Contemporary Collingwood is desolate. It cowers in the shadows of grotesque, overpowering Housing Commission monoliths, and it bleeds at the heart from the wound of freeway ‘development’. Desolation, malevolent and often violently destructive, flows from the modern desecration of the traditional Collingwood heritage which, in its most vital aspect, was expressed in the nature of community support for the Collingwood Football Club. As the City of Collingwood recognised, in celebrating its centenary year, ‘the people’ and ‘the Club’ were ‘synonomous’³⁵: an historic relationship of identity had been established.

In an analysis of particular relevance to the Collingwood context, R. A. Nisbet has related the idea of community to the emergence and growth of modern, mass industrial society and has observed that, ‘In many spheres of contemporary thought the imperatives of community are irresistible. Along with the pervasive vocabulary of alienation…there is an equally influential vocabulary of community.’³⁶ The malaise of present day Collingwood is a perfect illustration of the growing conflict between the competing historical ‘imperatives’ of alienation and community.