Words & Music Phil Kakulas
AFL team songs hold a special place in the hearts of their supporters. Yet what do we know about their origins and meaning? This month Words & Music explores the history and significance of some of our most cherished footy club songs…
The team song of an AFL club can be as important to its identity as the club colours or guernsey design. Sung in victory by the winning team and its supporters, the songs traditionally combine a chest-beating lyric with a simple, rousing melody borrowed, more often than not, from a well-known pre-existing musical work.
The precedent was set at the beginning by the oldest of the AFL team songs, ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’. Written in 1906, the song combines an original lyric by Magpies player Tom Nelson with the melody of ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’, an American song popularised during the Boer War. Nelson may have only played three games for the club, but his lyrics have endured for over a century.
Good old Collingwood forever
We know how to play the game
Side by side we stick together
To uphold the Magpies name
Much to the irritation of rival supporters, the song’s expressions of pride and loyalty give way in the end to a boastful claim of an easy victory over the club’s competitors.
Oh, the premiership's a cakewalk
For the good old Collingwood
The term ‘cakewalk’ has its origins in slave-era America, where it referred to a walking dance performed by African-American slaves for the prize of a freshly baked cake. Perhaps it was the connotations of the phrase, or simply some recognition of the hubris it reflected, that moved the club to initiate a change to the lyric in the 1980s. The replacement line, ‘there is just one team we favour’, never found favour with the club’s supporters and Nelson’s original lyrics remain intact to this day.
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