Dairyman, Laundryman, Football Dynasty

Not a particularly common name Twomey, but well known to Victorian football followers.

Collingwood Football Club followers idolise the Twomey clan, and the Twomey's made an impact playing in Heidelberg teams also.

When Nilss of Innsbruck came across the reference to the Twomey family laundry business at Eaglemont he did not twig to the connection.

Table Talk (Melbourne), 08.10.1908, Page 8


A VILLA LAUNDRY.

It is now twelve months since she started the Eaglemont Laundry. It is most ideally situated, quite away from town smuts and smoke, on the hill at Heidelberg, the laundry being carried on in a large villa. The clothes are all dried in the open air, in a breezy paddock, and no machinery nor chemicals whatever are used. Her employees work under particularly favourable conditions, in beautiful, light, airy rooms, with windows overlooking one of the prettiest village vistas near Melbourne. There are piles of laundried things ready to be packed, shirts and collars, table linen, and blouses, which look like new, not like things that have stood the ordeal of the washtub, which is so often fatal.

The Sands & McDougal's Directory reveals the Twomey family had a dairy farm (their milking shed was overlooking MacArthur Road) and subsequently the commercial laundry.

This is the Twomey family that are Collingwood Football Club royalty.

Bill Twomey Snr. was a 9 y.o. boy when the article about his mother's laundry business was published.

Bill Twomey Jnr. played for the 'Pies 1945 to 1958.

Bill Jnr's brother Michael played 157 games for the Woods between 1951 and 1961, while Pat had two brief stints with the club which amounted to 55 games. The three brothers' nephew David – the son of a fourth brother, Peter Twomey[3] – later played with the Magpies.

The 1953 Collingwood premiership side included 3 Twomey brothers - Bill Jnr, Mick and Pat.