SUCKING on a pencil stub one day this week as he mulled over what he would say in his luncheon address at today's Anzac Day clash at the MCG, Collingwood president Eddie McGuire dared to think big.

"This now is almost the biggest regular-season sporting fixture in any sport in the world," he said.

For sheer scale, he has a point. The original Collingwood-Essendon fixture in 1995 startled AFL and Melbourne Cricket Club authorities by drawing 94,825, the second-biggest home- and-away crowd in history.

Che Cockatoo- Collins, a late inclusion for Essendon who was nearly best on ground that day, remembered this week that the stadium vibrated. "You could feel it and see it," he said.

Memorably, the Magpies and Bombers played a draw, and the match became an instant tradition.

Every year, regardless of the form and trajectory of Collingwood and Essendon, it sells out weeks in advance - it has again this year - and packs out both members' reserves, too.

After the dawn service, it is the place to be on Anzac Day. k.d. lang will be there today, and so will Jason Alexander - George of Seinfeld - both guests of Collingwood.

A further case could be made to add an historic dimension to McGuire's claim: that just as the 1970 grand final is regarded as the most influential single match in the game's history, Anzac Day 1995 has left the greatest legacy of any non-final.

Sitting at the back of the consciousness of the AFL and the two clubs, it provided a model for what might be achieved by matching games to dates and themes.

The next year, the AFL's centenary year, heritage round was introduced and, a little while later, rivalry round.

In time, more promotions followed: the Dreamtime match, Queen's Birthday, Mother's Day, new this year the Eureka match (most, like the first Anzac Day blockbuster, bearing the distinctive stamp of Kevin Sheedy).

However tenuous some are, figures say they work. "That was the start of ensuring that our supporters were always turned on by big games," said Ross Oakley, then AFL chief executive.

"We had an enormous crowd that day, but I don't think people at the time under stood the additional impact that it might have. It does now have an enormous impact."

Nineteen ninety-five inspired McGuire to think that Collingwood could be resurrected as the imperious club that had made him feel so important as a child. Four years later, he became president.

Today, the club has re- established most of what McGuire calls its "bragging rights".

Next week, the Magpies will announce a new membership record for a Melbourne club.

Nineteen ninety-five established Essendon as a trendsetter, able as few others were to see beyond the doors of the football department. By the return match that year, the Bombers had put out a celebratory poster entitled "Lest We Forget". Small beer now, innovative then.

The next year, free-thinking Peter Jackson became chief executive, and still is. By 2000, Essendon ruled the land.

McGuire believes that the 1995 blockbuster, its sequels and its many spawn emboldened the MCC to rebuild the ground, knowing that whatever the cost, the people and the money would come.

"The success of that game has meant that it is economically viable to build the MCG," he said.

"It meant there was an economic worth in building the new northern stand. Now it's about when we knock over the Southern Stand and do that again."

McGuire also believes the Anzac Day match has played a significant role in reshaping Australia's once shame-faced attitude to its war history.

While a schoolboy in the 1970s, he marched in the Anzac Day parade as a member of his school band. Sometimes, he said, the band would have to march two or three times a day, so thin were the ranks of marchers, musicians and, for that matter, crowd.

"It was post-Vietnam, a time when it was really on the nose," he said. "It was when Women Against War were protesting and bombarding the veterans. There's no doubt in my mind that this game has contributed to the renaissance of feeling towards the diggers."

Oakley recalled that the RSL initially was reluctant to sanction the match, fearing its show would be stolen. The AFL empathised.

"By having a massive crowd, we ran the risk of taking the focus away from Anzac Day a little,'' he said. "We wanted to incorporate elements of recognition into the day, so that it became part of it, not a distraction. By making it a part of the Anzac Day commemoration, I think it enhanced the whole Anzac Day tradition."

The 1995 Anzac Day match became a watershed in one other seismic way. Sometime in the din and frenzy of the last quarter, Collingwood ruckman Damian Monkhorst made a racist remark to Essendon's Michael Long, also within the hearing of Cockatoo-Collins.

Long decided to draw a line in the sandy turf, reporting it to the umpires.

At first, the league was hamfisted, but, pursued by Long, it set up mediation that led to an apology from Monkhorst and so became the forerunner for an AFL-led campaign against racial vilification that in turn helped to retrain society's attitude.

It also established for the heroic Long a place not just in the history of the game, but the country.

Cockatoo-Collins remembered this week that he and Long were not so much shocked as fed up. "It wasn't the first time I'd heard it," he said. "Longy had had enough, and so had I."

Cockatoo-Collins was thinking of his younger, twin brothers, who had just been drafted to Melbourne. "That was my influence, and it was on Longy's mind, too," he said. "It would be better for them."

Nonetheless, Cockatoo-Collins marvelled at Long's courage. "I thought it was pretty amazing to take on that responsibility at that time," he said.

Cockatoo-Collins stressed that Monkhorst was not so much evil as unlucky to be the stuck at the crossroads of history when the lights changed. "We never thought of Damian as a bad person," he said.

The Long/Monkhorst incident characterised the day and its aftermath: no one saw any of it coming.

