Hawthorn v West Coast on Grand Final Day.

For football diehards, Saturday’s game brings memories of 1991 flooding back.

There’s the Eagles in their first Grand Final – the first non-Victorian team in the league’s history to reach the big day.

There’s Angry Anderson and his famous Batmobile during the pre-match entertainment.

But above all, there’s Waverley Park.

With the MCG out of action due to construction of the Great Southern Stand, the ground hosted its one and only VFL/ AFL Grand Final on that murky September afternoon. It was decommissioned as a league venue just eight years later.

As a ground, it had its moments of the thrilling and the bizarre: goals after the siren, a power outage, epic finals and hours of waiting for the car park to clear.

Collingwood played 126 games at the ground – as many as Carlton, and more than all bar Hawthorn (211) and St Kilda (173), who each called the ground home during the 1990s.

The Magpies won exactly fifty per cent of their games at Waverley (nee VFL Park), with a 62-62 split and two draws to boot.

It wasn’t exactly a happy hunting ground, either. Six clubs recorded a better winning percentage at the venue during its 1970-1999 lifespan.

FROM THE VAULT: Winning in the dark at Waverley Park.

But it was at Waverley Park that Collingwood kicked the biggest score in its history.

In round 17, 1980, the Magpies kicked a whopping 32.19 (211) to belt the Saints 16.11 (107) in a 104-point goal fest.

Ross Brewer kicked eight goals, Allan Edwards managed five and Ian Low and David Twomey each walked away with four.

It was the second biggest score kicked in 732 games at the ground.

The Pies also lay claim to sharing the equal lowest score in Waverley’s history, kicking just 2.6 (18) in a loss to North Melbourne 10.12 (72) in 1987. With a moniker like Arctic Park, chances are it was a day of torrential rain.

In 59 games at the ground, Peter Daicos kicked more goals at Waverley than any other Magpie. He slotted 124.75, equal with Dermott Brereton, himself a one-time Magpie, in eighth place overall.

Wayne Richardson is another of the ground’s record holders. He won 45 disposals against Carlton in 1971, which sees him level with Greg Williams and Garry Wilson as the most prolific player in a single game at the Mulgrave ground.

And of course, it was a Collingwood match that drew the single greatest crowd to a game at Waverley.

In 1981, 92,935 fans squeezed along the old wooden benches to watch the Magpies fall to the Hawks by 81 points in round 11.

Ross Brewer kicked three goals while Tony Shaw won 30 disposals.

For the record, Collingwood was also involved in the second largest crowd at a Waverley game. It was held only three weeks prior, too, when the Magpies copped a 57-point hiding at the hands of the Bombers in front of 79,326.

In fact, the Pies were involved in all bar one of the seven highest drawing games at the ground.

It’s funny to think now that, in an alternative universe, Collingwood could have made Waverley Park its home ground.

It seems far-fetched now, but as the league’s ground rationalisation gathered speed in the mid-1990s, there was some consideration given to the idea that the club could call Arctic Park home.

“Collingwood has begun talks that could take the club's home games to Waverley Park,” wrote The Age’s Martin Blake on 21 March 1997.

“Magpies' president Kevin Rose admitted last night the club was considering all options in light of the Docklands proposal, Collingwood's failure to secure more games at the MCG, and the AFL's reluctance to schedule more than a handful of games at Victoria Park, the Pies' home base for more than a century.

“"We're looking at every option," said Rose. "We've talked to people about Waverley Park, we've talked to people about the MCG, we've talked about Docklands. We're reviewing our situation at Victoria Park as well.”

So while league football has not been played at the ground since the Ansett Cup of 2000, and no official match has been staged since the 2000 VFL Grand Final, Waverley Park still manages to creep back into the public’s consciousness all these years on.

And us Magpies will never forget it.

After all, it was the home of Peter Daicos’ finest masterpiece.