As I write this all three Australian Rules football teams representing the Collingwood Football Club, the Magpies, have a real chance to win a premiership this year. The two men’s teams are in the finals and the Women’s team has started a new season with a good victory last night and a number of talented players expected to return from injury.

The AFL mens team has played perhaps the most exciting brand of footy in the history of the sport this season to finish among the top four teams which is where the premier normally comes from.

In 2010, when Collingwood last won an AFL premiership, I invented the word “Flagpies” and proudly said over and over at one literary pub in Carlton that this word was the greatest poem ever written in Australian.

Today, Ash, the MC at a Magpie Nest function in Melbourne, enthusiastically joined me in shouting out this word.

Ash is a follower of all things good in Aussie footy, not a life-long one-eyed Collingwood supporter like me, but she recognizes that the Collingwood AFL team’s achievement in winning eleven games by less than two goals (easily eclipsing the previous best number of close finish victories of 8 by Melbourne in 1989) has made this year’s Collingwood team one of the most exciting teams to watch in the history of the game.

I am an old man on the skids trying to make a go of it with a midrange camera that doesnt always produce great results in some light conditions.

But I am very grateful to Ash and the Magpie Nest for giving me the chance today to celebrate in two of my chosen art forms my life-long loves of Collingwood, footy and freedom.

Thank you, my friends.

Geoff Fox, 26th August, 2022, Melbourne , Australia