‘They've kicked the gates down!' How an Anzac Day tradition was born

The Age

22-04-2025

Thirty years ago, Essendon, Collingwood and the Returned Services League built the Anzac Day clash at the MCG in the spirit of commemoration and remembrance. Tens of thousands of footy fans descended for the first instalment of a match that has been played every year since – except the pandemic-affected 2020 season.
If you weren't there on April 25, 1995, you might have tried to get in or know someone who was unsuccessful, perhaps one of the fans who took in the experience in the parkland surrounding the 'G instead. And the official crowd of 94,825 – the third largest VFL/AFL home-and-away crowd ever recorded – might have even been off the mark.
'I remember going to the game and being at the AFL lunch [with] Ross Oakley, and we were getting messages through that the crowds are unbelievable,' remembers Eddie McGuire, who became Collingwood president three years later.
'Then we're hearing word that they've just opened the gates. They've kicked the gates down in the Northern Stand! They always said it was 90-something [thousand fans in the ground]. It was well over 100 [thousand] that day.
'The game just built and built and built. There was something like 20 or 30,000 people who didn't get in and [were in] the parks. And then they surrounded all the pubs.'
The fans came, and the players delivered. Less than five years after their famous 1990 grand final, the two teams played out an iconic draw. Mention Saverio Rocca, a man mountain who excelled at Collingwood and North Melbourne before forging a career in the NFL, and try escaping any reference to his nine goals that day. Dermott Brereton took to the field in his only season at the Magpies, and a young Nathan Buckley, dashing through the middle with the scores tied late, infamously opted to try and find Rocca with a pass instead of going for goal himself.
Collingwood's 1990 premiership captain Tony Shaw was the club's runner that day.
'I still remember yelling out to Bucks when he was coming out the centre and kicked the ball to Sav Rocca,' Shaw recalled. 'I was saying, 'Kick for goal'.'
Just as Rocca's haul is a part of footy folklore, Anzac Day footy offers a collection of great moments and masterful memories. Think the likes of Dane Swan, James Hird and Scott Pendlebury, with cameos from Mark McGough and Andrew Lovett. In '95, Rocca climbed onto Ryan O'Connor's shoulders to pull down a great grab. In wonderful symmetry, the 29th instalment last year also finished in a draw and Jamie Elliott had his own Rocca moment as he pulled down a ripping mark.
But as much as the first Essendon-Collingwood clash of any season is closely intertwined with April 25 at the MCG, it's a fixture that doesn't exist without the sombre marking of a day of remembrance.
How did it all start?
Collingwood played a blockbuster Anzac Day match in 1977, but it was Richmond, not Essendon lining up against them in front of more than 92,000 at the MCG. Tommy Hafey was in his first year as Magpies coach after crossing from the Tigers, where he had led the club to four premierships and Kevin Sheedy was one of his pupils. Quirkily, Sheedy booted the ball about 40 metres the wrong way at the start of the third quarter. 'As for Hafey's former players in Richmond jumpers, it looked at times as though they were trying to help him win it,' The Age's chief football writer Ron Carter wrote. 'Kevin Sheedy, of all people, grabbed the ball in the centre at the first bounce after half-time and kicked it the wrong way, straight to Phil Carman.'
Sheedy later recalled: 'I've got a very sore tail – where I was kicked by about 5000 members for kicking that ball the wrong way. I just looked at Carman [who marked it] and said to myself: 'What a bloody silly thing to do'.'
The occasion stayed in the mind of Sheedy, a champion player and coach and member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame who was drafted into the army. Just two days after he won the 1969 premiership, he had had to front up to the Swan Street barracks in Richmond.
Decades later, he was pottering in his garden and focusing on ways to promote the game.
'I remembered the seed that had been planted on that day,' Sheedy wrote in a newspaper column referencing the 1977 game. 'It was one of the biggest home-and-away crowds of my era, and it had me thinking about the concept of bringing people to the football, and what entices them to come.
'We needed something to bring us together, not tear us apart. We proposed the idea of a game on Anzac Day that would celebrate the spirit of the diggers.'
