Hello again Magpie Faithful,
Well, you can’t say the first phase of the season hasn’t been eventful! Disappointing results, our coach gone, off-field rumblings, more key injuries … and then we go and pull off a remarkable victory over the ladder-leading Demons to give Bucks a fairytale send-off. Football hey? You couldn’t write the scripts sometimes …
In amongst all that, we’ve kept our history activities ticking along nicely, as you’ll see below. And here’s hoping we have a big end to what’s been a fairly dramatic 2021.
Carna Woods!
Michael Roberts
Collingwood Historian
Thank you Bucks!
It’s hard to put into words what Nathan Buckley means to this football club.
As a player he was one of the few reasons it was worthwhile going to the footy in the 1990s. He played at a consistently elite level never bettered by anyone in our club’s history. As a coach he gave everything to the cause, even reinventing himself along the way to become a more caring, empathetic version of the highly-driven figure he had first been. And as we all know only too well, he went within a couple of minutes and one freakish West Coast chain of possessions of bringing us home another flag.
In the end he enjoyed 117 wins as a player from 280 games, and 117 wins as a coach from 218 games (winning percentage 54.13). There’s a lovely symmetry in that.
Throughout a sometimes tricky time at the top, he carried himself with a grace and class and dignity that you don’t always find among coaches in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of AFL footy. He was a great ambassador for the club, right to the very end.
What many of you might not know is that he also had a great respect for our history. He was interested in what we did at the Archives, interested in the displays we produced and the presentations we made, and even on occasions involved us in pre-match or other activities.
Put simply, Bucks got Collingwood. He loved the place, and hopefully still does. And that last game at the SCG? Well, that was the stuff of fairytales. But no more than he deserved.
So our parting message to Bucks is exactly the same as that he gave to his own players at three-quarter-time of that last game:
Thank you.
Bri Davey you star!
It was a big year for Brianna Davey, who became just the third Magpie to win the senior competition’s peer-voted MVP award (Darren Millane and Dane Swan being the other two). Bri was also named captain of the all-Australian team (where she was joined by teammates Brit Bonnici, Ruby Schleicher and Chloe Molloy), and grabbed the Collingwood B&F too.
https://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/news/910634/aflw-davey-joins-magpie-royalty
Our women make history
Our AFLW team registered its first ever finals win, and also became the first senior Collingwood team to everhost a final at Victoria Park before it eventually bowed out in a preliminary final. Our VFLW team was also crowned minor Premiers for the third straight season just before our latest lockdown. We’ve got our fingers crossed for the finals to come!
Pendles: King of the MCG
Our skipper has now officially played more matches on the MCG than anybody, having passed Kevin Bartlett’s old record of 200 games early this season.
https://www.afl.com.au/news/579264/move-over-kb-it-s-time-to-crown-a-new-king-of-the-mcg
Beating the Blues
Our win over Carlton in Round 2 meant that we eased ahead of them on the win-loss count in the VFL/AFL (128-127, with 4 draws) for the first time since 1981! Though as I always like to point out, we’re five in front if you count our matches in VFA days too. Fingers crossed for the rematch in a few weeks.
Bruce Andrew’s memorabilia collection
The family of the former Machine team member and TV panellist Bruce Andrew, well remembered by many footy fans of a certain age, has donated some wonderful old memorabilia to the footy club. Read all about it here:
https://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/news/904708/bruce-andrew-s-remarkable-football-life
A Noble story
Gutsy running defender John Noble made his own piece of history when he achieved the rare feat of facing up against his father coaching the opposition side, when we beat North Melbourne back in Round 8.
https://www.afl.com.au/news/607768/history-predicts-clear-winner-in-rare-father-v-son-blood-battle
New History Hub
If you get a chance, check out our new History & Heritage hub on the main club website. It’s the place where we are going to gather all the bits and pieces of history news from here on (such as acquisitions, functions etc), leaving the Forever website to act solely as the repository of historic info, stories, stats and records. And because it’s on the main site, we’re hoping it will make our History activities a little more visible, and provide a stepping-off point to other destinations. We hope you like it!
https://www.collingwoodfc.com.au/club/history-and-heritage
Stay in touch
That's it for now. As always, yell out if you have any queries, you have anything you want to donate or you just have a suggestion for us. You can always get us at [email protected]
See you at the footy (hopefully)!
