LEGENDARY Richmond player Jack 'Captain Blood' Dyer hated Collingwood like no other Tiger. Dyer was the most famous and feared Tiger of them all.His hatred for Collingwood was genuine.
"It is a blind, unreasoning hatred, but not really difficult to understand,'' he wrote in his book - Captain Blood - in 1965.
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"If they win they gloat. If they lose they sulk.''
Dyer said the Magpies did have some qualities, but it didn't compensate for their mean, nasty and petty weaknesses.
It was with a certain amount malice that he recalled an incident in 1936 when Collingwood's gentleman star, full forward Gordon "Nuts" Coventry, appeared on the ground with heavy bandages on the back of his neck to conceal "large, angry boils."
Tiger fullback Joe Murdoch wasn't fussy about the way he beat an opponent and at the first opportunity he punched at the ball, missed and hit Coventry on the boils.
Dyer said with the first punch he'd seen Coventry throw, Murdoch went down for the count and "Nuts'' was reported.
The Magpies needed Coventry for the finals and a club official offered Murdoch 100 pounds - a huge sum at the time - to tell the truth at the tribunal that he had deliberately hit him on the boils.
"Murdoch flatly refused,'' Dyer said.
"He hated Collingwood as much as I did."
Coventry was suspended for eight game and missed Collingwood's premiership.
Dyer, captain coach from 1941-49 and coach in 1950-52, said Collingwood would turn off the hot water in the visitors' rooms if the Magpies lost.
He said when Collingwood offered the opposition a beer after the game it would be warm and the players wouldn't drink it because they were were scared about what was in the glass.
Dyer, who later became a legendary media commentator, died in 2003.
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