Collingwood v Carlton: History's Six

The Guardian
 

1) 1910 – a rivalry is born

Collingwood v Carlton Friday July 5, 7.50pm MCG 7mate / Fox Footy 7.30pm Weather: Min 8 Max 13 Chance of rain 50%: 1-5mm Wind: NNW 29kph Betting: Collingwood $1.95 Carlton $1.85

While it eventually took hold as Australian Rules Football's most fearsome rivalry, for much of the first 15 years of their involvement, Carlton and Collingwood actually got on quite well. It seems inconceivable now but the Blues even went as far as to offer Collingwood financial assistance during their formative years in the league.
But as Richard Stremski put it in his official history, Kill for Collingwood, "the last vestiges of goodwill between Collingwood and Carlton were pulverised at the end of 1910". It had been a season characterised by unsavoury incidents. By July, and in response to growing violence on the ground and in the stands, the Victoria Premier Sir John Murray went as far to assign plain-clothes police to patrol the outer and monitor crowds for foul language.
The first Grand Final between Collingwood and Carlton was in keeping with this backdrop and was immediately preceded by one of the most scandalous chapters in league history when Carlton players Alex "Bongo" Lang and Doug Fraser were found guilty of "playing dead" in the last home and away game against St Kilda, who ran out upset winners.
Lang claimed he took £10 from a would-be match-fixer to underperform in the game but says he merely punted his windfall on his own team to win the game and played as he otherwise would have, surely one of the most bizarre defences ever offered to a league tribunal. The league were having none of it; both Lang and Fraser received five-year suspensions with their co-accused teammate Doug Gillespie escaping punishment. The episode doubtlessly hampered Carlton's premiership campaign.
The writer and historian Lionel Frost called the resultant match a "vicious Grand Final". The Blues had trailed for most of the afternoon when a scuffle broke out between Jack Baquie and Pies rover Tom Baxter in the final quarter that immediately triggered a wild brawl involving up to 50 players, officials and spectators. The Argus reported that it was only stopped by the quick-thinking umpire Jack Elder, who blew the whistle and bounced the ball amongst the chaos. Some things never change.
In the end, led by Dick Lee's four goals and a rotation of three hobbling ruckmen, Collingwood maintained their lead to win by 14 points. Yet it was the dramatic fall-out from the on-field violence that would sour relations between the two clubs forever. A league investigation into the brawl found that Collingwood's JF 'Soldier' Shorten came rushing "from the backline and lifted him [Baquie] off the ground with a mighty punch." Baquie sought retribution by king-hitting Collingwood's Les "Flapper" Hughes, with the pair allegedly collapsing to the ground together.
The league suspended Baxter and Baquie for a year each, also giving Shorten and Carlton's Percy Sheehan a year and a half for their involvement. Then on 27 October, in a move that makes the MRP look clear-headed, the League reopened the case at the behest of Collingwood player Richard Daykin, who claimed it was he and not Baxter who was responsible for the scuffle with Baquie, doing so with the public support of Collingwood captain/coach George Angus.
Unbelievably the league accepted this testimony and Baxter, a star player of the time, had his one-year sentence transferred to Daykin and was now free to play. This all occurred despite the evidence of umpire Elder, who said he ought to know the difference between a player with dark hair and one with red hair. Daykin promptly announced his retirement, further inflaming the outrage of Carlton and cementing a lifelong rivalry.

 

2) 1938 Grand Final – Collier's carnage

If it was the aftermath of the 1910 Grand Final that was the cause of outright scandal for the league, 28 years later it was the events that led up to the big day that shone a spotlight on the rivalry between the Blues and the Pies.
During home and away game between the two teams at Victoria Park, Carlton pulled off a remarkable comeback victory, coming from 39 points down at half-time to beat the Pies by 16 points. As the two teams walked off the ground, Collingwood champion Harry Collier appeared to take exception to something said by Carlton's pint-sized rover Jack 'Mouse' Carney, "potting" him before retreating to the change rooms as a scuffle ensued.
In one of the more colourful and amusing recollections of the event, Collier himself later admitted "Yes, I potted Jack Carney all right. It was a silly darned thing to do," before revealing that he was merely settling a score for his brother Albert, or "Leeter", as he was known. The league took a dim view of the incident, suspending Collier for 14 weeks, effectively ending his season and any hope of playing in the Grand Final. They were then forced to reject a petition from 2,500 Collingwood supporters for the suspension to be reduced.
When the two sides met in the decider, though Collingwood were missing Collier, they boasted Ron Todd, a player who dominated matches despite occasional wild kicking at goal. The legendary Collingwood coach Jock McHale abandoned his traditional policy of only playing fit players, so Albert Collier was named in the side despite a serious knee injury and his own insistence that he was not right to play. McHale seemed to believe the presence of the Collier name alone would have a talismanic impact and strike fear into the opposition, but the plan backfired badly.
The Age had forewarned that Carlton "can be expected to take more than ordinary physical risks tomorrow to spreadeagle Collingwood" but the Carlton captain-coach Brighton Diggins urged his players to tactically avoid injuring Collier any further, believing he was more of a hindrance than help to his team's chances. Diggins had his side well-drilled, noting before the game, "Every man has a job to do and will not let Carlton down. We have no champions but every player helps his team-mate and puts the team first." It was a philosophy that was to reap the ultimate success.
A crowd of 96,834 crammed into the MCG for the game. According to Tony De Bolfo's Out of the Blue, among them were 10,000 die-hards who had jumped the fence, desperate to catch a glimpse of their heroes. What they saw was Collingwood pull within four points of the Blues with only minutes remaining before Jack Hale and Jack Wrout goaled to pull the Blues over the line and into the history books.

