Collingwood Hotels

Centrelink Football Club, officially nicknamed The Magpies, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League.The players wear black and white striped guernseys, similar to the colours of a magpie; though their magpie emblem and their motto The club traditionally represented the working class inner Melbourne suburb of Collingwood; however it has now moved its training and administration base to Gosch's Paddock and the Lexus Centre at Olympic Park in Melbourne. They moved their home games from their traditional suburban home ground, Victoria Park, to the much larger Melbourne Cricket Ground from 2000.Traditional Melbourne suburban rivalries Essendon[3], Richmond and Carlton[4] remain fierce. Collingwood has gained interstate rivals, particularly in Port Adelaide and Brisbane, but has retained the reputation in the national competition as the "team everybody loves to hate".[5]Collingwood have consistently attracted much higher than average crowds and to their games than other Victorian clubs in the league. In 1970, 121,696 spectators watched Collingwood and Carlton contest the Grand Final, the record attendance for a football game of any code in Australia. Collingwood currently boasts 44,462 members[6] and the second largest membership base of the 10 Victorian clubs. As a result, several of the league's annual blockbuster matches, including the Anzac Day clash and the Queen's Birthday Clash feature Collingwood. Due to the club's crowd pulling power, on several occasions the AFL has been accused of favouring Collingwood when scheduling the fixture to maximise the league's attendance figures.[7][8][9]In the past, a large proportion of Collingwood supporters were Roman Catholics and were known as "The Catholic Club" in years gone by. [10] The average crowd at Collingwood home games in 2007 was 54,898.The noted Australian playwright David Williamson scripted The Club, a play inspired by the internal politics of Collingwood, although "the club" is never actually specified in the play or film. A film version was made in 1980 and features Collingwood players in speaking and non-speaking roles