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Collingwood’s long-term former president Eddie McGuire said he felt just as invested and emotional watching his beloved Magpies win a flag this year as he had been when the club won a premiership in 2010 during his reign.
“I always say, right from when I was a little boy when I was barracking over the fence that I was invested in the club and if it rained when I was there with my beanie on and it was running down my neck I felt even more invested,” McGuire told this masthead.
Eddie McGuire enjoyed the Pies’ premiership in 2010.Credit: Paul Rovere
“It’s just been wonderful. I said when I was president in 2010 that it was as much about Syd Coventry and WE Beasley and everybody else [as the current generation] and this feels the same.
“[In] the team there are players who didn’t get a kick, players who played brilliantly and they all played a role. I think the joy that Craig McRae has brought to the club is wonderful.
“My old mate Jeff Browne and I were together when I took over the place [as president in 1999], it’s just a wonderful thing.”
McGuire and Mark Korda, the two most recent past presidents, were both at the club’s celebration at Centrepiece function centre on Saturday night along with former coach and champion player Nathan Buckley and ex-players Anthony Rocca, Luke Ball and Sharrod Wellingham.
Browne told the function the club wanted to recognise that the success was built on the efforts of those who went before them and not a product of two good seasons.
“We are one big club. We are Collingwood … this club has got a rich history, and days like this celebrate that history and salute the people that have gone before. We should never forget that,” Browne said.
Collingwood had played in finals in all but one of the last six years, including four preliminary finals, a semi-final and two grand finals. That period had included three different presidents, two football managers, two list managers and two coaches. All of the changes, other than the public board election, had been free of rancour. But even the changes of president now left no animosity with Korda or McGuire.
McGuire joked the that the grand final itself was “never in doubt”.
“I said to myself, ‘we are due to win a close one’. We have won for two years the close ones – we got knocked off in the finals last year in a couple of close ones, but we have won the close ones and I just thought in the last quarter, ‘we are sure to win a close one,’” he said.
“For me to have been there the night that [recruiting manager] Derek Hine came to me and said ‘we are going to have a bit of a risk’. I said ‘what’s that?’ He said ‘there’s a kid called Pendlebury and we are going to get him at five.’ I said what’s the risk? He said ‘he’s a basketball player but the guy is unbelievable, he could play 300 games’. Well, hopefully he plays 400.
“To see what he did in the last quarter and ‘Sidey’ [Steele Sidebottom] and Mason Cox. Coxy’s the biggest elf in the world, he comes around and has Christmas dinner with us and he was out the door a couple of times [at the club] and Jordy [de Goey], you know there’s a couple of blokes we had to fight for and gee they delivered, so for me personally this win means everything.
“I was like the boy in 1977 again except this time we won.”
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