St Kilda’s first round clash with Collingwood this coming Friday will mark only the fourth time the two League foundation clubs have met in an opening round.
The law of averages would say that across the span of 125 years they would had more first-up encounters, but the previous three battles have all had a distinctive place in history.
The last time they met in Round 1 was in 1965 in the first ever game at Moorabbin.
On that day, Ian Cooper carved his name in history by kicking the first St Kilda goal at the new oval.
The popular 'Coop' sadly passed away in December, but in a previously unpublished interview, he told of a deeper family connection to the Moorabbin ground. Many years before, the huge Cooper family had arrived from the Victorian country town of Foster and, unable to find accommodation, set up two tents on an empty expanse of land in Moorabbin which would subsequently be used as the home ground for VFA club Moorabbin and eventually St Kilda.
One of nine children, Ian Cooper was just six months old at the time and did not hear of the story until years later. The police moved the family on, but the Coopers always remained a tight-knit group.
St Kilda crowned its debut at its new home ground with a hard-fought six point win over Collingwood before a huge crowd of 51,370.
The two clubs faced also each other in the very first game of League football on May 8, 1897.
The Saints were late in arriving in their horse drawn dray at Victoria Park after scrambling to round up sufficient numbers and started the match one man short. They suffered the unfortunate distinction of being the first VFL club to cop a fine, but the five guineas was later refunded by the VFL. It was Collingwood’s day as they unfurled the VFA premiership flag from the previous season.
One writer noted that the Victoria Park surface had been improved as “all the little hillocks which formerly accounted for the ball beating the player, were removed by the very simple process of cutting with an adze (an age-old form of mattock on the end of an axe handle).”
In the game itself, the opposition shown by St Kilda in the first two quarters was stronger than expected. They trailed by 2.2 to 4.2 at the interval, but then Collingwood’s superiority prevailed and the visitors were only able to add two behinds in the final hour.
The Saints had little satisfaction that day apart from the memory of vice-captain Harry Aylwin’s spectacular marking at centre half-back. The efforts of English-born Aylwin were recalled by Saint fans for years to come.
In 1962, an Easter Monday crowd of 42,000 crammed into Victoria Park, boosted by the prospect of seeing the Saints’ star Tasmanian recruit Darrel Baldock in action for the first time. Baldock revealed years later that he had cracked a bone in the arch of his foot in the Thursday night training session, but knew of the huge expectation surrounding him.
“All of the family had come across to see me play. Our trainer Frank Henley suggested that we pack it on both sides to take pressure off the injured part of the foot. But after about five minutes the packing had all moved inside the boot and was under the sore part of my foot!”
Baldock had little influence on the game in which big full-forward Bill Stephenson played the leading role.
Stevo kicked five of the Saints’ nine goals in the 25 point victory - St Kilda’s first win at Collingwood since 1919. That 43-year gap was one of the longest home-and-away droughts in history.
