https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au The complete history of Australia's greatest sporting club Tue, 30 Jan 2024 23:13:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.21 https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/birth-of-the-magpies-pt3/ Sat, 01 Apr 2017 23:19:55 +0000 http://cfc-forever-staging.qodo.com.au/?p=12007 mean as much to them. But Alf Manfield and Edwin Wilson, increasingly seen as the leaders of the push, weren’t that easily deterred. Neither were the local MPs, George Langridge and William Beazley, or other local businessmen such as Dan Reddan (a tobacconist in Smith Street), J R Bremner (licensee of the Yarra Hotel) and Tom Sherrin (football and leathergoods manufacturer). So Manfield and Wilson arranged another meeting in August, back where it all began at Harriet Pryde’s City Hotel in Johnston Street. There it was resolved not to give up, but to keep pushing the VFA and its delegates. The resolution passed that night read: “That it is the opinion of this meeting it is thought desirable to approach the Victorian Football Association for the purpose of getting the Collingwood Club admitted to the Association.” A letter was sent to the VFA straight away, and a serious campaign of lobbying was about to begin at both an individual and association level. They were encouraged in this by the support of the Argus newspaper, which urged the Collingwood locals not to give up. While being critical of its backers for having moved too slowly to form a club years before, and for not having an alternative scheme to propose when their initial request was rejected, the paper also suggested that it was time for the VFA to find ways to remove uncompetitive clubs. “The general opinion is that the Collingwood club need not necessarily take the first no for an answer,” it said at the end of August. “The perfect system is one that shall compel the failures of the senior association to give way periodically to an outside club which, being duly qualified in all respects, may desire admission.” The Argus went on to tag Footscray as one club that had “quite failed to justify its admission as a senior.” “The suburb was too small to commence with, and many years must pass before that defect can be remedied. Footscray is the failure of the association, and … a club so situated cannot expect to go on perpetually in that position. Glancing over the records of the past few seasons one finds that Footscray has played some 60 matches against senior twenties and won but 11. It is obvious that the association should ask Footscray to retire and give some other suburb a chance.” The paper also took aim directly at the arguments of the Evening Standard, among others, over the suitability of Britannia. “It is just as well to recognise openly that the Britannia club is merely a means to an end. If it were intended to play as a senior under its present title, utter and complete failure might at once be prophesied. A senior club to succeed must be identified both in name and residence with some important suburb, and within the local limit must have no rival. That fact has been sufficiently proved. “Other than Collingwood, the Brighton and Hawthorn districts would appear to be the only centres likely to make a claim on the VFA for many years to come. In any future consideration of the matter it will be as well to remember therefore that the claims are those, not of the Britannia Club, but of Collingwood, and Collingwood will probably get its chance only when Footscray is brought to recognise the hopelessness of its position.” There was further support in September from Melbourne’s VFA delegate, Mr Hunt. He had been publicly behind the push the night that Collingwood presented to the VFA, and he didn’t back away in the wake of the rejection. In September, when Collingwood’s letter came up for consideration, he suggested that if an existing team couldn’t reach a certain number of points over a two-year period, that team should be relegated to junior ranks to allow in another team “that would make a better show”. Such public support encouraged and emboldened the Collingwood supporters. But the road ahead was long and frustrating. The VFA secretary, Theophilius Marshall, described Mr Hunt’s suggestion that poorly performed teams should drop out as “suicide”. Instead he set up a committee to investigate the merits of admitting a thirteenth club to its ranks. In early 1890 there was talk of the VFA being split into two divisions to allow more teams in, but that ended up leading nowhere. The association, as it turned out, was wracked by internal divisions for much of that year, especially between the weaker and stronger clubs, and there was little or no movement on Collingwood’s petition to join through all of 1890. But all that changed early in 1891. In March that year, as recorded in Richard Stremski’s Kill For Collingwood, the VFA finally amended its rules to allow for a “prominent junior club” to be admitted as a thirteenth team. Manfield seized upon the rule change and asked the VFA if Britannia would be admitted as a Collingwood team if Victoria Park was brought up to standard. The VFA replied that it could foresee no further objections. Any celebrations were tempered, however, by the death just days later of George Langridge. He had been one of the key players in the push, and sadly didn’t live to see his hard work come to fruition. His parliamentary colleague, William Beazley, had no trouble convincing the Collingwood council to spend around £600 upgrading the ground and adding a picket fence, and they also promised a new grandstand for Victoria Park