet beautiful. Rarely has that scenario been played out more…

Wayne Richardson

One of the problems with making a sensational debut is that you’re forever going to be measured against that first performance. And for some players, that first game is as good as it gets. But not for Wayne Richardson. The football world was in awe after his debut against Richmond in Round 4 of 1966. The WA-born rover amassed more…

Len Thompson

Over the years, the Magpies have made something of an art form of throwing promising youngsters in at the deep end – debuting them in finals or massive home-and-away matches such as Anzac Day. But very few Collingwood rookies have had to endure an introduction as torrid as Len Thompson. It wasn’t just that his debut came in a preliminary…

Peter McKenna

In the early 1970s, Peter McKenna was the biggest name in football – and probably the most popular the game had ever seen. This was true pop-star hysteria hitting the Victorian Football League. Young girls would run onto the ground to kiss him before the start of matches. The club was so heavily inundated with requests for photos that they…

Graeme Jenkin

Every football club needs its characters – those larger-than-life guys with infectious personalities who can lift the change rooms and help make footy fun. That description fits Graeme ‘Jerker’ Jenkin to a tee. ‘Jerker’ was one of the most popular players not just at Collingwood but also in the VFL. “Everyone loved him,” Peter McKenna once said. “He was a…

Ted Potter

St Kilda’s Darrel Baldock has long been rightly lauded as one of the best players of the 1960s, a wizard with the ball who still remains one of the Saints’ greatest. But many Collingwood fans – especially those who only watched Magpie games – sometimes struggled to understand what all the fuss over Baldock was about. It wasn’t that they…

Terry Waters

It is a minor miracle that Terry Waters ever played for Collingwood. There were four other clubs chasing him, his brother had played for Hawthorn, he neither supported nor even liked Collingwood, and his VFA club wanted to block his path to the VFL. The major stumbling block, however, was much simpler: his mother hated the Magpies! The Waters clan’s…