As a boy, McGuire had stood one Anzac Day on the outer wing at the MCG, one of 92,436, as Tom Hafey coached Collingwood against Richmond for the first time and Sheedy kicked the wrong way, gifting the Magpies a goal.

But no one then thought of leveraging the moment, and Anzac Day was a spasmodic fixture until 1995 when Sheedy, now coach of Essendon and a famously original thinker, proposed not just to stage a match on the day, but make an occasion of it. "I think our club at that stage really wanted to get out and look at a game that we could get more out of than just hopefully (a step towards) a grand final," Sheedy said in an interview for a club production. Collingwood was a natural opponent.

The RSL was won over, proper and dignified ceremonies prepared. Still, no one was ready for what became the day's second grand procession. When Collingwood arrived at 12.30pm, coach Leigh Matthews thought the gates must still have been locked, such was the crowd milling outside the ground. Cockatoo-Collins came from Victoria Park, where he was watching the reserves; it took him an hour.

At 1.30, Essendon's David Grenvold peered out of the players' race, then reported wide-eyed back to the rooms: "There's a shitload of people out there."

The MCC surrendered its members' reserve and watched wondrously, and people continued to pour in until quarter-time. When the gates were shut, 10,000 or 20,000 remained outside. Oakley sat between McGuire and his brother, Frank, an Essendon supporter, and marvelled at their lack of fraternity, but also at the ever-growing crowd.

"I remember going out to the back of the stands and thinking, 'This is a hell of a lot bigger than we'd ever contemplated'," Oakley said. "They all came in a short period of time, from the march, from the city, from everywhere. It was a great thrill."

Deep in the bowels of the MCG, Sheedy somehow sensed this spontaneous combustion. "He warned us," said Cockatoo-Collins. "I remember at the start of the game, he said: 'This will be probably the biggest match you ever play in.' I thought: 'What's he talking about?' But it was. That's the foresight of Sheedy."

The match was an epic, changing direction three times. Sav Rocca kicked nine goals for Collingwood, Cockatoo-Collins had 15 last-quarter touches for Essendon. With seconds remaining, Nathan Buckley was streaming goalwards. Behind him, umpire Rowan Sawers thought he would surely kick at goal; any score would be enough. Instead, he tried to pass to Rocca, who was spoiled and the siren sounded.

High in the southern stand, I thought I had no contribution to the ear-splitting, day-long roar, other than the odd imprecation for Sawers, but when I made to swap felicitations with my brother-in-law, I found that I was hoarse.

So it was across the MCG: now that fans at last could hear themselves, most found they could not talk or had nothing to say. The match, result and occasion all spoke for themselves.

It was a first, but also a last. Not since, and probably not again, will an occasion sneak up on an unsuspecting AFL like this. "It was an organic crowd," McGuire said. "It wasn't the result of a ripping marketing campaign.

"I might be biased, but this is why Collingwood and Essendon have to do this game. It brings glory to the day that there are no seats available. No other clubs can do that."

Sheedy is gone from Essendon, but not from Anzac Day, nor from the pursuit of ideas. "In the week the Australian Government signs with the Prime Minister of New Guinea to keep the Kokoda Track open, it should have been important to have New Guinea and New Zealand here," he said last night. "We need to bring them here. If it's good enough to go to war with these countries, they ought to be at our bloody football match."

ANZAC DAY TRADITION

1995 Coll 17.9 (111) drew with Ess 16.15 (111), 94,825

1996 Coll 17.15 (117) d Ess 16.9 (105), 87,549

1997 Coll 14.15 (99) d Ess 10.10 (70), 83,271

1998 Coll 15.18 (108) d Ess 12.16 (88), 81,542

1999 Ess 15.18 (108) d Coll 15.10 (100), 73,118

2000 Ess 21.14 (140) d Coll 15.10 (100), 88,390

2001 Ess 15.13 (103) d Coll 14.11 (95), 83,905

2002 Coll 9.12 (66) d Ess 4.9 (33), 84,894

2003 Ess 23.9 (147) d Coll 12.9 (81), 62,589

2004 Ess 17.10 (112) d Coll 11.13 (79), 57,294

2005 Ess 11.17 (83) d Coll 10.9 (69), 70,033

2006 Coll 15.16 (106) d Ess 12.17 (89), 91,234

2007 Coll 12.23 (95) d Ess 11.13 (79), 90,508


AT A GLANCE

Ladder positions have never been indicative of the result and it has become season defining on more than one occasion.

Wins: Collingwood 6 Essendon 6
Biggest margin: 66, Essendon, 2003
Smallest margin: Draw, 1995
Biggest crowd: 94,825, 1995

Anzac Day Medallist:
1995 Saverio Rocca (Collingwood)
1996 Mark Mercuri (Essendon)
1997 Damian Monkhorst (Collingwood)
1998 Stephen Patterson (Collingwood)
1999 Matthew Lloyd (Essendon)
2000 James Hird (Essendon)
2001 Chris Tarrant (Collingwood)
2002 Mark McGough (Collingwood)
2003 James Hird (Essendon)
2004 James Hird (Essendon)
2005 Andrew Lovett (Essendon)
2006 Ben Johnson (Collingwood)
2007 Heath Shaw (Collingwood)