Why A Pie?

Along with everything else in my life that can have an apportion of blame, I blame my mother for my dedication to Collingwood. When I was 12, my mother made me pick an AFL football team. Her team was Hawthorn and I think she hoped that I would choose the same team, thus ensuring that we would spend many hours together on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, drinking tea and cheering on the Hawks. Little did she know. Clearly she had forgotten that no 12 year old on the planet is going to pick the same team as her parents – that’s just, like, soooo not cool. Not only that, when you’re 12, your parents suddenly become disease-ridden and you cannot stand to be in the same room with either of them for any protracted length of time, nor in fact admit that you actually know them, or are related to them. Whatever.

A further strike against Hawthorn is that brown and yellow simply do not belong together unless you happen to be some class of insect, and as I was great friends with the boys at Padua College who were in our year's social group, I should know all about that.

As there was no Brisbane team at the time, and since I didn’t really understand the rules of the game, I had to base my choice on the things I did understand without too much trouble – the colour of the jerseys and the cuteness of the players. Again, for every 12-year old girl on the planet, colour coordination is an imperative to avoid being a social pariah. Unless you are adept at colour coordination, left to your own devices you could commit such heinous fashion crimes so as to frighten the elderly, small children, animals, and embarrass everyone around you. Do that a couple of times and suddenly you'll find that there's nobody around you. It’s a minefield out there in peer-pressure-land. Also, at age 12, you don’t actually know enough about the opposite sex to realise yet how disgusting they are, and forever will be. All you know is that suddenly you’re looking at boys as though they’re something other than your father, your brother or the parish priest.

Whether or not any of these boys can string a coherent sentence together is completely immaterial when a girl is relegated to simply watching them (from a safe distance) run around an oval for 2 hours in short shorts and sleeveless shirts. The only thing that mattered to me is that they have beautifully defined arms like steel bands, lean thighs, tight butts and their ears aren’t taped to their heads. Oh, and another important thing – they have clearly visible necks, unlike the players of the codes of League and Union. So, armed with this vital information, I carefully watched the television and worked out who had the cutest boys and the best coloured jerseys. I’ve always been partial to the signature colours of the house of Chanel – black and white, so that pretty much narrowed the field then and there. Besides, black and white vertical stripes are slimming, which again, for any 12-year old girl on the verge of an eating disorder, is going to win you over every single time.

So, the decision was made, and I am a person who rigidly sticks to the unwritten rules of sport – once your team is chosen, you’re with them for life. It’s easier to divorce your husband than it is to switch allegiance to another footy team. It's just a shame that I can't make the boys wear camellias in their hair.

Ta da! I’m a Pie and proud of it (although had I at the time seen some of my fellow nest-mates, I may have taken a little longer to make my choice, and a different choice it may have been too). When I tell people I’m a Pie it certainly stirs up quite the reaction – mostly bad. However, love them or hate them, it seems that everyone has an opinion about Collingwood, even if they couldn't be bothered to have an opinion about any other team in the AFL.

The Collingwood Club can stand proudly on its record, its commitment to its members, supporters and the community it serves, and most of all to the code of AFL. We’re still the only team in the history of the game to have won 4 premierships back to back.