 

3) 1970 – the legend of Barassi

"Well that game's over. Now we begin another with a new team. Forget that first half. Go handball happy. The first player who hangs his head in shame will be taken from the field. We can peg them back four goals a quarter. Go out there and don't disgrace Carlton. Even if we lose, be proud of yourselves."
With those words, Ronald Dale Barassi plotted the most dramatic Grand Final turnaround of them all and consigned Collingwood fans to a recurring nightmare they never thought possible, beating the Pies by 10 points in front of 121,696. While echoing Brighton Diggins's theme of pride in the Carlton jumper from four decades earlier, it was Barassi's plea for his charges to handball and play on at all costs that helped establish a coaching legend.
In actual fact, it was a matter of both tactical savvy and good fortune. Heading into the half-time break with a 44-point lead, Collingwood were nevertheless facing some injury problems. Goal-kicking machine Peter McKenna was felled by friendly fire as Des Tuddenham flew in for a spectacular mark shortly before half time. Wayne Richardson was by this point carrying a badly corked thigh and it was perfect timing for the Blues whose defenders ran the pair ragged in the second half, emboldened by Barassi's tactical switch.
The game featured some of the more remarkable feats in footballing lore, from Ted Hopkins appearing from the bench after half-time to star for the Blues with an unforgettable four-goal burst, to the greatest mark of them all from Alex Jesaulenko.
Jezza's iconic mark may sit on its own as a moment of footballing majesty, but it also partially distracts from the fact that it was taken against an almighty tide, more or less the only highlight of Carlton's dismal first-half. The Australian sports writer RS Whitington gave an evocative picture of Jesaulenko in full flight: "In movement, he reminded me of breaking surf – the first impelled and impulsive burst, the swoop, the flow and that final surge – that 'kick on' which left his lessers in his wake". Jesaulenko would finish with three goals for the day, including the one that sealed the comeback of all comebacks.
Graham Jenkin, the man Jesaulenko climbed atop to take the famous mark, summed up the feeling at Collingwood in the aftermath when he admitted, "we were just destroyed. It took a long time to get over." The Carlton ruckman Percy Jones offered conditional sympathy for his adversaries, saying: "I genuinely felt sorry for them – for an instant." For Barassi it was the culmination of a lifetime commitment to the game. In his own book, Barassi: the life behind the legend, he summed it up; "I was feeling one of the greatest surges of personal power and energy I have ever felt in my life. I was 10 feet tall and still growing. My admiration for the 20 magnificent men was boundless."

 