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Sheedy was soon on the phone to Collingwood's director of football Graeme 'Gubby' Allen.
'He knew RSL boss Bruce Ruxton, and Ruxton had black-and-white through his veins,' Sheedy wrote.
McGuire had no doubt that the origins of 1995 'came from desperation'.
In previous years and decades, Anzac Day did not go close to attracting the recognition it does now.
'I actually used to be in the school band,' recalled McGuire. 'A couple of times we had to march two or three times on Anzac Day because, you know, people were protesting, flower bombing, and the whole thing was starting to die off in a lot of ways. Anzac Day was really on the wane.
'Those guys [in the 1990s] realised that the parade and the whole remembrance was starting to fade.
'Sheeds, in his inimitable fashion, remembering the day that he kicked the ball the wrong way … but geez, I tell you what, he picked it up, ran with it the right way after that.'
Growing the presence
While footy on Anzac Day has had different incarnations (the VFL in 1986 experimented with an MCG double-header, coupled with a game at Waverley Park), neither the competing clubs nor the AFL have attracted any stringent criticism for the occasion. Melbourne and Richmond have found a home with a regular Anzac Day eve clash, too, and Fremantle have regularly hosted the Len Hall Tribute Game, in recognition of the Gallipoli veteran.
Much of the consternation has instead been whether the main event at the MCG should be shared with other clubs.
'What I always argued with people who used to say, 'Oh, they should share it around' … [I argued] there's no two teams who can guarantee 100,000 over the years, up and down [with fluctuating form]. But Collingwood and Essendon did it, and they did the day proud,' McGuire said.
'Sheeds, in his inimitable fashion, remembering the day that he kicked the ball the wrong way … but geez, I tell you what, he picked it up, ran with it the right way after that.'
Eddie McGuire on Kevin Sheedy
McGuire also believed the right level of solemnity in respecting the sacrifices of Australia's armed forces was achieved. 'In the first couple of years [of the fixture], there was always some idiot yelling 'Go Dons', or 'go Bombers', or 'go Magpies' or something. And then it stopped,' he said.
'Now people go there, and the pride you can feel in the crowd [with the mood] being absolutely stony silent, being able to hear the flags fluttering above the stands.'
Shaw coached Collingwood in four Anzac Day matches between 1996 and 1999.
'When you're a coach, and you're coaching Anzac Day, I never mentioned war because we're not going out to die,' Shaw said. 'You can still utilise the self-sacrifice, the discipline and all that, that the Anzacs showed for our country.'
The legend of 1995 lives on
Rocca and Essendon defender Dustin Fletcher got together a few years back to watch a replay of the 1995 match. Their recollections make fascinating viewing. Champion full-back Fletcher spent time manning Rocca but was moved off him, the Bomber kicking a few goals of his own.
'On the way in there I couldn't believe the traffic,' Fletcher said in the video.
'I knew it was going to be big, but to have a lockout, to play on a Tuesday and Anzac Day … it was a day when the shops weren't open; for footy to be played was massive.'
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Rocca remarked: 'It's pretty eerie being out there and having that silence with 95,000 people. It was pretty special … You get goosebumps.'
The two were absorbed by the contest. 'It feels like a final, even looking back on it,' Fletcher said. 'It doesn't feel like a normal home-and-away game.'
Rocca took in the replay of one of his three goals for the opening quarter: 'I thought it was loud at this stage. It got even louder. Like it was deafening later in the game. It's always good getting a few early.'
The players agreed that despite the frustration of sharing the premiership points, the result matched the mood.
'Looking back now I think it's fitting that it ended in a draw, and it really set the tone for however long it's been going … the expectation is that you fight hard, not only for yourself and for your team and your situation, but what the Anzacs stood for,' Rocca said.
Bragging rights have waxed and waned ever since.
Said Shaw with a chuckle: 'In a bad sort of coaching era, I think I won three out of four Anzac Days against Sheeds, so I tell Sheeds every time I see him.'