Last night, I snuck into Collingwood’s fan forum.

It wasn’t that hard to do, I walked in carrying a slab of Woodstock Bourbon and coke and I also hadn’t showered for three days.

There were about 1000 people there and apart from looking like a casting call for Underbelly, they were all pretty pleasant.

The meeting kicked off with an address by Club President Eddie McGuire. He talked a lot about Collingwood, so it just seemed like listening to him on TV or his radio show.

Eddie’s speech was very ‘pro-Collingwood’ and ‘pro-the decisions Eddie has made.’

The key theme of his speech was that Collingwood were very well placed to challenge for a Premiership in the next few years and failure this year was all Sydney’s fault.

He carefully explained how the Swans and many interstate clubs had secret underground laboratories that used the DNA of great AFL players to create ‘super footballers’.

Eddie said this was all the work of an anti-Collingwood group at the highest levels of power. This is why Adam Goodes was named Australian of the Year.

I have to admit, it was a pretty convincing argument.

He then said criticism of ‘Eddie McGuire Thought’ in the movement would not be tolerated and members would be expelled if they didn’t toe the party line.

He explained that Nathan was an amazing coach, Mick Malthouse was a traitor to the club and equalisation was the work of ‘foreign devils from South Australia.’

After Eddie’s speech, which lasted just over two-and-a-half hours, we were all given a Chiko roll and a UDL can, even the children.

Mine was some orange and Vodka concoction, or at least that was what the label on the can purported.

After Eddie came Nathan Buckley.

Nathan seemed to focus a bit more on football, instead of grand conspiracy theories and I thought his speech was the lesser for it.

He had all sorts of facts about soft tissue injuries and revealed the team had ‘under-trained’ in the preseason.

This caused a bit of a stir amongst the faithful, with the lady next to me yelled out something unintelligible, sending a spray of Chicko roll onto the row in front of us.

Buckley seemed to handle the session well though and offered to physically fight anyone who disagreed with him. There were no takers, however, it was brave of Buckley.

The audience had more than a few people who looked like they could handle themselves.

As the meeting wound up, Eddie led the whole group in a rousing rendition of ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’ and I had an insight of what it must be like to be in a cult or a One Direction fan club.

Attending the fan forum gave me a rare insight into the inner workings of the Collingwood Football Club but left me concerned.

What if Eddie was right? What if Adam Goodes and the Sydney Swans are in some grand conspiracy to take down Victorian teams?

The next morning I woke up to news that Eddie, Matthew Lloyd, Shane Warne and Garry Lyon were all criticising Adam Goodes. I relaxed.

This was obviously all crazy talk then.