Few have given more to the Collingwood Football Club than Eddie Hillgrove.
Hillgrove has made a remarkable contribution to the Black and White for over 35 years as a great football man, a magnificent friend and supporter of the players, as a tireless volunteer and passionate servant of the club, and literally as a wonderful club man.
His story is a genuine black and white Collingwood story.
Hillgrove first started going to Collingwood matches at Victoria Park at the age of three, and hewent to the Victoria Park Primary School and watched training every Tuesday and Thursday night after school.
He joined as a social club member at the age of 24 through the great Bill Twomey, exactly fifty years ago.
Hillgrove joined Collingwood’s Reserves Committee in 1981, and graduated into the role of the senior Team Manager in 1983, a role he held until 2000. He was also Chairman of the Players Welfare between 1985 and 2000, managed all training and match day operations between 1985 and 1999, was responsible for managing all messages from the coaches on match days between 1983 and 1999, and organised all the fundraising and arrangements for the players’ end of season trips between 1983 and 2000.
Of course, his role in the 1990 premiership remains one of the most storied in the club’s history.
Hillgrove, famously, was involved in the quarter-time brawl between the Collingwood and Essendon players and staff at the city end of the MCG.
“Being a Reservoir boy, Eddie thought he was super tough and as everyone knows the fight started, and Eddie and Graeme ‘Gubby’ Allan were soon involved with the opposition trainer, Essendon’s Peter Power, and their runner,” premiership captain Tony Shaw recalled.
Hillgrove takes over the story.
"I saw Kevin Sheedy grab Gubby by the throat and, without a word of a lie, I thought I'd break it up because you can't have officials fighting at a Grand Final,” Hillgrove told the Herald Sun’s Chris De Kretser in September 2013.
“But as I was about to run in and do that, Essendon's bootstudder (Graham Mendola) hit Gubby."
Essendon doorman Jack Synan told De Kretser he recalls Mendola delivering “one of the best uppercuts I have ever seen on the MCG”.
“Then Eddie Hillgrove came in and had a go at him (Mendola). I sat on Eddie and wouldn't let him up.”
What happened from there?
“Being a Collingwood boy born and bred, I said to him (Mendola) it was not right what he did,” Hillgrove continued.
“He swung and missed. I swung at him. One of the trainers swung and missed, and I got him.
“Then one of their older trainers shaped up to me, and I said to him, 'You're too old for this crap', so he backed away. John Synan came in and two other guys had me on the ground by the legs.
“Leigh Matthews came up and grabbed hold of me and said, ‘C’mon, Eddie, we've got a job to do’”.
“That’s Ed, he would stand up for you,” Shaw reflected this week.
“Everybody had to stand up after that and it was a very enjoyable time that night just seeing the joy on everyone’s face, but for him to be part of that after seeing things not happen the right way over a lot of the time at Collingwood, it was just sensational.”
Hillgrove remained at Leigh Matthews’ side throughout the duration of his time at the helm.
“(People like Eddie and Brisbane’s Barry Lowe) epitomised what pre-professional sport teams were about, an era when representing your community with many unpaid individuals digging in to give the team a hand was how the clubs were run,” Matthews wrote in his autobiography Accept The Challenge (2012).
“(Both Eddie and Barry) were terrific people who were more important to the team karma than they were ever given credit for.”
Matthews’ departure paved the way for Tony Shaw to take his place in the coaches’ box, and it was Hillgrove who helped steer him during his four years at the helm.
“The one thing about a football manager is that you take all the administration part away from the football coach,” Shaw explained.
“Things such as the organisation, where the players have got to be, that they’ve got to be on time, to make sure that all our travelling is organised too, Eddie did all that.
“But he went beyond that, he was also a sounding board about how players might be feeling. Even during that period of time, especially the last couple of years of my coaching career, which was a pretty hard time for me, he kept me up and kept telling me to believe in myself and hopefully things would turn.
“They didn’t in the end, but with the support I had I knew I could always sound off him to make sure that we had things in control.
“I think we did that to a certain point, we would have loved a greater result but you couldn’t get a better man or person to depend on and just know that you could turn to him all the time.”
As Shaw’s time at Collingwood ended, so, too, did Hillgrove’s.
But not for long.
As the club relaunched its own stand alone VFL team in 2008, Hillgrove return to join forces with his old friend Gavin Brown (coach) and Paul Licuria (VFL Manager) to lead the VFL Magpies.
In the years since, Hillgrove has worked alongside Brown, Tarkyn Lockyer and Dale Tapping in helping give rise to the next generations of Collingwood footballers.
From Victoria Park to the outer suburbs, he continues to keep the ship on course every winter and retains the highest respect of all involved in the Black and White.
It’s a respect built from decades of friendship and a common sense approach that has helped countless Collingwood players and staff achieve their best.
“He’s a man’s man. He says what he thinks, he’s honest. You wouldn’t second guess any time you spoke to Eddie Hillgrove where you stand in his life,” says Shaw.
“He is probably one of the most loyal men I’ve met in football, and let me tell you, if anyone deserved an award like this, it is Eddie Hillgrove.
“I’m glad it’s come now; it’s probably a bit slow in timing, but thanks to the club for doing it. He deserves it more than anybody that I know.”
Reward for the ultimate clubman
Few have given more to the Collingwood Football Club than Eddie Hillgrove.