AFL Toyota Premiership 2011

Match 1: 1970 grand final, MCG
Carlton 17.9 (111) d Collingwood 14.17 (101)

The game that had everything. The two greatest rivals the code has known hit the MCG turf on September 26, 1970, and quite literally changed how footy was played. With Collingwood barnstorming to a 44-point lead at half time, Carlton coach Ron Barassi urged his players to handball at all costs. Modern football was born, and modern scoring rates too, with the Blues rattling on seven quick goals to eradicate what had seemed like a match-winning lead.

The Magpies fought back again but this would be Carlton's day. The Blues handballed their way to a 10-point victory that featured the greatest comeback in grand final history, the biggest crowd in football history (121,696) and one of the best marks ever seen. Jesaulenko, you beauty? You better believe it.

Match 2: 1979 grand final, MCG
Carlton 11.16 (82) d Collingwood 11.11 (77)

Let's not beat around the bush, Carlton and Collingwood hate each other's guts. What is amazing, though, is that the enmity - already seething after 82 years of cross-suburban bitterness - deepened even further in the fourth quarter of the frantic 1979 grand final.

The Blues had held the upper hand for most of the second half but Collingwood was coming and coming hard. Three final-quarter goals had the Pies within one straight kick and smelling revenge for 1970. Enter Wayne Harmes. The Blues centreman gathered the ball and kicked it forward into a vacant forward pocket. Harmes pursued his own kick and, with the ball in the process of crossing the boundary line, flung himself across the muddy turf to bat it back in to where teammate Ken Sheldon gleefully accepted it and ran into an open goal.

The debate on whether the ball was in or out when Harmes got to it still rages but no matter which side of the fence you fall on, one thing will never change: the result. Carlton won by five points and the hearts of Magpie fans lay in pieces once again.

Match 3: Rd 22, 2004, MCG
Carlton 17.6 (108) d Collingwood 16.11 (107)

Both teams were out of finals contention when they met in the last round of the 2004 season but when Carlton and Collingwood come together on the MCG, ladder positions fade to irrelevancy.

Collingwood had the run of the first half but poor finishing in front of goal kept the door open for the Blues, who were only too glad to smash it open with five goals in the third quarter. A late Magpie charge failed to grab the chocolates and Pies supporters were, once again, left to lament a narrow loss to their arch-rivals at the home of football.

And Carlton fans? As the old saying goes, the only thing better than beating the Magpies by a hundred points is beating them by one.