Peter Daicos

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

Daicos is considered one of Collingwood's greatest ever players thanks to his brilliant 549-goal, 15-year career that earned him entry into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. His honours include the 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 was named in Collingwood's Team of the Century in the forward pocket, led the club's goalkicking for five seasons, and won the best-and-fairest award twice.

Football career
Daicos debuted with the Collingwood Football Club in Round 4, 1979, against, in what was, at the time, the largest winning margin in VFL/AFL history (179 points). 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 the 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 seemingly 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, which drew the 1990 Qualifying Final, became the subject of a Toyota Memorable Moments advertisement, first screened in 2005.

Post-playing career
In 2005, Daicos became coach at local club Greythorn Falcons, and in 2006 coached them to an 80-point win in the Grand Final.

In 2007, Daicos launched SportzStats, a hybrid online/offline sports statistics tracking and diary system for junior players in various sports.

In 2010, Daicos resumed commentating duties with the AFL Live radio team.

Personal life
Peter Daicos is commonly known as the 'Macedonian Marvel' as a result of his ethnic Macedonian ancestry.

His parents were Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia, immigrants from the village of Vevi and he was raised in a family with the Macedonian language. Daicos was interested in Australian rules football, and played with the school team whilst at Preston East High School.

His eldest son, Josh, was drafted to Collingwood with pick 57 in the 2016 national draft under the father–son rule. Another son, Nick, was also recruited through the father–son rule by Collingwood, selected with pick 4 in the 2021 national draft after the Gold Coast Suns’ bid was matched by the Magpies. Both Daicos brothers played for the Oakleigh Chargers in the TAC Cup in their draft years.

In March 2024, he was announced as a celebrity contestant on the tenth season of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!.

Legacy
In 1999, Daicos was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. In 2002, he was selected in the AFL Greek Team of the Century, a team reserved for players having full or partial Greek heritage; despite Daicos being an ethnic Macedonian, his family hometown is in Greece and was thus eligible for inclusion.

Nowadays, his name is regularly used by journalists, commentators, 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; such feats may be referred to as a 'Daicos-style goal'.

Daicos' son Josh was awarded Goal of the Year in 2020 for his single-handed effort from the boundary in round 10 to seal a victory against Sydney in a style reminiscent of the elder Daicos' snap goals.

As of the end of the 2023 AFL season, Daicos still holds the ground record for most goals kicked in a single game at Carrara Stadium on the Gold Coast when he kicked 13 majors against the Brisbane Bears in round 20, 1991.