Goats

[K]

The club website (at the link above) lists 35 ('66) and then 5 ('67-end). [It doesn't mention 3.]

afltables lists 35 ('66), 5 ('67-'71), 2 ('72), 3 ('73-'75), 5 ('79).

Perhaps the club website needs correcting.

[HAL]

It depends on what the meaning of the word "it" is.

[K]

The last men standing

20 March 2013

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/the-last-men-standing-20130320-2gf8s.html

"Thorold Merrett is now 79, but he retains the energy of the 16-year-old Collingwood first-gamer he once was; he looks much younger than his age.

From the back line, he reads through the 1953 premiership team, marking off mates lost.
...

When the nine who remain gather, as they did on Wednesday night for the '53 team's induction into Collingwood's hall of fame, Merrett tells them the same thing. "Thank god we belonged to a strong club." It means more to him now than ever.

The Twomeys, Richards and Roses littered that line-up with famous Magpie names, yet he finds fond memories in every position. Like Finck, the full-back who commuted from Portland – a 720-kilometre round trip, in 1953! – where he worked as a school teacher, clocking off at lunchtime on Thursday to get to training, and driving back each Sunday morning.

"He wasn't going to come back, so the club bought him a car. 'What? What? Finck's got a car!"' Merrett says, aping his teammates' mock indignation. "How about we all ask for a car!"
...

Des Healey and Bill Twomey were his great confidants, the other two-thirds of an all-left-footers centre line that Merrett completed on a wing. Except in the grand final, when he played on a forward flank – because chairman of selectors Jock McHale got the hump with coach Phonse Kyne and the other selectors on the Thursday night after training. "So he wrote out his team, put it in an envelope, gave it to [club secretary] Gordon Carlyon and said, 'I'm sick of waiting for these blokes, there's my team, I'm goin' home'." No one was game to change it.
...

In the ruck was Neil Mann with his huge hands. Jack Dyer would say Merrett "could stab kick a footy right up a chook's a--- from 50 yards", and Mann could hold a dozen eggs in each hand, and palm the ball to his little men at will. After he died last month, Nathan Buckley asked Merrett to address the current players.

He relayed the story of breaking his leg for a second time, which ended his career at 26, and how Mann sat with him in the rooms for a quarter and a half until the ambulance arrived. "I told them that displayed to me what a loyal friend I had in Neil Mann.""

[K]

http://cobden.org.au/thorold-merrett

[Damien]

If Pendlebury can somehow hold the Premiership cup aloft in 2019 and then get a pic with a cigar in his mouth in the rooms later with the cup then he be the GOAT.

[E]