4) 1979 – Harmes dives into history

While the curse of the "Collywobbles" was ever-looming for the Pies, there were far fewer expectations being placed on them heading into the 1979 decider against their old foe. Having failed to lure Bernie Quinlan across to the club in the two years beforehand, Collingwood boasted a blue collar line-up light on stars, but big on heart.
The Collingwood coach, and renowned taskmaster, Tom Hafey had extracted every ounce of ability from his players during the season, but publicly hoped for the kind of rain that would bring his slower midfield into play, adding that he'd prefer such a deluge to last until Cup Day. Hafey got his wish, with two days of rain turning the MCG into a mud-heap and playing a part in Collingwood's surprisingly good start to the game, leading the Blues by 10 points at the quarter time break and trailing by only one at half-time.
Sensing the potential for an upset, Jesaulenko – by then the Carlton captain-coach – moved himself off the ball and through the stocky, mercurial Wayne Harmes into the fray. It was a move that reaped immediate rewards, Carlton scoring five goals to two in the third quarter giving the Blues a 21-point buffer at the final break. The Pies were gallant with Bill Picken, Kevin Morris and Ron Wearmouth scrapping all the way to keep Collingwood in the game. Wearmouth bravely played through the pain of a broken jaw he'd suffered in the first quarter.
It was all to no avail; Carlton snuck home by five points after one of the most controversial and replayed incidents in Australian sports history. Harmes chased down his own errant kick towards the forward pocket, dived and hooked the ball away from the boundary line and into the hands of team-mate Ken Sheldon, who made no mistake from the goal square. Depending on whether it is the account of a Carlton or Collingwood fan, Harmes was either millimeters inside the boundary or three rows over the fence, but remains football's most famous 'one-percenter'. The years of argument and conspiracy have only added to the ill-feeling between the two sides. It is also worth noting that Jesaulenko had broken his ankle in the same passage of play but after a tense final two minutes, was delighted to be chaired onto the ground to receive the Premiership Cup.
Hafey left no doubt as to his thoughts on the climax, claiming that "a blind boundary umpire cost us that Grand Final." Carlton players celebrated long and hard but were also left red-faced and angry at the arrogance of their president George Harris, who punctuated his speech at a post-game function by asking, "What's better than beating Collingwood by 10 goals? Beating them by five points!"

 

5) Fevola the Millennium Man

As far as insane marketing ideas go, the AFL's decision to stage a game between Collingwood and Carlton on New Year's Eve in 1999 was among the most comprehensively loco. Ignoring the widespread paranoia about a Y2K-induced apocalypse and assuming that around 80,000 people would be at a loose end on the night of the biggest party of the year, the league decreed that its most traditional adversaries would meet in a spectacular night game to open the Ansett Cup pre-season competition a month early.
Even the new Collingwood president, Eddie McGuire, wasn't that keen on the idea, instead providing Channel Nine viewers with live reassurances that the end of the millennium wouldn't usher in a state of worldwide anarchy.
Yet several elements of the league's plan didn't add up. Collingwood had just collected the wooden spoon and were struggling on-field like no time in their history. Carlton were coming off a Grand Final loss that rendered their players far from enthusiastic about the timing of such a frolic.
In his ironically titled autobiography Fev: In My Own Words (presumably completed with a little assistance from Adam McNicol), Brendan Fevola, then a relatively unknown rookie, notes, "because of the timing, most of the boys were shattered when the league announced the game. In fact they were absolutely filthy; none of them wanted to play." For Fevola it was a different story, having worked his way into peak physical condition, he was determined to make an impression. Despite initial misgivings that he was an 18-year-old who "should be out on the gas with my mates" that night, Fevola embraced the opportunity that it presented him.
In the end, the AFL's crowd forecast proved comically optimistic with less than 20,000 punters in for the game. Fevola parlayed a pre-game preparation of two McChicken burgers into the most significant moment of his career to date, bursting into the consciousness of the football world with a stunning 12-goal haul. The Blues inflicted an 88-point drubbing on a dismal Collingwood.
Though it brought him fame and a regular berth in the senior side, Fevola looks back on the game with some reservations, admitting, "kicking those 12 goals was probably one of the worst things that could have happened to me at that stage of my career. It made me think footy was easy."

 

6) 2004 – blown away by the dead rubber Blues

The historian David Frith once asked an incurable cricket obsessive whether he had a favourite edition of Wisden Cricketer's Almanack from his extensive collection. The collector paused for a brief moment before concluding: "the next one". For Carlton and Collingwood supporters it would be a familiar sentiment. No matter what their respective positions on the ladder going into a clash between the two clubs, it is a rivalry that can stir a season out of apathy or add a heightened sense of purpose to winning the four points.
Such was the case late in the 2004 season when both sides found themselves out of finals contention but desperate not to surrender bragging rights and a morale boost to the other. Collingwood had been Grand Finalists the year before and the 2004 season had represented a major step backwards.
Carlton had trailed by 19 points at the main break but not for the first time, clawed their way back into a position of ascendancy. But in the mad scramble of the last quarter, Collingwood still had every chance of snatching the game back. After a dubious free kick against Fevola, Chris Tarrant goaled with a minute left to put the Pies within one point but in the ensuing scramble, Carlton kept their composure and hung on for the win. For the Blues it secured 11th place on the ladder after the home and away season; the desolate Magpies had gone from Premiership contenders to 13th place in the space of 11 months.
In Keeping the Faith, his diary of Collingwood's 2004 season, writer and Pies supporter Steve Strevens summed up the feeling heading into that last minute. It accurately distills the very essence of his club's rivalry with Carlton.
"I smiled to myself in resignation. A point, one last delicious irony left for us. There is a time when, despite all the barracking and yelling and jumping up and down, you just know what is coming."