It was the decade where football took its first faint steps towards professionalism.

Players chased a greater financial return, Waverley rose from the paddocks, colour television beamed into our living rooms for the first time and the game endured through a turbulent decade.

The ‘Sensational Seventies, as they would become known, proved a tantalising, yet ultimately unfulfilled period for Collingwood.

It was bookended by heartbreaking Grand Final losses to Carlton. The first came when the Magpies lost from what had previously been considered an unlosable situation; the second when Collingwood almost pinched the premiership in the dying moments of a dour struggle.

Through it all, the goings on at Collingwood – and at Victoria Park - was like a soap opera you couldn’t switch off, and the audience was spellbound.

For those who lived through it, it was a period they will never forget and it produced heroes and characters alike forever etched into our consciousness.

For those who didn’t,Collingwood Forever will transport you back in time each week this season for a blast from the ‘70s past, profiling a player who made an impact for one reason or another.

Dashing Collingwood defender Paul Cranage played only 48 games across three seasons in black and white, but still managed to make an impact in his brief stint there.

At a time when a number of Magpies players struggled to produce their best during the heat of September action, the half-back from Hamilton reserved some of his best performances for finals.

He was among Collingwood's best players in three of the four finals he played (in 1973 and 1974), with only one of them resulting in a team victory.

His connections with Victoria’s western districts, where he was "country born and bred", ensured his time at Victoria Park was short-lived, though his links to the club have always remained strong.

Over the years, he always kept an eye out for players he thought Collingwood should recruit (two prominent names included), and even returned to the club as a reserves coach for a short time.

Cranage had grown up on his parents' "mixed farm" - sheep, cattle and pigs - in Edenhope in the Wimmera, 400km west of Melbourne. He had been a Geelong supporter as a kid, obsessed with "the Big Cat", as he liked to call champion ruckman Graham 'Polly' Farmer.

As a student of Monivae College, in Hamilton, Cranage attracted the interest of Magpie talent scouts, with the region being in the heart of the club's recruiting zone. For the last three years of his schooling, he was in the First XVIII, and was captain in his final season (1971).

It was a fertile time in terms of the school’s success. In each of those three seasons with Monivae College, the school won the premiership.

"We lost a couple of games," he would recall. "But you've got to remember we were playing in the western districts under 18s competition as well as in the schools competition. We were premiers there (in the under 18s competition), too."

One of his teammates in that Monivae team was Mike Delahunty, while future teammate Bill Picken was also a student at the school.

Cranage would tell the story of his recruitment to The Sun's Tom Prior: "Apparently, someone was impressed when I played in the country versus city team in the Collingwood area, and Mike Delahunty and I were invited down."

"The fathers (Sacred Heart priests) at school encouraged us to go and further our education.

"Collingwood pays our board and travelling expenses, and helps us out with our (university) fees as well as match payments and things like that.”

He moved to Melbourne in 1972, but struggled to make impact in his first season in black and white.

"It's a big deal coming to Melbourne, particularly for a famous club like Collingwood," he explained.

"They certainly didn't get much value out of me (in 1972). I couldn't kick on, and we (the reserves) finished way down the ladder.

“I felt like throwing it in, but well, what would you say when you went home."

The opportunity Cranage had been craving would eventually come, even if his coach Neil Mann forced him to wait for it.

He was selected as one of the reserves player in five games early in the season - the opening two games of the season (one in which he didn't have a possession) and in Rounds 6, 8 and 9.

But at no stage was the 20-year-old disheartened by sitting so frequently on the bench.

"If you are patient, you learn a lot from just sitting and watching so close to the action," he said later. "The team played very well and I was stuck on the bench."

"I never despaired when selected as a reserve. I was confident my chance would come."

So it did, in Round 10, against Hawthorn, at Glenferrie Oval, and he didn't let Mann down when named at half-back, having 17 disposals and being named in the club's best players.

"I knew it would be tough," he said of his 'full game' initiation. "I gave away a few frees in the first half when I tried to do too much. I felt better after the interval."

Cranage not only broke into a team that would ultimately finish the home-and-away season on top, but he made a real difference to it.

Incredibly, his first 14 games would come in winning sides. He wouldn't play in a losing side until the Round 20 loss to Richmond, as the Magpies headed towards a finals berth.

He would play 19 games in his debut season, winning the club's best first year player, validated with a strong finals series.

He boarded at a house in Reservoir, with a well-known Magpie supporter Jess Plymin, who had earlier hosted Des Tuddenham, Denis O'Callaghan and Con Britt.