should the club be admitted. It still took until a meeting late in the year for Britannia’s formal application to be considered. And by then the public momentum had swung heavily in Collingwood’s favour. The long fight, and persistence of the club’s supporters, seemed to have won just about everyone over. And the fact that Britannia was enjoying one of its best seasons (it would end up finishing second) didn’t hurt either. In early September, the Australasian wrote that “there seems to be no just ground for any longer excluding them.” The Argus added: “If persistency and earnestness, coupled with good play are reasons why a junior club should be admitted to the senior ranks, Collingwood has fairly earned the distinction. The Britannia, the local junior club, has long been prominent, and the ground on which it proposes to play is properly enclosed and equipped, and already better than several of the grounds on which senior clubs play. Clubs should not be admitted to the association on any but strong grounds, but Collingwood has in every way justified its claim.” The changing tide of public opinion even swayed the old enemies at the Evening Standard to come on board, saying that there was “no visible reason” why the VFA should not grant the new club a berth in the association. The application was formally made at the VFA’s meeting on September 11^th, and the discussion held two weeks later, on September 25, 1891. Secretary Marshall and several of his colleagues inspected Victoria Park in the days beforehand and told the meeting that they had “found it in all respects satisfactory”. In the end it was Marshall himself who moved that the Collingwood Football Club should be admitted to the VFA for the 1892 season, describing the suburb behind it as “an important centre of population”. The resolution was unanimously carried. Collingwood had won. It had been two years, three months and 18 days since that first meeting at the City Hotel, but the local forces behind the push had prevailed. Langridge hadn’t lived to see victory, but Beazley would go on to be the club’s first president, Wilson its first secretary and Manfield its first treasurer. It was, as a famous politician and one-time Collingwood supporter would say many years later, a victory for the true believers. Much hard work still lay ahead to get everything ready – including assembling a team virtually from scratch, as most of the Brits would go their own ways – in time for the club’s debut the following May. But for now, the only thing that mattered was this: the Collingwood Football Club had been born.]]> https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/birth-of-the-magpies-pt2/ Sat, 01 Apr 2017 23:16:04 +0000 http://cfc-forever-staging.qodo.com.au/?p=12005 th meeting came to light. And it was led by the Evening Standard newspaper, which pulled no punches in its opposition, mocking the motives of those behind the push and declaring that, “although the dignity of Collingwood would be raised by the possession of a senior football club”, it could not and should not be allowed to happen. This was, the paper said, a “useless errand” and one which would only see people “bumping their heads against stone walls.” As the campaign against Collingwood intensified, it also broadened. The Standard questioned, for example, whether Britannia really had been successful enough to justify inclusion ahead of a rival junior team such as North Park, which had won four junior premierships (but had no ground of its own and did not represent a distinct suburb). Papers like the Standard weren’t brazen enough to openly object to Collingwood’s admission on the grounds of social status. But the bias was real: you could see it in the mocking tones and condescending language used whenever Collingwood’s bid was discussed. ‘A place like Collingwood could never have its own football club, so why bother trying?’ seemed to be very much the tone of the articles. The Collingwood forces began fearing the impact the attacks would have on delegates considering their application. So Alf Manfield, becoming an increasingly important figure in the pro-Collingwood movement, felt compelled to write to the Mercury and other papers, stressing that it was not Britannia that was seeking a spot in the VFA, but Collingwood. “The Evening Standard having been so persistent of late in doing all they can to thwart our movement, and with their articles trying to influence the delegates of the Victorian Football Association, it is only fair that something should be said on the other side, and why we should receive the association’s support,” he wrote. “I wish to point out that it is not the Britannia Football Club, but a Collingwood Football Club, who wish to be represented on the Victorian Football Association, and this club [Britannia] is co-operating with us in the movement, and would form a nucleus for the proposed new club. It is hardly expected that all the junior members now playing would form the senior twenty. Players living in the district and others would join us. We would have a ground of our own, which some of the clubs now on the association cannot say, and for easy access would be second to none in the colony. It is the oldest suburban city having a population of over 30,000 people. The ground is certainly large enough and enclosed, and very easily converted into a first-class playing ground, the surroundings of same being pleasing to the eye, and where is the suburb or any place that supports football better than Collingwood, aye, or even any other outdoor sport? I would ask now what district do the North Park represent, have they an enclosed