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Collingwood fans farewell hallowed ground

KERRY O'BRIEN: For 107 years, the Collingwood Football Club has called Victoria Park home. For Magpie supporters, it's been more than just a football ground -- it's been a place of worship, home to arguably the most parochial and passionate supporters in Australian sport. But tomorrow afternoon, the final siren will sound and an era will have come to an end, even though the club lives on. Geoff Hutchison reports.

SONG: Good old Collingwood forever, we know how to play the game.

MAN: If barracking would prevent an opposing player kicking for goal, I'll be all there and give such unearthly shrieks as would terrify the kicker.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: Those words, spoken by local politician John Hancock 107 years ago, came to typify the furious parochial loyalty Collingwood would become famous for.

BETTY GARTH, SUPPORTER: No matter how bad they were beaten the week before or where they were on the ladder, it just wouldn't occur to you not to go.

MICHAEL ROBERTS, FOOTBALL HISTORIAN: Collingwood, at that stage, was a suburb much derided. It was a largely industrial area. It wasn't regarded as a good place to live. Many of its citizens were regarded as, you know, second-class, or of the poorer class, if you like.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: Depression years struck Collingwood savagely, but the misery of the day-to-day was broken on Saturdays, when the 'Pies played and invariably won. The feats of the Colliers and Coventrys gave supporters not just hope, but the prospect of delicious revenge. For the toffs did have something to envy -- the men of Victoria Park.

MICHAEL ROBERTS: The '20s and '30s were huge -- A) because Collingwood had such a successful team. They won the four flags in a row from '27-'30. They appeared in six Grand Finals in that period. They won another two five years later. They had some of the greatest names probably in football that were playing at that time.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: Lou Richards was a Collingwood captain and icon. He arrived at the club in 1941 as an 18-year-old.

LOU RICHARDS, FORMER COLLINGWOOD CAPTAIN: And they talked all the time of the tradition of Collingwood. It was imbued into you.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: You felt it all the time?

LOU RICHARDS: You felt it, yeah, and if you didn't feel it, I think you soon did!

GEOFF HUTCHISON: And last night, the faithful gathered to farewell a grand old ground, rendered irrelevant because football is now a big-money entertainment industry. Grounds had to be rationalised and after tomorrow, Victoria Park will be too small and too rickety to pay its way. Never again will fans get quite as close to their heroes and Betty, Rana, Kath and Marilyn are none too pleased. It won't be the same to be at the MCG next year?

BETTY GARTH: No, it's never the same at the MCG. Nothing could ever be the same as Victoria Park. Even my granddaughter -- and I mean, she probably wouldn't have been here more than a dozen times, and yet one day we walked through the gate and she said, "Oh, I just love coming in here. I shiver."

GEOFF HUTCHISON: To understand a fan's relationship with Victoria Park you have to understand women like these. Between them, they've seen nearly every home game in the last 50 years. If any of their daughters wanted to get married during the footy season, mum wouldn't be going, and despite their gentle grandmotherly appearance, they are very, very dangerous people. How badly did you take defeats?

MARILYN: Shocking.

BETTY GARTH: Very badly.

MARILYN: They were shocking.

BETTY GARTH: Yeah, if the kids spoke out of turn, they'd probably get sent to bed.

MARILYN: She actually whacked a footballer once.


MARILYN: She went out out on the ground and whacked a footballer.

BETTY GARTH: Well, it was only Bob Chitty. And I mean, he deserved to get whacked.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: Did you hit him with an open hand?

BETTY GARTH: Yes. Oh yes, I was a lady -- no punches thrown.

LOU RICHARDS: They've been maligned by people saying they're a bit rugged, but they're no more rugged than any other supporter -- but they do it better. They're more enthusiastic than any other supporter. That's what makes them so great.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: Supporters like Betty, Rana, Kath and Marilyn are the fabric from which Collingwood's personality was cut -- staunch and unwavering, through good times and bad. And you get the sense that while they and others mourn the loss of their community meeting place, they mourn perhaps more the loss of the game that once belonged to the suburbs.

BETTY GARTH: Kids would wait outside because the players didn't arrive in cars in those days. They'd come on the train, or on their pushbikes, or walk. And the kids would wait and carry their old kit bags.

LOU RICHARDS: It's more intimate for these people here now at Victoria Park than it'll ever be anywhere else, because this was their ground, this was their home, and they're going to miss that.

GEOFF HUTCHISON: And when the final siren blows tomorrow afternoon, an era will have ended. But when the final siren blows for Rana, she's in no doubt she's not going anywhere.

RANA McGOLDRICK, SUPPORTER: I said, "You can put me in a kero tin, burn me and just put my ashes over the Collingwood football ground -- that's all I want." And it is all I want, too.



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