Peter Daicos

Peter Daicos (born 20 September 1961 in Fitzroy, Victoria) is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played his entire 250-game career with the Collingwood Football Club in the VFL/AFL.

Peter Daicos
Peter Daicos in 2009
Personal information
Nickname(s) Macedonian Marvel, Daics
Date of birth (1961-09-20) 20 September 1961
Original team(s) Preston RSL (Vic)
Debut Round 4, 1979, Collingwood
vs. St Kilda, at Victoria Park
Height 184 cm (6 ft 0 in)
Weight 90 kg (198 lb)
Playing career1
Years Club Games (Goals)
1979–1993 Collingwood 250 (549)
Representative team honours
Years Team Games (Goals)
Victoria 5 (12)
1 Playing statistics correct to the end of 1993.
Career highlights
Sources: AFL Tables, AustralianFootball.com

Daicos is considered one of the greatest ever players in Australian Football history due to his brilliant 549 goal, 15 year career that earned him entry to the Australian Football Hall of Fame. His honours include the inaugural 1990 AFL Premiership with Collingwood and the 1991 Goal of the Year. He also represented his home state of Victoria a total of five times.

Daicos is considered to be one of Collingwood's all-time greats, being named in the club's Team of the Century, leading the club's goalkicking for five seasons, winning the best and fairest twice, and playing in the club's drought-breaking 1990 premiership.

Personal life

Daicos is commonly known as the Macedonian Marvel[1] as a result of his ethnic Macedonian ancestry.[2]

He was raised in a family background with the Macedonian language spoken at home and church services attended on Sundays but with an important difference being his interest in Australian rules football instead of soccer, including playing with the school team whilst at Preston East High School.[3]

His son, Josh, played for the Oakleigh Chargers in the TAC Cup before he was drafted to Collingwood with pick 57 in the 2016 national draft under the father–son rule.[4]

VFL/AFL Career

Peter Daicos debuted with the Collingwood Football Club in round 4, 1979, against St Kilda, in what was, at the time, the largest winning margin in VFL/AFL history (179 points).[5] He went on to play 250 games (for 549 goals) with the Magpies until his retirement in 1993, and he won a premiership with them in 1990; he kicked Collingwood's first goal in that match.

In the 1990 season, Daicos scored 97 goals playing mostly from forward pocket, a feat made all the more remarkable because he was considerably shorter than many full-forwards of the era, and was not playing in the traditional position of a spearhead full-forward. His skills in scoring from impossible angles, as well as his ability to get rid of defenders, led pundits to start naming him The Magician.

In fact, one of his goals, drawing the 1990 Qualifying Final became the subject of a Toyota Memorable Moments advertisement, first screened in 2005.

In 1999, Daicos was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. In 2002, he was elected in the AFL Greek Team of the Century[6] reserved for players having full or partial Greek heritage.[7]

In 2005, Peter Daicos became coach at a local club called the Greythorn Falcons, and in 2006 he coached them to an 80-point win in the Grand Final.

In 2007/08, he launched SportzStats,[8] a hybrid online/offline sports statistics tracking and diary system for junior players in various sports, and, as of 2009, he is also a weekly guest tipper on the Score Five Footy[9] tipping game.

In 2010, Daicos resumed commentating duties with the AFL Live radio team. Nowadays, his name is regularly used by journalists and Australian football fans as an adjective to describe a difficult goal scored from the boundary in play, especially one that is dribbled along the ground in a controlled manner; for example, a 'Daicos goal'.

See also
  • List of VFL/AFL players by ethnicity

References
  1. Hill,Peter: "The Macedonians in Australia", page 132, Hesperian Press,1989
  2. http://www.magpies.net/nick/players/tribute/cddaicos.html
  3. Daicos : Collingwood and me / by Peter Daicos with Jake Niall, Kilmore, Vic. Floradale Productions, 1991
  4. Salemme, Kate (26 November 2016). "Callum Brown and Josh Daicos join Collingwood as father-son recruits in dream scenario for Magpies". Herald Sun. News Corp Australia.
  5. "Collingwood v St Kilda - Sat, 28-Apr-1979 2:10pm". AFL Tables. Retrieved 8 October 2016.
  6. Tamis Anastasios: "The Greeks in Australia", page 104, La Trobe University, Victoria, 2005
  7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 13 December 2009. Retrieved 1 December 2009.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. http://www.sportzstats.com
  9. http://www.scorefivefooty.com
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