 | | 
|
During the off season we recruited Jack Spain to joffasfrontpage.. "We Landed the Big One " !
Jack Spain is a proud one eyed Collingwood fan who has the ability to say how it is..It will provoke you, He may even anger you, But at the end of the day you will come to like his passion for the magpies, In his first blog on joffasfrontpage, jack spain says Collingwood’s grand final record – the full horror revealed!
WARNING: If you like stories with happy endings, don’t read any further. If you like historical facts, no matter how painful, then read on.
Alright this has been bothering me ever since we lost against Geelong. I can’t work out why in my lifetime Collingwood has played in 15 grand finals for 2 wins, 2 draws and 11 (ELEVEN) losses. I highlight 11 losses because even I can’t believe that in my lifetime Collingwood has a winning percentage in grand finals of 15.4% (NOTE: I’ve taken the two draws out of the equation for that percentage).
Some people are calling the Malthouse era a golden one in Collingwood’s history. Shall we compare? 5 grand finals for one win, one draw and 3 losses = 25% winning record (That’s almost one of St Kilda proportions: 7 grand finals for one win, one draw and five losses).
For the record our official overall grand final winning percentage is:
43 grand final matches for 15 wins, 2 draws and 26 losses = 36.58% (not including the draws)
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_Football_League_premiers ]
On those odds it means every time another team plays us in a grand final they have a 63.42% of winning the flag. The law of averages would suggest 50%. It must be a nice thing to draw Collingwood in a grand final (I compare grand final winning percentages for other sides later).
There are lots of little pieces of evidence that add up to some very bad karma at Collingwood: 
The legendary Jock McHale coached us in 17 grand finals (count them seventeen!). He had the great Machine playing for him, and we all know they won four flags in a row (1927-1930). But even the great Jock had a losing grand final record. Under Jock (through no fault of his own) we won a massive 8 premierships (still a record) but lost 9! Even the Phar Lap of footy coaches couldn’t get a 50% winning record in grand finals with Collingwood. Amazing!! This is “Ripley’s believe it or not” stuff. Seriously!
In more recent times the great Tommy Hafey, who coached 10 grand finals in total, had a losing record after finishing with us. With Richmond he won 4 flags from 5 grand finals. With us it dived with no wins, one draw (1977) and four losses - the most embarrassing of all being our record-breaking loss to his old Tigers in 1980. Talk about dancing on someone’s footy grave.
Personally, I rate Bobby Rose second only to Jock McHale as the most influential person in the history of our club. As a kid I tell you a knife was stuck through my heart that last day in September 1970 when I saw Bobby Rose cry a river of tears after being stitched up by fate yet again. In 1964 we lost to Melbourne by 4 lousy points. In 1966 we went three points better to lose by a solitary mongrel one point to St Kilda (a day that lives in infamy!). In 1970 we led by 44 points at half-time when Des Tuddenham accidently knocked out Peter McKenna who had kicked 7 goals up to that point. We lost the game by 10 points and bragging rights to the Scum forever.
If you don’t believe in bad karma by now, you never will. It gets worse of course. At Collingwood, nothing is so bad that it can’t be made worse.
This club breaks people’s hearts!
Now let’s compare some of the other clubs’ grand final records:
Carlton: 29 gfs, 16 wins, 13 losses = 55%
Essendon: 29 gfs, 16 flags (note in 1897 Essendon won without a gf), 14 losses = 51.7%
Melbourne: 17 gfs, 12 wins, 5 losses = 70.6% (That will shock you!)
Richmond: 22 gfs, 10 wins, 12 losses = 45.5%
Hawthorn: 15 gfs, 10 wins, 5 losses = 66.7% (Those 10 wins have all come since 1961. They are clearly the best performed club of modern times).
Geelong: 17 gfs, 9 wins, 8 losses = 53%
Fitzroy: 13 gfs, 8 wins, 5 losses = 61.5% (and the AFL wound them up!  )
South Melbourne/Sydney: 14 gfs, 4 wins, 10 losses = 28.6% (Thank God someone has a worse percentage than us!).
North Melbourne: 10 gfs, 4 wins, 5 losses, 1 draw = 44%
None of the other clubs have played enough grand finals to matter.
Incredible that everyone has a better conversion rate in grand finals than us with the exception of South Melbourne/Sydney.
Now to conclude this depressing history lesson, let’s compare head-to-head records with Collingwood in grand finals. Again it’s not altogether pretty.
v Melbourne: 7 gfs, 1 win, 6 losses (we are their bunnies)
v Carlton: 6 gfs, 1 win, 5 losses (and theirs)
v Geelong: 6 gfs, 2 wins, 4 losses
v Richmond: 6 gfs, 4 wins, 2 losses (The Machine beat them 3 years in a row, 1927-29)
v Essendon: 4 gfs, 2 wins, 2 losses
v Fitzroy: 4 gfs, 2 wins, 2 losses
v South Melbourne: 3 gfs, 2 wins, 1 loss (Yay, another winning record!)
v St Kilda: 3 gfs, 1 win, 1 loss, 1 draw
v North Melbourne: 2 gfs, 1 loss, 1 draw
v Brisbane: 2 gfs, 2 losses
So there we have it. We have a long way to go indeed if we ever want to get our winning percentage in grand finals up to the law of averages. That is, we’d have to win our next 11 grand finals straight (26 wins, 26 losses). Scary isn’t it, because we all know it ain’t gonna happen!
So what dark events in our past have earned us so much bad karma?
 |
|
 |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | | | If you have any feedback on how we can make our new website better please do contact us and we would like to hear from you. | |
|
|
 |
 |
|