ground?” Manfield’s arguments, and those of his other supporters, seemed to have done the trick. The VFA meeting on June 28^th, held at Young and Jackson’s Hotel in the city, heard from local MPs George Langridge and William Beazley, among others. Beazley said that, through Britannia, they had a junior club that met the VFA’s criteria in terms of membership and financial security, and that its ‘merits in the field’ had been sufficiently proved. They also had a ground that could soon be brought up to senior standards. The initial response was positive. The VFA said that night assured the deputation that their claim would receive “full and fair consideration”. The Chairman said he was personally in favour of it. Melbourne’s delegate, Mr. A. Hunt, later gave notice that he would move at the next meeting that the Britannia Club be admitted to the association in the name of the Collingwood Football Club. Collingwood’s supporters were rightly encouraged. But they seem to have underestimated the power of the campaign waged against them. At the VFA’s next meeting two weeks later, a majority of the delegates decided that the association “was already a sufficiently large body, and, on the ground that the Collingwood club could not be admitted while other clubs anxious to join were refused, the resolution moving their admission to the association was lost by 12 votes to 8.” The Sportsman questioned the decision: “Some persons think the association might have stretched a point in this instance; others fancy the delegates decided thus from a loyal attachment to their own rules, which they rigidly enforce – when it suits them.” Collingwood’s supporters were stunned, and the local residents dismayed. It had been just over a month since that initial meeting at the City Hotel. Just over a month. And already the Collingwood Football Club as a concept seemed to be dead in the water.  ]]> https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/birth-of-the-magpies-pt1/ Sat, 01 Apr 2017 23:06:13 +0000 http://cfc-forever-staging.qodo.com.au/?p=12001 Argus carried a special cable from London that Madame Nellie Melba (also known as ‘Mrs. Armstrong, of Melbourne’) had been wowing crowds with her performance in Rigoletto, one critic saying it would be “impossible to surpass her voice for purity and sweetness”. The same paper reported with great excitement that the RMS Oroya, of the Orient line, had left Melbourne for London the previous day carrying the second largest cargo of mail in our city’s brief history. In football circles, there was controversy over Carlton players being caught wearing illegal nails or stops in their boots against Essendon the previous Saturday. And a team of Maori footballers, having been to Kyneton and Daylesford during the week, was going to play a game against Essendon on Saturday. But local Collingwood MP and former mayor George Langridge presumably cared little about such matters. He spent much of that Friday at Customs House (now the Immigration Museum) chairing meetings about Victoria’s wine displays at the Paris World’s Fair, but his mind would surely already have been on another, more important, meeting he would attend that evening: one that would give birth to the Collingwood Football Club. ********** When George Langridge left the Customs House building that day, he headed to Harriet Pryde’s City Hotel, in Johnston Street Collingwood (which later became the John Barleycorn Hotel). There he was met by a large group of local businessmen, politicians and community leaders, all of whom were there for one reason – to talk about forming a senior football club that would represent Collingwood in the Victorian Football Association. At that point the closest thing that Collingwood had to a football team was a junior club called Britannia (‘junior’ referring not to the age of its players but to its standing within the game). The Brits played at Victoria Park, but were aligned as much, if not more, with Fitzroy than they were with Collingwood. Fitzroy had formed its own senior football club in 1883, and it was part of the VFA. Some of Collingwood’s other geographical neighbours such as Richmond and Carlton had teams in that competition too, as did lowly ranked suburbs like Footscray and Williamstown. Increasingly, people in Collingwood were asking, ‘What about us?’ Letters even began appearing in local Collingwood papers, urging “leading citizens” to push for a team that year. Part of that push was commercial. Businessmen and leaders had seen the crowds being attracted to senior football matches in other suburbs and wanted a piece of the pie. Partly it was also driven by the desire to see local boys playing football with a local team that carried the name of their municipality. But mostly it was driven by a fierce parochial pride. Collingwood was regarded as not much more than a slum in those days. It was mocked as a place of pestilence, poverty, larrikinism and crime. As the Clifton Hill Tribune noted a few years later, Collingwood had a reputation as a place of “moral filth, a hot bed of vulgarity in forms of speech and general manners, and a very poor and despised place.” Faced with such opinions, many locals began to feel that having a senior football club bearing the Collingwood name might be one of the few ways of gaining some respect from the rest of Melbourne – maybe even taking it up to them. When public pressure starts to build momentum, you know that politicians will never be far behind. Langridge himself had been twice Collingwood mayor previously, and was coming towards the end of what would be a 17-year reign representing Collingwood in the Legislative