When Charlie Cameron snapped to give the Brisbane Lions the lead with five and a half to play in the fourth quarter of the 2023 AFL Grand Final, I, like every other Collingwood supporter thought, here we go again.
I was actually at peace with it. It was too perfect. Let’s just name it the Charlie Cameron goal square now, shall we?
The Pies were on top in possession count, inside 50s, shots on goal, and were looking down the barrel of another heartbreaking loss.
It’s been well documented that the Magpies have lost 27 Grand Finals. The next nearest recipient of football heartache is Essendon with 14 and then Carlton and South Melbourne/Sydney with 13. How do you explain that level of discrepancy?
Of those 27, I’ve only been alive for four of them (not counting the draw, which wasn’t a loss, but it was certainly no victory). But it’s enough.
Speaking to my elder Magpies supporters, who were there for many of the other heartbreaking Grand Final losses, the term Colliwobbles comes from a long way back, and you can’t argue with it. In fact, it felt like more than just bad luck or nerves.
Maybe teams just have extra motivation to beat Collingwood in the biggest game of the year. Maybe Collingwood is particularly good at playing above itself, but gets exposed at the final hurdle. Maybe there really is a Collingwood curse.
Considering the two most recent Premierships came in October, any of the club’s more recent success still came with an asterisk — as if the curse only worked on that one day in September.
It’s hard not to think that the Footy Gods were conspiring against the club. But why would this be? And who would be the one to break the curse?
One man who must feel particularly impacted by the curse is Nathan Buckley, the only player (by my research — happy to be fact checked) to win a Brownlow and a Norm Smith Medal and not a Premiership. He didn’t taste it as a player, retired, the club claimed one in October, he seemed shuttled into the coach’s job with a stacked team, almost as a consolation to claim one as a coach instead, and it slipped out of his reach again.
As the banner tore apart in 2018, and that fateful kick from that pocket that shall remain nameless, you can’t help but wonder whether Buckley — and Eddie McGuire for that matter — felt it too. That this was more than just bad luck.
What must they also have been feeling, as the game clock ran down to zero on Saturday, and the Pies snuck over the line, courtesy of two clutch long-range kicks, and arguably, some fortune from the umpires, to hang on and win a flag at the end of September?
Craig McCrae might have taken on the moniker of the Ted Lasso of the AFL, but while we’re doing TV and Movie lines, maybe we should call him Neo. Collingwood has finally been plucked from the Matrix of September despair. The demons have been exorcised (mind the pun) the run of September blues has finally ended (yep, mind that one as well), and we Collingwood supporters will — cautiously — enjoy it.
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