Every match that Collingwood plays feels like it's the most important game in the world.

But the truth is that some games matter more than others. And some have impacts that last for decades, even if that significance isn't always apparent at the time.

So here is a trawl through the history books to come up with the most significant games in Magpie history. These aren't just the biggest wins or the most memorable days, but the games that had a significant influence on the club's history.

We've excluded all finals, simply because otherwise the list would almost be completely taken up with premierships and a few painful Grand Final losses. But the home-and-away games covered in this series have had a huge impact on the club – sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. They've led to club turmoil, coaches being sacked, major changes in the game or sometimes set us on the path to a flag.

Whatever the outcome, these games represent major turning points in our club's story. And they're worth recalling.

Turning Points: The break that felled Carman - 1975

It is June, 1975, and Fabulous Phil Carman is flying.

In just his first season in the VFL, having crossed from Norwood after a long and complicated transfer process, Carman is taking the competition by storm.

His strength, athleticism, skills and endurance are proving too much for opponents, and already he is being compared to the most talented and exciting Magpies of all time.

After 10 rounds, Collingwood sat in fifth spot on the ladder, having won six games. Over the next eight rounds they would win only three more.

The reason was simple: between rounds 10 and 11, Victoria played Western Australia as part of a knockout interstate carnival featuring the Vics, WA, South Australia and Tasmania. These were the days before State of Origin, so Phil Carman had been chosen to play for the Big V – no small honour for a guy in his first season in the VFL.

But that honour turned into a disaster for the Collingwood Football Club, when their most important player – the man who would go on to win the Copeland Trophy that year and just miss out on the Brownlow – broke a bone in his foot.

Carman was a football freak; it seemed there was simply nothing he could not do. At 188cm (6ft 2in) he was tall enough to hold down key positions like centre half-forward and full-forward, yet he was agile and quick enough to play his best football in the centre. He had a huge leap, sure hands, was superbly skilled on both sides of his body, superfit and had a penchant for the spectacular. If there was an “impossible” goal to kick, Carman would kick it; a skyscraping mark to be taken, Carman would take it.

He was in the prime of his football life and was already regarded as the most exciting footballer in the League, and he had a talent that was not again to be matched until Gary Ablett Snr hit his straps in the 1980s

In a star-studded Victorian line-up that featured names like Jesaulenko, Bartlett, Moss, Knights and Matthews, Carman was just about the team's best player in the first half, kicking three goals and generally starring. But someone accidentally trod on his foot just before half-time and he was replaced soon after.

The injury sidelined Carman for eight weeks of football. That alone almost certainly cost him the Brownlow, where he finished only three votes behind the eventual winner, Footscray’s Gary Dempsey.

It also cost Collingwood valuable momentum. By the time he returned from injury in round 19 the Pies were seventh with a woeful percentage. They did not lose another game after Carman’s return, and eventually managed to sneak into the finals. But with no double chance, the Pies went out at the first hurdle. Had Carman stayed on the park, they almost certainly would have finished higher.

Strangely, there was one upside to Carman's enforced absence. The impact on the team's performances was so obvious, and the buzz he'd created in his first 10 games so extreme, that his return was the most eagerly anticipated event of the season – at least for Magpie fans.

And what he did when he came back did much to forge the Phil Carman legend. In his first game back he kicked 6.8 against Essendon in a superb individual performance: he could easily have kicked double figures.

The next week at Moorabbin he did just that. He simply tore St Kilda apart. In a one-man rampage that will never be forgotten by anyone who saw it, he bagged 11 goals. Tony Shaw said he had never seen an individual display like it. In its aftermath Lou Richards branded Carman “the most exciting footballer ever to play with Collingwood ... and possibly the best”.

To make his impact even more pronounced, both those extraordinary performances were delivered with him wearing lairy new white boots. This was a time when lime green adidas stripes were considered a bit 'out there', so his appearance in stark white boots not only cemented his standing as one of the game's most brilliant players, but also as one of its most flamboyant.

The impact of Carman's absence on Collingwood in the middle of 1975 was measurable: the impact on Carman himself less so. Years later, he would reflect on the difference it might have made if he had won the Brownlow that year, the external validation it would have provided perhaps stiffening his self-belief and desire to conform.

Instead he would go on to be a central figure in the disastrous season that would engulf Victoria Park in 1976, his disinterest and lack of discipline proving to be corrosive. 'Fabulous Phil' would never again reach the heights of 1975, and would leave the Magpies at the end of 1978 as one of our most intriguing – and ultimately frustrating – figures.

Turning Points
Written by Glenn McFarlane and Michael Roberts

Turning Points: A game of belief.

Turning Points: The first game.

Turning Points: History's ugly repeat.

Turning Points: Honouring the greater good.

Turning Points: A turning point for football.

Turning Points: How we landed McHale.

Turning Points: Ending the Cat empire.

Turning Points: The practice match that led to a revolution.

Turning Points: Starting from the bottom.

Turning Points: Attacking the Cats.

Turning Points: The drama before the revival.

Turning Points: The loss that elevated Lethal.

Turning Points: The miracle of '58.