To mark the occasion, collingwoodfc.com.au will turn the spotlight on the key moments and figures that influenced the birth of the Magpies.
The Collingwood Football Club has been privy to several colourful characters in its 120-year history.
Most tend to roll off the tongue. Lou Richards. Phil Carman. Darren Millane. Eddie McGuire.
But what of the club’s first President - William D. Beazley?
Find out more about Collingwood's 120th Birthday here.
Beazley is a man whose work has been smothered by the passing of time, but his influence on the Collingwood Football Club can never be underestimated. In fact, without him, the club probably would not exist today, and certainly not in its current form.
A local politician, and the mayor of Collingwood from 1894-1895 and 1899-1901, Beazley was born in London in 1855 but arrived in Australia 12 months later.
He was elected to the Collingwood Council and was an active member within the local community.
But his most enduring legacy is his role in the creation of the Collingwood Football Club.
Beazley lived with his mother in Bath St behind Victoria Park and was an advocate for the introduction of a Collingwood football team in the VFA as early as 1889. According to Richard Stremski in Kill for Collingwood (1986), a group of Collingwood residents met in a Johnston St hotel and formed what they called the Collingwood Football Club. The residents appointed Beazley and local entrepreneur and parliamentarian George Langridge as the men to approach the Britannia Football Club about forming an alliance.
Click here to read about the rise and fall of the Britannia Football Club.
As both Beazley and Langridge were patrons of Britannia, their input was welcomed, and the two put the notion of a team in Collingwood based on Britannia to the VFA. Their submission was rejected, although the desire to have a team representative of Collingwood wasn’t dulled.
Two years later, Beazley convinced the Council to spend significant money on leveling the ground, building a fence and extending the playing area. This prompted the Council to write to the VFA to express their desire to field a team that was truly representative of the suburb.
View the history of the suburb of Collingwood.
Once Britannia disbanded, a public meeting was held at the Collingwood Town Hall on 12 February 1892 that endorsed the creation of the Collingwood Football Club.
That evening, Beazley told the crowd that the new football club would be a boon for the city, that its matches would ‘draw immense crowds and be the cause of much money being spent in the district’.
Sensing the buoyant mood, Beazley hosed down expectations of immediate success by demanding that fans remain ‘true to their colours, and not be dispirited if they at first lost matches, as they would require one or two seasons to lick them into first-class football’.
In hindsight, Beazley was laying the foundations for the Side By Side ethos that remains a cornerstone of the club today.
Beazley remained club President until 1911, and became President of the Collingwood Cricket Club upon their formation in 1906.
He died of pneumonia aged 58 in 1912.
There are some similarities between Beazley and current Collingwood President Eddie McGuire. Both are recorded by history as prominent figures within the wider community, although in Beazley’s day there was certainly no opportunity to become a celebrity via the media.
W. D. Beazley (fourth row, fourth from left) oversaw Collingwood's 1896 VFA Premiership in his fifth year as President of the Football Club.
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Eddie McGuire, President since October 1998, was at the helm when Collingwood won its most recent premiership in 2010. He is pictured here with the 2010 premiership team.
Like Beazley, who was said to have left the original February 12 meeting to ‘address a rally of unemployed people’, McGuire is a staunch advocate of aiding the needy, and often cites the role the Football Club played during the Great Depression when the local unemployed residents were used to help build the Ryder Stand, which is still in place 83 years later.
Collingwood Football Club Presidents
W. D. Beazley - 1892-1911
James Sharp - 1912-1923
Harry Curtis - 1924-1950
Syd Coventry - 1951-1962
Tom Sherrin - 1963-1974
Ern Clarke - 1975-1976
John Hickey - 1977-1982
Ranald Macdonald - 1983-1986
Allan McAlister - 1986-1995
Kevin Rose - 1996-1998
Eddie McGuire - 1999-2012
