To mark the occasion, collingwoodfc.com.au will turn the spotlight on the key moments and figures that influenced the birth of the Magpies.
The formations of the league’s most recent additions have been quite swanky and drawn out affairs.
The introductions of the Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney Football Clubs have taken several years, and were accompanied by camera flashes and a number of public appearances. Both were welcomed in at venues befitting of an elite sporting organisation, and have commanded plenty of space in the major media outlets nationwide.
In stark contrast, the birth of the Collingwood Football Club was anything but glitzy.
Read more about Collingwood's 120th Birthday.
The Magpies came into being on the evening of February 18, 1892. The suburb had been longing for a team that they could call their own, and was truly representative of its people. While Collingwood in 2012 represents people from all walks of life the world over, in 1892 the tribal nature of each town in Melbourne meant that the people of Collingwood required a distinct source of local pride.
A football club would provide just that.
Football folklore suggests that the Collingwood Football Club was formed at the Grace Darling Hotel in Smith Street, Collingwood. While the Hotel had an important role in several related events, such as hosting the official disbanding of the Britannia Football Club in early 1892 and Collingwood’s first official committee meeting in March of the same year, the birth of the Magpies occurred at the Collingwood Town Hall.
Discover more about the suburb Collingwood represents.
An advertisement was published, proclaiming ‘Football! Football! Forward Collingwood!’ and declaring notice of a public meeting to be held at the Collingwood Town Hall on 12 February 1892.
On the night, local parliamentarian and the club’s first President W.D. Beazley made several bold statements aimed at rousing support for the new club.
“(The Collingwood Football Club) will draw immense crowds and be the cause of much money being spent in the district,” Beazley told the packed crowd.
“(Supporters) must be true to their colours, and not be dispirited if they at first lose matches, as they (the players) would require one or two seasons to lick them into first class football”.
The size of the crowd Beazley addressed was unprecedented. Despite the incredibly difficult financial times, which saw the country feel the brunt of an economic depression, the residents of Collingwood rallied behind their new football club.
Some compare W. D. Beazley with current President Eddie McGuire.
Michael Roberts and Glenn McFarlane note in The Official Encyclopaedia of the Collingwood Football Club (2004) that the attendance, held in the lecture room at the Town Hall, was “so overwhelming that some of those present - including a few journalists eager to record the historic occasion - had to follow the proceedings at a distance, through an opened window”.
It wouldn’t be the last time the club’s popularity drew a capacity crowd.
While Beazley chaired the meeting, local parliamentarian John Hancock MP stirred the pot of excitement with several ambitious predictions about the fortunes of the Collingwood Football Club.
“(Collingwood) will be the premier team - for the very name Collingwood would strike terror into the hearts of opposition players.”
Hancock went on to set the challenge for the supporters, calling upon the residents to put off opposition players at all costs.
“If barracking would prevent an opposing player kicking for goal, (the barracker) would be there and give such unearthly shrieks as would terrify the kickist”.
Although Beazley was forced to leave the meeting early to liaise with a group of unemployed residents, the meeting was a profound success.
The Collingwood Football Club had been formed, and played its first practice match against the Clifton Hill juniors on the Darling Gardens (located off Hoddle St, north of Victoria Park) on 16 April 1892.
Collingwood’s first official match in the VFA was played on 7 May 1902 against Carlton at Victoria Park. Over 16,000 people gathered to witness the Magpies make their debut against the club that would develop into their biggest rivals over the next century.
Read more about the role of Victoria Park in Collingwood's early years.
Although beaten, the Magpies acquitted themselves well, and even managed to share the gate takings. The club broke through for its first win against Williamstown several weeks later. Ironically, the two clubs would combine to field a Collingwood reserves team in the restructured second-tier VFL competition over 100 years later.

The earliest known photograph of a Collingwood team, in 1894, as published in Collingwood at Victoria Park - Revised and Updated Edition (Roberts and McFarlane, 2005).
Late in 1892, Collingwood began to show signs of improvement winning two and drawing another of its last four matches for the season. The victory over Carlton in the final round “sparked such jubilation at Victoria Park that an unsuspecting passer-by might have thought Collingwood had won the flag” according to Richard Stremski’s Kill for Collingwood (1986).
View an account of Collingwood's early years, written in 2002.
They may have shared the wooden spoon with Williamstown (three wins, fourteen losses, one draw and equal on goals for and against), but the club’s fortunes rose rapidly in the ensuring years, culminating in the 1896 premiership against South Melbourne in the first official Grand Final in the competition’s history.
Two more flags followed in the next seven years as the club developed into a powerhouse in the new VFL competition.
And to think that it all started on that raucous evening at the Collingwood Town Hall on 12 February 1892.
The information compiled for this article was sourced from:
· A Century of the Best, written by Michael Roberts, and published by the Collingwood Football Club in 1992.
· Collingwood at Victoria Park (Revised and Updated Edition), written by Glenn McFarlane and Michael Roberts, and published by Media Giants in 2005.
· Kill for Collingwood, written by Richard Stremski and published in 1986 by Allen & Unwin.
· The Official "Collingwood Illustrated Encyclopedia" written by Michael Roberts and Glenn McFarlane, and published by Slattery & Lothian Books in 2004. It is available from the Collingwood shop.