Footy fans don't live in the heartlands anymore

[Mr Miyagi]

Been this way since the 1990's, but interesting article. Will Collingwood have the streets painted and fans going wild if we make the Grand Final and win it? Or will the hipsters deconstruct their avocado coffee latte moustaches and sneer at us? It's sad, but a fact of life. People move, demographics change. Suburbs that were mad for a football club for a century were changed within a decade.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/you-don-t-live-here-any-more-how-richmond-and-collingwood-fans-moved-on-from-the-heartland-20180920-p5051t.html

[thesoretoothsayer]

One would hope that the council will make an effort if we get through to the GF.
Then again...

[RudeBoy]

[Mr Miyagi]

It's a crying shame if the streets are empty. Footy's defined Melbourne for over 100 years. It's heritage, it's in our blood. We can blame drunken idiots for ruining it for everyone, but it's also the councils and property developers turning our heritage into generic boring concrete and glass. When my old man migrated to Australia, he was caught up in the 1958 Collingwood premiership hysteria in the streets as a kid. He jumped on board immediately and he went from feeling like an outsider to feeling welcome here. I was chatting with co-workers new to Australia, and they're a bit sad that they're not seeing the "Aussie" stuff in public. They've lived in London, Dubai, Singapore... and Melbourne's feeling like just another airport without any local flavour to them. One Nation and the Alt-Right can go stick their racism up their bungholes, but the other extreme of the pendulum is creating a bland, generic city, with all the colours of AFL being washed to grey.

The corporatisation of footy has played a big part in this too.

Get out there in the streets, fellow Magpies, and barrack loud and publicly. This is Melbourne, the heartland of footy, and I'll be stuffed if I'm letting it turn to grey because of corporate beaurocrats, racist bogans, and uppity hipster snobs.

[Raw Hammer]

Northcote/Thornbury/Preston represent.

Will be Collingwood bound in an instant if the cup comes home this year.

[roar]

^^ Collingwood heartland, right there.

[5 from the wing on debut]

[David]

I understand the sadness inherent in losing connection to place, but football isn't a suburban game any more, and really hasn't been for as long as any of us posting here have been alive.

You'd probably have to go back to the 1940s or before for a time when a strong link between suburban identity and top-grade football clubs remained; since then, populations have grown, cities have expanded, people have become more geographically mobile, and even the very notion of geographically-based communities has gradually dissolved (at least, in the cities). Half a century ago, you had Collingwood supporters not only in Clayton and Reservoir, but in Mildura and Albury and Canberra and Mandurah too, and Essendon, Carlton, Richmond and St Kilda supporters in the same places as well. And now? We have a national game, and most of those teams don't even play in their suburbs, or have their home bases there.

But you can be assured of one thing: if we win the flag next Saturday, old people, young people, kids, rich and poor, from every demographic in society – the only real point in common being the black and white they wear – will converge that night at one football ground in Abbotsford, and that pilgrimage will have a deep resonance for all of them. Even if we've never lived in Collingwood and don't know anyone who has, we still know where our home is.

[Bruce Gonsalves]

You've always made a lot of sense Mr Miyagi [Eddie].

[BBHS]

The North - East I always though of as the outer heartland. Mostly because that is where I am from..Diamond Creek etc

[Mr Miyagi]

[ANNODAM]

Reservoir, Thommo, Lalor. Epping & my neck of the woods Greensborough/Eltham.

All Collingwood!

[ronrat]

1880 we we still celebrating at Vic park for 2 days,010and they held all the celebrations at some unrelated joint and a cost to get in. i suspect in 50 years time that suburbs names will disappear. St Kilda has not been relevant to its suburb for 50 years now and North and Footscray have tried or rebadged the the names. Geelong may be the only side that will hang on in the old VFL sense. Fitroy and South melbourne have long gone. A kid born, raised and going to schoolin an area have zero chance really of playing for club they would have been aligned to. The tAC cup and all that has seen the demise of u19s as we knew it. Unfortunate I know but when when you see players like Richards and Weideman playing for the opposition you know the gig is up.

[5 from the wing on debut]

[K]

Is Diamond Creek right in front of Collingwood?