Collingwood are into a Grand Final.
If you’re a Collingwood supporter, read that line again, and let it sink in. If you’re not a Collingwood supporter, read that line again, and suck it up.
The lot of you have grown more obnoxious and annoying than anything our supporters could dish up. Nearly 40,000 people have joined some nonsense Facebook event: “The Day Collingwood Choke”. Their M.O.? “Collingwood are shit and we hate you.”
What a pack of sooks.
Growing up, I never “got” the world’s anti-Collingwood sentiment. Like every bright-eyed Australian kid, I chose a team and a team chose me.
I got smug eye-rolls every time I told people which team I went for. It was like a goddamn conspiracy. Grown men would explain to me how feral my fellow supporters were, and tried to shove some rubbish about “Colliwobbles” down my throat.
As a five-year-old, I didn’t understand why people were kicking us while we were down. After attending my first AFL match in 1995, Collingwood didn’t make the finals for seven years. Winning a game felt like Christmas. Why were they still hating on us?
My mother routinely blamed my father for putting me onto a “loser team”, but I always had a fond attraction for the underdog. The diamond in the rough.
I’ve lived through a lot of pain as a Collingwood supporter. I’ve seen two losing Grand Finals—one tantalisingly close, the other humiliatingly far—and spent the turn of the millennium watching our archrival pummel us into the 2000s.
I’ve grown into a cynical, biased and occasionally obnoxious AFL fan. Self-fulfilling prophecy and whatnot.
But I still vehemently argue that my club has come a long way: for all the jokes, few know that Collingwood’s most infamous supporter, Joffa Corfe, is a welfare worker who devotes much of his free time to working with indigenous and underprivileged communities, and has spent the better part of five years fundraising for the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria.
The club has gone a long way to atoning for its shameful history with racial incidents—the most notable of which saw indigenous St Kilda player Nicky Winmar respond to overt crowd racism from Collingwood supporters by lifting his jumper and boldly pointing to his skin. Leon Davis became the first indigenous player to play 100, then 200 games for the club, whilst Collingwood were the only club to take a punt on Harry O’Brien by taking him in the 2004 rookie draft, O’Brien becoming the league’s first Brazilian player, and going All-Australian this year.
In 2010, everything is falling into place nicely—Collingwood finished 1st, disposed of each of the top teams during the regular season, and secured a place in the Grand Final via a preliminary final belting of one of the best teams of the past decade.
I’m still bloody nervous.
Collingwood play free-flowing, fast, attacking football, the antithesis of St Kilda’s infamously negative footy. When it comes to playing the best, the Saints know a sure way to win—ugly: they’ve averaged less than 10 goals against Top 4 sides this year, despite a 5-1 winning record. They know how to strangle a game to victory.
Contrary to the insistence of the bookies (who have installed the Pies as heavy favourites), this Grand Final is a genuine 50/50. The game plans of the two finalists are polar opposites, and the side that holds its nerve under duress and dictates the tempo of the game will win.
To all of you on the fence, there’s a lot to like about the Pies: an exhilarating game plan, a coach chasing glory in his twilight years, overwhelming youth (more than a quarter of Collingwood’s Grand Final team will enter with less than 50 games of experience), and new recruit Luke Ball, who will face-off against the club that benched him for the final quarter last year’s Grand Final, despite a near best-on-ground performance to half time.
But all of this reasonable talk is probably futile. Haters will hate, and what good is any story without an antagonist?
Go Pies, go Mick, go Eddie, and stuff the rest of you.
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