This weekend, as we sit down on our ‘comfortable’ plastic tip-up seats, with a retractable roof protecting us from Melbourne’s perpetually fickle weather outside, accessing the free Wi-Fi on our phones to check the bank balance after ordering a lukewarm pie and a watered down beer, let’s remind ourselves that it wasn’t always like this.
There was a time when seats, if they existed, were wooden and hard and left the odd splinter in your numb backside. Where leaky grandstand roofs may have kept the rain out but offered no protection from the howling wind that tore through your duffle coat. The beer was full strength, as was the language and the toilets. Well, let’s not even go there.
Sounds bloody awful doesn’t it?
Looking back there were parts of the suburban football ground experience that were, shall we say, less than ideal, and things did need to change. But have we gone too far the other way? As you settle down at Telstra or Etihad or whatever it’s called this week for a match where you have genuinely forgotten if it’s your club’s home game or not, it’s time to reminisce about an era when that was never in doubt.
For all their faults these grounds had soul. They had character, and characters. They had identity. They had quirks. They had stories. But most importantly they were home. So let’s go around the grounds of past days, starting off this week with the club everyone loves to hate, Collingwood, and Victoria Park.
Victoria Park was a place akin to Mordor, where the local orcs would don their black and white scarves and leave their black and white houses to take the short walk to the ground beneath a sky of industrial smog emanating from the factories nearby.
It was from these factories in the staunchly working class suburb of Collingwood that the Magpies drew their support. These were tough men doing tough work and Saturday afternoon was the one time of the week they could ‘let off some steam’. It were these fans that gave Victoria Park its reputation as the most intimidating venue in the league.
And intimidating it was, the away support here was always much less than at other grounds across the city. Only the most committed, brave or some may say stupid supporter turned up in the opponent’s scarf or beanie. Stories even abound that during close finishes some of those said supporters secretly hoped their team would lose so as not to incur the wrath of the Magpie hordes afterwards.
This was a place where you swayed with the action on the terraces such was its cramped nature. Where those of smaller stature would stand on two full beer cans in an attempt to see at least some of the match. There was no nipping off for a quick pie or drink here either, once you had your place on the terrace that was it for the next three hours.
Empties rolled around your feet, the air was fresh with the aroma of cigarette smoke and stale beer breath and the sound of every profanity known to man, with a few unknown ones thrown in for good measure. It was rough and it was tough and you went home feeling as though you had played a match yourself.
The players didn’t have it easy though either. The opposition player’s race emptied the team onto the turf right in front of the famous Sherrin Stand at the railway end of the ground. For generations this was where some of the more vocal and famously one-eyed Collingwood supporters sat. Imagine for a minute the Manchester United team emerging from underneath the Kop at Anfield and you will get an idea of some of the abuse that was dished out here.
This was the end the ‘Pies preferred to attack in the last quarter and rightly so, as it always seemed as though they had a two or three-goal breeze behind them when they were kicking that way. Then win, lose or draw the players had to endure the infamous cold showers in the away dressing rooms. For some reason Collingwood never did manage to get those pesky things fixed.
So there you go, Victoria Park, on and off the ground it was hostile, it was intimidating and it was certainly not for the faint of heart. But it was what made it Collingwood. The tight terraced streets surrounding the ground, the old factories, the black, the white.
Don’t get me wrong, beating Collingwood anywhere, anytime is a fantastic feeling whether it be at Docklands, the ‘G, heck even on the moon.
But nothing can surpass the feeling of going behind the lines, deep into enemy territory and returning home with those four, oh so precious, points from Victoria Park. Even if you only let out a celebratory cheer and mini fist pump once in the relative safety of Flinders Street Station.
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