1892 – Our first ever game

To understand how big a moment this was, you first have to understand how important the footy club’s existence was to the entire Collingwood community.

This was something the Collingwood people – residents, businesses, civic and community leaders and politicians – had been working towards for three years. It was a grass roots revolution: a community desperate to have a football club bearing its name so that it might reclaim some civic pride and be less ridiculed and criticised by the rest of Melbourne. For the suburb to have its own football club was a massive achievement. It carried a significance far beyond football itself.

So when the Collingwood Football Club finally came to life, in that historic first game against Carlton on 7 May 1892, it was a momentous day for the entire community. Newspaper reports put crowd numbers between 10,000-16,000 – making our first game one of the best attended footy matches Melbourne had seen. By the end of that year we already had the highest membership in the VFA.

We lost that first game, three goals to two, but for once the result didn’t matter that much. This was much, much more than a sporting event: it was also a cultural and social highlight of the year for the entire suburb.

And, as we know now, it was the start of something truly special in the football world.

1896 – Our first Premiership

Despite starting from scratch, Collingwood’s on-field progress was quick and impressive. In just our fifth season we finished equal top with South Melbourne. Nothing could separate the two teams, so the game’s first ever ‘Grand Final’ was needed – in itself an historic moment – to decide the Premiership.

Under Bill Strickland’s shrewd leadership, the Magpies prevailed in a gripping contest. The win sparked wild celebrations at the ground and throughout the suburb. More than 2000 locals turned out to the victory celebration at the Town Hall, while the parties, smoke nights and banquets that followed lasted over a month. One such function at the City Hotel in Johnston Street featured more than 80 speeches!

Local politicians took particular pleasure in the victory, rubbing it in the faces of those who had mocked both the municipality and the team. Mayor William Cody said the footballers were a credit to the city and had done much "to do away with the bad name Collingwood once enjoyed". Another councillor said the win had "done so much to lift Collingwood in the eyes of the world" (yes, the world.)

It is impossible to overstate the significance of Collingwood's first flag. It gave Melbourne's most downtrodden residen

ts something to be proud about, and cemented the club at the centre of the suburb's existence. It also helped change external perceptions. And it propelled the Magpies into the brave new world of a breakaway competition called the Victorian Football League.

1914 – Dick Lee takes the game’s first great specky captured on film

Football photography was in its infancy in 1914. Good action photos were few and far between then, especially if they were taken anywhere other than near the boundary lines or goalsquares. So this photo of Dick Lee soaring above a pack was something way out of the ordinary: it was sharply in focus, an extremely rare occurrence in those days, and taken on a glass plate. It was also wide angle, so you could see much of the Princes Park turf. And it was taken at exactly the right moment, just as Lee secured the ball in both hands.

Make no mistake, this is an extraordinary photograph. But it was also an extraordinary high mark – and the first true ‘specky’ captured on film. As such, it assumed a life of its own in the years that followed. It was used pretty much any time Dick’s name was mentioned, in advertising for footy boots and other products, and in countless football publications. It was also used to help promote the game of Australian football itself more widely, well into the 1960s. It is one of the most widely reproduced photos in the game’s history.

All of this helped cement Dick Lee’s thoroughly justified place as the most exciting player of his generation, and one of the greats of the game’s early years. But it also changed the way footy was marketed forever.

1929 – Gordon Coventry becomes the first player in history to kick 100 goals in a season

Gordon Coventry was a one-man record-breaking machine. He held just about every goalkicking record in the game at one stage – and held onto many of them for decades.

But his ton in 1929 was among the most noteworthy. For a long time, nobody had really thought kicking 100 goals in a season was a possibility. Dick Lee won the club’s goalkicking 11 times, and the VFL’s seven, but never managed more than 66 in a season. Yet just a few years later Coventry managed 97, and footy’s goalkicking Mt Everest was suddenly conquerable.

In 1929, ‘Nuts’ didn’t just reach the mark, he smashed it, eventually finishing on a staggering 124 goals. In a season full of records – this was The Machine at its best, becoming the only team in history to go through a home-and-away season undefeated – Coventry’s 100 stood out. It was low-key at the time, unsurprisingly given his own ridiculous levels of modesty, but grew in significance.

And the records didn’t stop there. He set new single-game records of first 16, then 17 goals. In time he would become the first player to kick 1000 goals (his final tally of 1299 remains the second highest of all time), and the first to reach 300 games. He still co-holds the record for most goals in a Grand Final (nine, shared with Gary Ablett).

Over time, a full-forward kicking his 100^th goal in a season would grow to become one of football’s most beloved and iconic moments. And Gordon Coventry was the man who started it all.

1930 – Pies grab their fourth successive flag – and it’s still a record

Things were not looking good for Collingwood at half-time of the 1930 Grand Final.

We trailed a faster and more youthful Geelong side by 21 points, having lost to them by more than four goals the previous week. Legendary coach Jock McHale was home in bed with pleurisy and the flu. After years at the top, The Machine looked like it was running on empty. An unprecedented fourth successive flag seemed impossible.

But Treasurer Bob Rush stepped up to the plate during the long break. A masterful orator, Rush delivered a passionate, inspirational speech that lifted all the players. Thirty minutes later the Pies had kicked 8.6 and left the hapless Cats wondering what had hit them.

The eventual margin was 30 points, and nobody was in any doubt about the magnitude of Collingwood’s achievement, not only in terms of the mighty comeback but also its place in history. The Sun newspaper called it “one of the finest performances ever seen in football”. The same newspaper had earlier that day described the Magpies’ quest for four flags in a row as “the greatest record in League history”. “It will probably be many years, if at all, before another team gets close to four Premierships on end.”

That didn’t end up being quite true. Other teams have indeed gone close: Melbourne (twice), Brisbane, Hawthorn. But nobody’s ever got to four, let alone beaten it.

That 1930 triumph turned out to be the last hurrah for The Machine. But the record they set that day still stands, and remains one of this club’s proudest achievements.