JUST 12 days after its president Eddie McGuire returned from an AFL fact-finding mission on the issue of equalisation, Collingwood has signed a record-breaking 80,000th member.
It is the highest membership tally achieved by an AFL club in one season and gives Collingwood a significant advantage over many of its competitors.
Magpies CEO Gary Pert said the milestone showed there was no ceiling on the number of members the club could achieve.
It has doubled its membership tally in the past seven seasons after recording 73,600 members in 2012.
Collingwood has members from 88 countries and has made no secret of the fact it has global ambitions. Pert said the club's goal was to reach 100,000 members in two years.
"We've had a single, clear strategy for the last six years to simply ask supporters what experience they want as a member and then, as a club, do everything in our power to deliver it," Pert said.
Collingwood has won just one premiership since 1990 but has finished in the top four every season since 2009. It sits fifth on the ladder as it takes on top-placed Hawthorn at the MCG on Friday night.
With fears that the gap between rich and poor clubs is growing and increasing evidence there is a link between on-field success and off-field expenditure the AFL is determined to tackle equalisation.
Collingwood is seen as a key player in the debate and McGuire told Triple M recently he learned plenty on the AFL delegation to America.
He was happy to concede that if clubs such as Collingwood dominated the local market to such an extent that it stopped clubs such as Melbourne or the Bulldogs from gaining sponsors, then the Magpies should tip money into a redistribution pool.
However he remained adamant that the same salary cap figure should apply to all clubs regardless of where it was located and that each club should be able to spend 100 percent of the cap.
