COLLINGWOOD BEAT MELBOURNE. By OBSERVER
Collingwood and Melbourne played a rather one-sided game in which Collingwood were always ahead, but not sufficiently to make it uninteresting. Collingwood's passing was perfect, and their goal-kicking exceptional, so that at one stage about half-way through the second quarter they had scored 5 goals to only 1 behind.
Their superiority was not so pronounced in the first quarter, and again for part of the third term Melbourne were playing excellent football. Two of the Collingwood cracks Condon and Pannam were almost unfit to take the field, yet both of them rose superior to bodily ailments and played very fine football. Condon especially looks worse with every succeeding match, and if the club recognise their duty to a player who has done a great deal for them, they should send him away up north at once for a holiday. A player is expected to make some sacrifices for his club, but the obligation is more strongly the other way, and, though one hesitates about offering even a suggestion where exact medical advice is so easily obtainable, it seems to me that a prosperous club is not quite doing the right thing in this case. Collingwood had a young player named Spier in their team, and he shaped very nicely, but the men in addition to these named who were mainly responsible for their success were Peers, Lockwood, Monahan, A. Leach - who is in great form-Tulloch, and Drohan. Lockwood scored 4 goals for them.
Parkin was unmistakably the most valuable of a very capable lot of Melbourne backs, Moriarty perhaps being the next best. Hocking, who has not had much football this year, was very good forward but though he got a couple of goals he might very easily have doubled his score. Langley as usual, was second to no man on the side, while the three who mixed it on the ball, Moodey, Tout, and Strong were, as usual excellent. If the fortunes of the game made them moody, they were ever strong and stout. Coutie, Sowden and Young did very well.
1903 'FOOTBALL.', The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), 20 July, p. 7, viewed 31 July, 2015, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article9829758