What about the footy?!

  Scanning the pages of this lovely website I begin to think that while you have all gone cricket mad (I now know what a golden duck is lol) the tennis, Australian Open was kinda ignored and umm…there’s this other thing called FOOTY…. Where were the Federer pieces?  (Don’t go there Gigs! Lol) Sure he [Read more]

A Magpie Life

So here’s my story.  I heard FootyAlmanac.com.au being plugged on SEN 1116 and thought “this is for me”. I love my footy and with my great mate Chubba I started a parenting resource, a blog with a sporting flavour, called TackleNappy.com.   I’m a tragic Collingwood supporter. I once stood next to Lee Walker at [Read more]

Thai-king Footy

THAI-king Footy Sawasdee Mister Floreat Picans and Mister Almanackers. The last place I expected to be talking footy with the locals was in the faraway tropical land known for its sporting pursuits of Soccer, Boxing and a derivation of the game we know as Table Tennis! But, you could have knocked me down with a [Read more]

Giving thanks for the GFC

  by John Mirisch   Nov. 28, 2011: This is Thanksgiving time in the US.  It’s one of our best holidays.  Any holiday that centers around a meal can’t be all bad, I guess.   In the best American tradition, we take stock of life’s blessings, among the pains and irritations, and we give thanks [Read more]

What if?

One of the many attractions of sport is the endless possibilities for discussions post events beginning with the word “if.” The beauty of such arguments are that they are all hypothetical, so no-one can be proven wrong ! In the wake of the greatest Melbourne Cup of my lifetime, one of the fascinating post-race events [Read more]

Book Review: Tortured Tales of a Collingwood Tragic

Tortured Tales of a Collingwood Tragic James Gilchrist Connor Court Publishing  Paperback  $30   Your choice of football team can affect so much. This presumes, of course, that familial loyalties allow for the luxury of choice. For many, this is not an option. Food, shelter and clothing can be at stake. Even if you are [Read more]

Crazy Pies

Now we all know that each footy club has it regular clowns but when it comes to Collingwood we are talking about a whole new level of craziness. First off I have a confession to make, I’m writing this piece right now instead of working on my sports media and sports development assignments; however this [Read more]

Tuesday night at the book group… readings in black and white *

By Paul Masters It might have just been a normal, quiet first day in October when the book group met in an inner suburban house in Thornbury. They were, as always, more or less ready to catch up, eat, and to debrief on the human condition – work, partners, life and the whole damn thing [Read more]

Tortured Tales of a Collingwood Tragic by James Gilchrist:

James Gilchrist will be speaking at the ECCC Sportsnight on the 25th October. Details here.   Tortured Tales of a Collingwood Tragic is the story of one boy’s struggle to become a man despite the pain of drawn grand-finals, boundary-line incidents, the schoolyard taunts of Carlton-loving scumbags and even the awkwardness of coming to terms [Read more]

Sometimes you get that old lost feeling…

  by Andrew Stafford IT always feels worse in the morning. I’ve supported Collingwood all my life. It’s not my fault; Magpies supporters are generally born, not made. I’m a third-generation Collingwood supporter; my grandmother’s best friend was the sister of Frank Tuck. Uncle Frank, as he was known to my mother’s family at that [Read more]

Rodge and Tobe

  Yesterday, on dusk, I found Rodge and Tobe sitting on Rodge’s ute, which was backed up to a pile of road gravel beside a gully hair pin. I pull in, sore and grotty from work. “Old Dog!” Rodge smiled, throwing his hands in the air. “What’s up, blokes?” ‘We were nicking some Shire gravel [Read more]

Ode to a Magpie

  This anonymous poem was handed to my cousin John Scopas by an old Collingwood fan. He passed it on to me in the hope that it will get a run on the site and that we may yet find the author. I have cleaned up a fair bit of punctuation (written by a Collingwood [Read more]

2011 Grand Final: Anyone for Lacrosse?

“Oh. Is that all?” Helen wants some more to read. Monday morning. October 3. Helen and I have been for a walk along the foreshore – Scarborough to Trigg Beach. Perth. Western Australia. Our bodies and minds are still operating on Victorian time so when you wake at six o’clock in the morning, you may [Read more]

A physically, not mentally, sore loser.

A lot of things in life are often referred to as being a marathon; school, work, even life itself. In fact more than one scribe, in searching for padding for their requisite column inches, during Grand Final week, called the AFL season a Marathon. For the purposes of full disclosure, I’ll come straight out and [Read more]

Its Eade time at Collingwood

I guess everyone has heard about the new addition to Collingwood, I personally beamed at headlines such as ‘Eade joins Magpies’- when did I ever leave?! However, the media were referring to ex-Bulldogs coach, now Collingwood’s new ‘director of coaching’- oooooohh fancy! Now I don’t know how other Collingwood supporters may feel about this, since [Read more]

Cats Fans Have Much To Celebrate

In contrast to 2010, this year it was easy to decide who to barack for in the Grand Final. I live in Collingwood, not far from the traditional Collingwood home ground of Victoria Park. It was to this station that I walked in the rain to catch a train to a friend’s house to watch the [Read more]

Grand Final Week

Ellie and Luke had their ear plugs in and portable TVs on before I had pulled out of the driveway,  Monday morning, grand final week.  High School Musical.  I attempted conversation. So, who’s going to win the grand final? Geelong, said Luke, 8. Collingwood, said Ellie, 10. Why? Dunno. Dunno. What about the Brownlow?  Judd. [Read more]

SAVIOURS

As a youngster I had never been exposed to a Collingwood premiership. It was not until 1970 that the black and whites finally made it to a grand final in my memory. That day they looked home and hosed after leading by 44 pts at half time. Then Ronald Dale Barassi unleashed an unknown in [Read more]

Fearless: Here endeth the season! There can be only one…

  Grand Final: COLLINGWOOD V GEELONG MCG Saturday Afternoon by Paul Thomson Whilst the AFL heavies determined whether to leave the Meatloaf out in the rain, the rest of us were hoping that maybe the words of 70s classic ‘Macarthur Park’ would inspire action. True to form Meatloaf, imitated the cake and went off in the [Read more]

The Footygods: Philoctetes

  by Ian Latham Philoctetes was a warrior with a wounded foot. He was in such pain that the greeks left him out of the army with which they intended to attackTroy. Abandoned and suffering on the island of Lemnos, he waited until Heracles finally arrived to command him onwards to Troy.  And there of [Read more]