Collingwood diehard Steve Fahey takes fellow supporters on a trip down memory lane as he revisits some of the match ups that define our recent history against the Navy Blues.

Every win against the arch-enemy is sweet, but some are sweeter than others.

Unfortunately, some of the biggest clashes against the Blues have gone the wrong way. Notwithstanding that, there have been some very memorable wins against the Blues. While we beat them in finals in 1970, 1978, 1980 and 1984, all of the wins detailed below came in home and away games. They are detailed in historical order.

In round 19, 1970, the old foes faced off as the top two sides in front of nearly 40,000 at Victoria Park and I was cheering loudly at age seven.

The Pies became raging favourites to break their twelve year premiership drought as they destroyed the Blues 13.23 (101) to 2.12 (24). The cream on the cake for the ecstatic Pies’ faithful came late in the game when The Sharpshooter (Peter McKenna) dribbled one off the ground to score his ninth, and his 100th for the season. Sadly, the glory of this day faded into obscurity some weeks later as a season which promised so much again ended in tears.

In round six, 1977, the Pies met the Blues at what was then called VFL Park with both teams on four wins and only North Melbourne ahead of them on the ladder. The match was also notable for McKenna lining up for the Blues against the Pies for the first and only time, as well as the debut of the fleet of foot Ricky Barham as 19th man.

The match was a triumph for the Pies. After a tight first quarter, we broke the game apart in the second and went on with it to win by an astonishing 102 points.

Twenty year old blond bombshell Peter Moore, in his 45^th game, announced himself as a star, kicking seven and standing on several heads to pull down screamers.

The Pies went home that day on top of the ladder and daring to dream that a premiership was possible after being wooden spooners for the first time in the club’s history the previous year.

In round six, 1981, the two foes met as undefeated sides and early flag favourites at Princes Park in front of more than 36,000.

The attendants in the tiny pie stand in the outer were so busy this day that one guy was taking the pies out of the cardboard box and into the pie-warmer metal trays and the other guy was selling them straight out of the trays, completely unheated!

My lifetime best mate Stork and I weren’t worried about the stone-cold pies off the field, as on the field, the Pies were red hot, powering away in the second quarter and stretching the margin in the second half to record a comfortable 57 point win.

With gun South Australian recruit Mark Williams running amok in the centre, Moore matching his 25 possessions with 25 hitouts and Daicos magnificent with seven goals, the Pies were super-impressive and became outright flag favourites.

Round 14, 1988 was another epic and in my view, the Pies’ best win in my lifetime against the Blues. The Blues were the reigning premiers while we had come out of the wilderness after missing the finals for three years in a row and were second, a game ahead of the Blues.

While the Pies led at each of the changes, with Brown, Daicos and McGuane leading the way, the Blues got their noses in front in a tense last quarter and led with less than seven minutes to go. It seemed like it might be another case of what might have been and another forlorn trip home from a clash against the Blues at the 'G.

The Pies, however, unleashed a powerful burst of four goals to take the prize and I boldly declared that we could win the premiership.

I might have been two years early, but some of the seeds of the 1990 premiership were sown this day. The crowd noise in the last few minutes was (and still is, on the replay) absolutely phenomenal. This match also contained the famous hanger that SOS took over Craig Starcevich, which you can look at elsewhere!

The final match in this collection of best wins comes from the largely forgettable year of 2000, Mick Malthouse’s first year with the Pies.

After being wooden spooners and winning only four games in 1999, we had won our first two and in round three faced the Blues, who had been runners-up the year before and had also won their first two games (they had also annihilated us in the ill-conceived Millennium Eve game).

For a change, we had entered this season with very modest expectations, and the first two rounds were therefore as pleasantly surprising as they were highly enjoyable.

Nearly 83,000 packed the G to see a very young Pies’ team featuring 11 players with 25 AFL games or less (Adkins, Betheras, Nick Davis, Fraser, Johnson, Kinnear, Licuria, Lockyer, O’Bree, Tarrant and Ukovic) take on a seasoned Carlton team.

With Bucks leading the way with 34 possessions and Sav Rocca kicking six, we pulverised them, leading all day and increasing the margin at very change to a final margin of 73 points.

Other than remembering feeling both ecstatic and quite stunned, my only other memory from this day came from a conversation at the Baden Powell Hotel in the post-match celebration.

My brother Kevin, who worked in the stats team for the Pies for a decade, reported that Mick had congratulated the players after the game, told them that it was a magnificent performance, and then told them that their challenge was that it wouldn’t be their best win of the season.

This was a prescient observation, as, after winning our first five, we won only two more for the season.