Just days after Good Old Collingwood Forever was 'performed' publicly for the first time – on a team trip to play an exhibition game in Tasmania in 1906 – a journalist travelling with the touring party noted the words as being:
"Good old Collingwood forever,
They know how to play the game.
Side by side they stick together,
To uphold the Magpies' name.
Hear the barrackers are shouting,
As all barrackers should.
Oh, the premiership's a cakewalk
For good old Collingwood."
But over the years, there have been some subtle variations to those original lyrics. Many fans sing 'we' instead of 'they'. Many also sing 'See' instead of 'Hear', and 'For' instead of 'Oh' in the last line. An extra 'the' has also been added to the last line before 'good old'.
PROFILE: The story of Tommy Nelson on Collingwood Forever.
A close listening to the version recorded by the Fable Singers that's played at grounds before (and hopefully after) our matches reveals that the recorded lyrics reflects some of these variations. It goes like this:
"Good Old Collingwood forever,
They know how to play the game.
Side by side they stick together,
To uphold the Magpies' name.
See, the barrackers are shouting,
As all barrackers should.
For the Premiership's a cakewalk
For the good old Collingwood."
The penultimate line in the song, about the Premiership being a cakewalk, was changed by the New Magpies in 1983 because by then it had become clear that Premierships for Collingwood were far from being cakewalks. But the replacement version, with the words 'There is just one team we favour', didn't last long.
110 years on: The story of our song is revealed.
Around that time, the club also introduced an additional verse, that went:
"There's no team we'd rather see winning,
And there's no team that likes winning more.
When it's all said and done, and the Premiership's won,
It's Collingwood – for ever more."
Not surprisingly, that didn't survive either.
The team sing the song alongside actor Rob Lowe, President Eddie McGuire and captain Nathan Buckley in the win over St Kilda in round nine, 2003.
