Loving Collingwood is about the heart and not the head – and my grandfather’s story helped forge my emotional connection

Every supporter has a unique personal story about why they barrack for their team. It might involve a special moment. Just as often it’s about where we’ve come from – geographically and genealogically, emotionally and sentimentally.

For me and most of my family, immediate, extended, it’s Collingwood – the place and the team, even though today’s prosperous inner-city suburb is a world away from the slum that gave rise to the great football club in 1892.

Our support seemed straightforward enough. Our grandfather “played for Collingwood”. If you grew up knowing – or thinking – that, it seemed a no-brainer to support the Magpies.

Our grandad, William (Bill) Bourke – as enigmatic in life (and perhaps death) as he might be described as “colourful” – died almost 91 years ago. But his shadow and his story forged the Collingwood allegiances of myself, my sister, most of our cousins and our kids.

So much of what gives meaning to life is, of course, story. Which is not the same as history – although that, too, influences how we live and what we believe. And, as I head down to Melbourne to watch Collingwood play the formidable Brisbane Lions in the AFL grand final at the MCG on Saturday, I am nostalgic with the melancholic weight of my grandfather’s story … and what’s known of his history.

We can rightly claim to be a Collingwood-descended family, insofar as Bill was born in the suburb’s Johnston Street in 1884 (the enigma extends to his Wikipedia page which incorrectly says he was born in Lahinch, Ireland, in 1882). He was poor, the son of a cabbie. He became a clicker in the boot trade which flourished in industrial, polluted, poverty-riven Collingwood. He married Eileen, the daughter of Norah Meskill, the licensee of Johnston Street’s rough and tumble London Hotel just ‘round the corner from Collingwood’s (then) home ground, Victoria Park.

In the first decade of the 20th century there is no doubt Bill was trying to make selection for Collingwood. But as far as the club’s archival record indicates (I’ve scoured it) he never played a senior game. Technically his inclusion in the Collingwood Trades 18 (a reserve feeder team for the seniors, comprising local trades workers and for which he played in the winning 1905 premiership against St Kilda) might count. But it’s not quite the same as being in the team.

Cigarette card of Bill Bourke from the Sniders & Abrahams 1910 series. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons

His football career did, however, take a compelling upward turn when he followed former Collingwood captain Charlie Pannam to Richmond in 1908, where Pannam went to be skipper and coach for the Tigers’ first year in the Victorian Football League.

The inter-club politics of this were bitter and controversial, certainly for Pannam, at a time when fierce club loyalty tended to prevail over most personal player (and club trade) interests, unlike in the modern game.

Grandad was handy at Tigerland: a full-forward standing five-10 in the imperial (the very definition of “a Collingwood six-footer”) he was leading team goalkicker in 1908 and 1909. He’s on the honour board there at Punt Road oval. But that was not something his children talked about; for them – and, therefore, us – it was always his Collingwood association.

It’s strange where our allegiances come from. If the tribe of grandad’s descendants allied theirs to his on-field success, we’d probably have to follow Richmond (as one of my daughters and a granddaughter do). But then love of a team begins and ends with the heart.

Grandad, having played for Richmond, returned to support Collingwood as a patron. He prospered, building what became the biggest boot factory in Australia in Abbottsford, a spit from Vic Park. He employed Collingwood players, was an acolyte of John Wren and a successful racehorse owner – until he wasn’t.

He was precariously big on the punt, inspiring in his children a lifelong aversion to racing and gambling I’ve only recently come to understand.

On the afternoon of Saturday 4 October 1930, the height of the Great Depression, he was at the MCG. He apparently learnt while watching Collingwood play in the prelim against Geelong that his factory had burnt down.

The Argus reported the fire would cost 300 local jobs (an economic and social catastrophe for the impoverished community) and that Bourke had “said that the damage probably would not be covered by insurance”. It seems a curious initial reaction. But then I’m a journalist and it’s the journalist and the grandson in me that wants to know more.

Collingwood would win an unprecedented – and unequalled – fourth consecutive premiership in 1930. I’m glad he saw those premierships for the club he adored, especially the last, as his world was eroding.

He died in November 1932 “suddenly”, according to the death notice, at just 48. Of a heart attack – according to the death certificate. He was broke. The bookies were into him for bank-breaking amounts, while the local Catholic community in Middle Park where the family then lived, passed around the hat to keep his widow and six kids (our mum was seven) under a roof.

The family is yet to untangle it all, historically and emotionally.

Little of all this did we know as kids, teenagers and even for a long time as adults. We just knew him as a Collingwood player and supporter who grew up on Johnston Street and loved the club. Just as many of us came to love it and support it for all its trials and shameful controversies and tribulations.

This might defy logic. But then this stubborn faith that walks with us through life is about the heart not the head, all steeped with emotion and sentiment and not rationale.

No matter the story and the more complex, tragic history of our grandad, it’s forged in me and so many in his family this ineluctable emotional connection – of joy and pain, bitterness and sweetness, through higher-highs and lower lows – to Collingwood Football Club.

That’s why it’s never, ever “just a game”.