Cranage was able to balance a reliability with a dashing style, often turning defence into attack.

Ahead of his first finals appearance, in the 1973 second semi-final clash with Carlton, the Football Record would describe Cranage as "(a) spectacular defender ... (he is a) dashing type who backs his judgement and has become an important and lively part of the Magpies' defence."

But while he turned in a fine display in his maiden September match, having an equal career-high 27 disposals, the same couldn't be said of his team.

Having kicked four of the first five goals, and having led by two points at the last change, the Magpies ended up going down to the Blues by 20 points.

Cranage was "one of the Magpies' best ... a most dashing display ... one of the best afield".

The Sun would suggest: "It is hard to find one Magpie - apart from Paul Cranage last Saturday - who grows in stature when the chips are down."

"We had them (Carlton) down in the last quarter, and they got back up," Cranage said the following week. "It won't happen in the Grand Final."

But first Collingwood had to take on Richmond in the preliminary final, and as bad luck would have it, the Magpies wouldn’t even make it through to the premiership playoff.

Collingwood squandered a big lead against the Tigers off the back of a second-half demolition performance from a "half-fit" Royce Hart, who went from the reserves bench to become a match winner.

Again, Cranage was one of Collingwood's best in a losing team (with 17 disposals) as the minor premiers embarrassingly crashed out of the finals in straight sets.

He would go to play another 19 games in 1974, including two more finals, as part of a defence that was briefly dubbed by The Sun as "the Rear-guard", even displaying the sideburns that were so popular at the time.

Described as "a determined and dedicated player who can check and keep an opponent out of play", Cranage was a solid mark and used "(his) pace matched with skill to win kicks. (He's) not a star, yet one who can be relied upon to do a very workmanlike job no matter how difficult the task."

He excelled in the finals again, being one of Collingwood's best players in the elimination final win over Hawthorn. The Football Record said of his 26-disposal effort that he was "starved of opportunities", but "turned defence into attack with his dashes downfield."

Cranage wasn't quite as effective in the first-semi-final loss to Hawthorn, but still worked hard.

He would play 10 games in the first 12 rounds of 1975 - under new coach Murray Weideman - but circumstances meant it would prove his last season as a Magpie player.

That took his tally to 48 games from his three seasons in the Collingwood seniors, before he moved back home to take up a physical education and biology teaching role at Monivae College.

It was at his old school that he took on coaching the First XVIII, setting him on a pathway that would lead him back to Victoria Park and in time he would become a superb judge of a young footballer.

At the school, a few years later, Cranage came across a kid that he saw some potential in. The kid's name was Phillip Walsh.

After Walsh left the school, spent some time in Ballarat, and then returned to the western districts, Cranage coaxed him to Hamilton to play.

The one-time Magpie called Collingwood coach John Cahill in 1983, and told him if recruited Walsh, he would "play the first game of the year".

Walsh not only did that; he played every game that season as Collingwood's best first year player – the same honour Cranage had won exactly 10 years earlier.

Sadly, Walsh would leave for Richmond, after only one season. Cranage tried to stop it from happening, by telling the club of the haste required to resign him, but the club couldn't manage it.

Cranage became one of the most successful regional coaches during the late 1970s and '80s, before he returned to Collingwood as reserves coach in 1985. He ended up spending three seasons at the club, under Bob Rose and then Leigh Matthews, accepting a pay cut, as the players did, during the Magpies’ financial disaster in 1986.

Returning back home to Hamilton, where he became club president – and putting his time into his business (Cranage Financial Group) that still flourishes - he was able to lure Bill Picken back to the western districts as coach.

In time, he would come to recommend Picken's son, Liam, to Williamstown, as a likely type, when the VFL club had a link to Collingwood.

The Bulldogs would ultimately be the beneficiary of that.

Cranage's own son, Sam, played AFL football, though not as a father-son recruit, given Paul's brief career at Collingwood. Sam was drafted to St Kilda, and played eight games between 1998 and 2000, before moving to Carlton (as part of a trade for Aaron Hamill), where he managed 10 games in 2002.

Sam Cranage training with Carlton in 2001 (AFL Photos)

But Sam would come to have a Collingwood connection of sorts, which delighted his dad. He played for Williamstown in the VFL for a number of years, including in the 2003 premiership side which included future Magpie greats Dane Swan, Nick Maxwell and a host of other Collingwood footballers.

Fittingly, Sam was named at half-back for that VFL Grand Final - the same position his father had played at Collingwood, albeit for not as long as he could have.