Assembly. At the City Hotel that night were the current mayor, community leaders, business representatives and a number of other councillors, including one, William Beazley, who had been elected to State parliament for the first time earlier that year (Collingwood was a dual occupancy seat, so was entitled to two MLAs). He would hold the seat for a further 15 years. Also there were Edwin Wilson, the town auditor, and Alf Manfield, a local landowner. Langridge told the meeting that it was nothing short of “a disgrace” that Collingwood did not possess either a senior football or a senior cricket club, meaning that teams in other suburbs were being manned with Collingwood locals. He didn’t want Collingwood to be a training ground for other clubs any longer, and he called on Britannia to help clear the path. Beazley spoke, and emphasised the support that could be expected from council. The meeting unanimously passed a motion declaring “that it is desirable to form a Senior Football Club in Collingwood, and that the Britannia Club be asked to co-operate in doing so.” A delegation, headed by the MPs Langridge and Beazley, was appointed to meet with the Britannia committee as soon as possible. That meeting took place two weeks later, at the Grace Darling Hotel in Smith Street. Both local newspapers, the Observer and the Mercury, were right behind the move, and the Mercury did its best to encourage Britannia officials to support it. “Collingwood could undoubtedly turn out a first-rate club,” the paper wrote the day before the Britannia meeting, “and one that would be able to hold its own. It has some first-class exponents of the game, who directly they become at all prominent go away and play with a Senior Club in another district. The Association could not possibly overlook the fact. It [Collingwood] is possessed of a very large population, the oldest suburban city, and from the amount of support not only monetarily but also from prominent players which has been promised, also the opportunity of an enclosed ground, the club should undoubtedly be represented on the Association.” As it turned out, Britannia’s support was never in doubt. They wanted to be in the VFA every bit as much as the people behind the Collingwood push, but they had been knocked back several times previously and realistically knew they were neither successful nor organised enough to make it happen on their own. That was confirmed at the meeting on June 21^st at the Grace Darling, when the Britannia president, Mr Anson, announced that his club had unanimously decided to help Collingwood’s supporters in forming a club. The VFA’s next meeting was only a week away, but a Collingwood-Britannia deputation was formed that night and immediately began preparing to appear. The Collingwood Council was formally asked for permission for the yet-to-exist club to play at Victoria Park. And there was one other important detail that was agreed that night: the name of the new entity would be the Collingwood Football Club.]]> https://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/the-formation-of-the-club/ Sun, 24 Aug 2014 21:17:30 +0000 http://forever.collingwoodfc.com.au/?p=8543 W.D. Beazley, who would go on to be the club’s first president, chaired the meeting, and speaker after speaker clamored to offer bold predictions about the future glories that awaited the new club. He enthusiastically told the large gathering that the Collingwood club would “draw immense crowds and be the cause of much money being spent in the district”. On a more cautious note, he urged those in attendance to “be true to their colours, and not be dispirited if they at first lost matches, as they (the players) would require one or two seasons to lick them into first class football”. The next speaker, John Hancock MP, was less circumspect. Sensing the buoyant mood of his audience, he offered a joke to start proceedings, claiming he was too fat to don a Collingwood guernsey and too stout to act as goalpost. But, more seriously, he claimed the club would soon be “the premier team – for the very name Collingwood would strike terror into the hearts of opposition players”. Hancock also set the scene for Collingwood supporters for the next century, and beyond, by suggesting that “if barracking would prevent an opposing player kicking for goal, (the barracker) would be there and give such unearthly shrieks as would terrify the kickist”. Despite the feeling of optimism at the meeting, there were reminders of the worsening economic climate surrounding them. Beazley himself had to be excused before the conclusion in order to address a rally of unemployed residents. An even more ominous reminder of the situation came in the local Mercury newspaper which reported on the same day as the meeting that “there were some 60,000 men, the bone and sinew of the colony, walking the streets of the metropolis and suburbs, idle and penniless”. This was hardly the ideal time to be embarking on a new venture. But the people behind the new club had judged the public mood to perfection. There really was a massive, community-wide push for Collingwood to have a club of its own – a means of competing with their suburban rivals and winning some pride and respect for the oft-derided ‘Collingwoodites’. Three months after this historic meeting, on May 7, the Collingwood Football Club played its first ever senior game. A massive crowd of more than 16,000 turned up. By year’s end, Collingwood had the biggest membership of any club. A powerful force had been unleashed on football – and the first signs of it had been shown at the Collingwood Town Hall on February 12, 1892.]]>