MARK Twain once famously said: “You can’t argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
But for any self-respecting Carlton supporter prepared to argue the toss with a Collingwood fan, you could do worse than remind him, her or them that football’s most enduring rivalry only exists due to the goodwill of Carlton and Jack Melville some 130 years ago.
For it was Melville, the-then Carlton Honorary Secretary of 1892, who in April of that year magnanimously arranged for the Collingwood Football Club (formerly Britannia) to field a team in the-then VFA competition.
The story goes that barely a fortnight before the first ball of the 1892 season was booted in anger, those of the black-and-white persuasion - the “Purloiners” as their opponents liked to dub them - were forced into admitting that they had not complied with all of their obligations under Victorian Football Association rules. As such, only 17 matches were scheduled for the ’92 season when a minimum of 18 was required, and club delegates hotly debated the anomaly at an extraordinary meeting.
Markwell, The Australasian correspondent of 30 April 1892 best articulated the situation.
“In the struggle for matches it was to be expected that the newcomers from Collingwood should be placed at a disadvantage, and it was not surprising to learn that they had been able to secure only 17 games, and were thus practically excluded from competing for premiership honours.
"However, the good sense of delegates at a subsequent meeting of the association, aided by the magnanimity of Carlton and South Ballarat, enabled them to secure their proper compliment; and though perhaps it would have been more satisfactory had they been set against Fitzroy twice, rather than against Carlton three times, they are grateful for the consideration shown them, and they deem themselves fortunate in having been vouchsafed a right to claim first honours should they come out on top.”
What had happened in effect was that Carlton, through Melville, consented to the cancellation of a scheduled match involving South Ballarat, then a provincial member of the VFA, so as to meet Collingwood on three occasions through the 1892 season instead of two to make up the shortfall.
Though The Australasian reporter noted that Ballarat football delegates were incensed that the VFA had “treated Ballarat and Ballarat clubs as nonentities”, he also appreciated that the decision had been made game’s greater good.
As Markwell wrote on the eve of the first Carlton-Collingwood fixture: “if an energetic and capable committee, a shrewd and industrious secretary, and a particularly wide field from which to select players be advantages, the Collingwoodites are to be congratulated upon the suspicious circumstances under which they make their bow to the public”.
Melville’s forward-thinking gesture was deeply felt by all at Victoria Park, so much so that the Carlton secretary was roundly applauded by Collingwood supporters as he walked the boundary line prior to that famous contest at Victoria Park on Saturday 7 May 1892.
That match, won by Carlton, attracted 16,000 spectators, and relations between the two clubs reached new heights when the Blues donated their share of the gate takings to their inner-city neighbour’s fledgling football club.
And the rest, as they say, is Australian sporting history.
This month marks the 130th anniversary of that historic encounter at VFA level, but it also marks the 125th anniversary of the first Carlton-Collingwood contest in the VFL foundation year of 1897: coincidentally, the first senior League match involving a Carlton team on Princes Park.
That happened in Round 7 of 1897, after the Carlton President A. H. Shaw called for three cheers for Queen Victoria, then asked Alderman Moloney to christen the ground with the first kick — an old-fashioned Irish punt.
It’s an incredible truism that 125 years on - through all the blood, sweat and tears shed in 260 games of League competition including the six Grand Final (five of them won by the good guys) - that the Carlton-Collingwood head-to-head tally in VFL/AFL competition stands at 128 wins each with four draws.
At the MCG on the afternoon of Sunday 29 May, Carlton has an incredible opportunity to restore order against Collingwood.
