Watson holds firm for love of Pies

By Chris Thomson | posted on September 27, 2018

AHEAD of Saturday’s AFL Grand Final, the Speaker of Western Australia’s Parliament has eschewed all local hype surrounding the West Coast Eagles, choosing to back his beloved black-and-whites instead.

With magpie season in full swing atop Mount Clarence on Tuesday, Albany MLA Peter Watson said the time was ripe for Collingwood to swoop and snatch the nation’s most coveted flag for the sixteenth time.

“After the Eagles beat Collingwood in the qualifying final, I copped a lot of flack,” winked the Legislative Assembly Speaker, who this week donned the black and white for his daily constitutional down, then up, Mount Clarence with pet pooch Harry.

“But I’ve kept all the emails and all the text messages just in case we happen to win at the weekend, and then I’ll reply to them.

“And if we lose, nothing else will be said.”

Mr Watson said his all-time favourite Pie is 2011 Brownlow medallist Dane Swan, “because he’s different”.

“He was his own man, a brilliant footballer, won a medal,” he reflected on the champion midfielder who retired in 2016.

Not far behind in Mr Watson’s esteem are current player Steele Sidebottom, and Macedonian Marvel Peter Daicos, who played his first footy in the Melbourne suburb of Preston where Mr Watson was born.

“They’d be the three, but Swanny is number one,” he expanded.

“He’s a real Collingwood person, rough around the edges, tatts all over him, but by gee he could play footy and he’s a great entertainer.”

Mr Watson, 71, grew up in Thornbury, just south of Preston.

“The guy across the road used to deliver the wood and the ice and he used to wear a Collingwood guernsey year in, year out with a beanie and he’d get me in my high chair and he’d grab me on the cheek and he’d say: ‘Don’t you barrack for Carlton’,” he recalled.

“Everyone else in my family barracked for Carlton.

“But he bought me a Collingwood guernsey when I was two and I’ve been a Collingwood supporter ever since.”

Mr Watson, who represented Australia as a middle distance runner at the 1968 Olympics, played junior footy and a scratch match or two in the Colts for Claremont before running took over.

“I wasn’t much of a footballer,” he confided.

“I wanted to be a footballer.

“All I wanted to do was play for Claremont and Collingwood, but I had to find something that I was good at, not what I wanted to be good at.”

He said he just hoped Saturday’s grand final would be a good game.

“I think it’s two teams who at the start of the year no-one thought would do well, so it’s a good luck story for one of the teams and it’s also a good luck story for the other team that got there,” he added philosophically.

No magpies or eagles were harmed in the production of this story.