“Tarpey back” remains our all-time favourite, as one Friday morning, The Sun giddily welcomed back a Collingwood ruckman who played all of nine games with the Magpies between 1988 and 1991. We're not sure whether the proclamation of peace in Europe in 1945 was greeted with as much excitement by the little paper.
Of course, those were the days when the teams weren't released until about 9pm on a Thursday and may have got a brief mention on the TV later that night. The iconic League Teams departed our TV screens at the end of 1986 and The Footy Show didn't start until 1993.
Fast forward to 2011. The teams for the weekend are locked, loaded and available on this website by 5pm, on Twitter a minute later and by the time most of us hit the sack on a Thursday night, the teams have been debated at length on several radio shows and four TV shows.
All this means is that the newspapers have had to work harder to come up with their lead stories on a Friday morning.
The Friday night match usually provides the papers with opportunities to fill their pages and ahead of the St Kilda-Adelaide clash at Etihad Stadium, The Age has gone big on a plea by senior writer Mick Gleeson for the Saints to sign coach Ross Lyon to a new contract.
Gleeson has canvassed a number of list analysts from rival clubs and the widespread feeling is that St Kilda's premiership window closed at the end of last year and that there are up to 17 players at the club who should be moved on over the next two seasons.
The cuts need to start at the end of this season, but as Gleeson writes, Lyon will be entering the final year of his contract next year, so will not be concerning himself with any long-term planning.
“Ross Lyon is indisputably a good coach - three grand finals in two years prove that. That he did not win a flag is a churlish criticism,” writes Gleeson. “St Kilda knows he can coach a team in contention; now it needs to decide if he is a coach for development. Having been a long-term VFL and senior assistant coach, there is no reason to believe he is not.”
All the decisions about St Kilda's football future now rest with the club's new head of football, Chris Pelchen, who starts with the club on August 1. Media Watch understands that Lyon had no say in Pelchen's appointment; it was the handiwork of the club's chief executive, Michael Nettlefold, and what it means is a changed dynamic in the football set up at the club.
Pelchen and Lyon need to decide whether they can work together. If they can, then we agree with Gleeson - the Saints must get Lyon to sign a contract extension and get on with the rebuild of the club, which the experts told The Age will take about three years.
Crows fly?
Over in Adelaide, rumours of players bolting from the Crows at the end of the season continue to be aired in the pages of The Adelaide Advertiser. Emerging star forward Taylor Walker has long been viewed as a high-priority target for Greater Western Sydney, but now, young full-back Phil Davis and midfielder Bernie Vince have also been touted as likely recruits for the Giants.
This has prompted Crows coach Neil Craig to declare that all clubs - just not his - have erred in not protecting their young players from raids from new clubs such as Gold Coast and GWS. He questions whether the AFL should have put blocks in place to prevent the new clubs from signing players who have only been in the stem for a brief period.
"We could lose a 20-year-old who has played 18 games," said Craig. "All our planning (to draft Davis), all our development, for no return at all. In hindsight, the AFL might have thought of putting a limit on the type of player GWS could contract."
What Craig fails to mention is that a representative sub-committee from the existing clubs, one of which was his own club's chief executive (Steven Trigg), created the player rules for the new clubs.
Sadly for Craig, speculation over his own future does nothing to help the likes of Walker, Vince and Davis decide their future. Across the border, Tom Scully would also like to know with absolute certainty who will be guiding the Demons for the next few years before he puts pen to paper.
Is Collingwood of 2011 the greatest team of all?
This sort of question gets asked around this time every year if the reigning premier is sitting on top of the ladder as the finals start to loom on the horizon. Geelong was all but anointed the greatest team of all time at this stage of 2008, and we know what happened in the Grand Final that year. The same with Essendon in 2001.
We even remember all the hype about Adelaide in 2005 when the so-called ‘Crow-bots' went on a mid-season rampage of destruction, and they didn't even end up making the Grand Final.
But Mark Stevens writes in The Herald Sun that there might be some truth to claims about Collingwood's claims if you look at percentage. Collingwood's percentage of 175.6 is the highest of any club after 17 rounds since 1911.
And with Gold Coast, the Brisbane Lions and Port Adelaide among the stragglers the Magpies still have to play, that figure could creep even higher, he writes.
In short
Gold Coast coach Guy McKenna, a long-time assistant coach at the Pies before heading north, rates Darren Jolly as Collingwood's most important player, reports The Herald Sun.
The ruck battle between Nic Naitanui and Zac Clarke adds a new dimension to Sunday's West Coast-Fremantle derby clash at Patersons Stadium, writes The West Australian.
Ben Cousins would like to coach under Mick Malthouse and would like to mend some fences with the Eagles, the West Australian also reports.
The NRL believes its TV rights deal for 2013 and beyond will dwarf that just struck by the AFL, reports The Australian.
Colin Sylvia has yet to agree to terms with Melbourne and might be another Demon to depart the club at season's end writes The Australian.
