I have always thought that the tradition of WEG’s Premiership posters began in 1954 when the Bulldogs won their one and only Grand Final… BUT reading the Herald from the Saturday afternoon of the 1953 Grand Final (September 25th) there was a curious little paragraph about hoards of Collingwood fans descending on the Herald vans to get their victory posters with the Magpie on it. I wonder if these posters were drawn by WEG and can be considered the first WEG true WEG posters but are not considered as such because it looks as though they were given away free of charge. I wonder if any of these are still in existence too?
Archive for October 27, 2010
These are the earliest scans I have of Wells’ cartoons, from the Herald October 10th 1930 and October 13th 1930. These aren’t the best quality and I had to get them through the State Library Victoria who have lots of old newspapers on microfilm. Unfortunately Mr Murdoch doesn’t want old editions of his newspapers to be available online, even for research purposes, unless he can change an exorbitant fee for them being viewed.
1930 Grand Final Preview
1930 Grand Final Review
It’s fun to look through all these old newspaper cartoons and the articles to do with Collingwood but I am not really doing this for my enjoyment. I have a little project in mind and am doing this research in order to help me. The reason I am doing this is because I think that there is a story to tell about Collingwood’s 1953 premiership team, but it hasn’t been told yet. It was a significant premiership because it broke what was until that time our longest premiership drought, was the only premiership played in by Bob Rose and Lou Richards who were two of the most significant members of the Collingwood family and because it was the last Collingwood premiership seen by legendary coach Jock McHale and Collingwood identity John Wren, both of who passed away within a month of the Grand Final win. It’s also a story that I want to tell or at least find out about for myself. Currently I find it frustrating reading any of the official history books that come out on the Collingwood club. All seem to be written by Michael Roberts and all seem to feature ‘cut & pastes’ from each other, meaning that you will read snippets from one book in another, usually worded in almost the same way. It becomes quite monotonous.
Anyway this may never amount to anything as I’ll probably get bored before anything significant comes of it, but I will see how things turn out.
