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Cameron O'Shea of Port pressured by Matt Priddis of the Eagles during the AFL Round 02 match between Port Adelaide Power and the West Coast Eagles at AAMI Stadium, Adelaide.
“Football in South Australia is Port Adelaide,” said former president Bruce Weber, when the club first applied for admission into the AFL in 1990. Two decades later, that flawed logic is haunting Port Power, leaving the AFL to nurture the ailing club to protect the integrity of the league.
When Port Adelaide went its own way to try and gain admission into the expanding AFL in 1990, going against the planned combined SANFL entry, it further ostracised itself within the South Australian football community.
When the Adelaide Crows were born, as a composite team representing the whole of Adelaide and the SANFL, beating Port to the AFL, any notion of Port Adelaide entering the national competition should have been shelved.
But the AFL eventually awarded Port a ticket into the AFL in time for the 1996 season.
Their 15 seasons have thus far netted one premiership, two grand final appearances, three minor premierships and consistent finals challenges throughout the noughties.
But that success only exaggerated their true support base, and eventually crowd numbers decreased as the club struggled to support itself on and off the field. And it will be a slippery slope from here on, with the lowest football department spending in the league, around $5 million less than Collingwood.
Port Power is a weirdly manufactured club, trying to represent its Port Adelaide roots in the national competition, but having to forego the very identity people connected with that great legacy – the black and white stripes and the Magpies moniker – in order to gain entry in the first place.
The addition of teal blue and the move away from stripes only eroded its Port legacy, creating a schism between the real Port Adelaide identity and that of the Power, severely hurting the Port Adelaide Magpies SANFL brand.
Their remarkable success in the SANFL – 36 premierships in the state league – only inflated their delusions of grandeur, prompting the “football in South Australia is Port Adelaide” claims.
The reality is Port only represents a fraction of Adelaide – its tiny corner, which, when you carve South Australia and suburban Adelaide into its SANFL factions, represents one-eighth of the state.
And let’s not forget, Adelaide and South Australia are already one of the smallest markets in the AFL, not growing to any great degree.
The ostracising results of their first AFL bid together with the rise of the Adelaide Crows, who draw their support from the wider Adelaide community, leave Port as an isolated figure in South Australia. Aside from its core Port Adelaide supporter base, it was always going to find it difficult to significantly grow its fan base – not to mention competing against the Crows for market share and corporate dollars in Adelaide’s modest economy.
Melbourne can sustain its multiple clubs because the AFL is essentially the VFL plus two representatives from West Australia, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. Port Power is an SANFL/ suburban club thrown into a national competition, minus the image and branding associated with its legacy and history.
And while comparisons are often made with Fremantle over in West Australia, the reality is the Dockers can draw from the 25,000-plus people who live within the Fremantle city, not to mention the surrounding suburbs geographically distinct from Perth. Port Adelaide’s population would be lucky to reach the 2000-mark.
In many ways Port is a victim of its own success – arguably too big for the SANFL, yet not big enough for the AFL.
There’s no indication from the AFL that Port Power will be dumped. The AFL has stressed it needs to have 18 clubs, a minimum of two in each participating state, ensuring weekly games in each major state (crucially in Adelaide to justify the Adelaide Oval redevelopment). And there are no clear expansion targets to replace them – Tasmania, Darwin and Canberra hardly the major markets the AFL is after.
So, where to for Port Power? There’s still some wait until they and the Adelaide Crows can take their home games into Adelaide’s CBD at Adelaide Oval – 2014 the best estimates, if the redevelopment goes off without a hitch.
And even then there are some suggestions that the controversial redevelopment could be reexamined given Port’s perilous state. Why invest so heavily in a city stadium if it’s only going to be occupied by one club once a fortnight, the suggestion being.
The move into the city will provide the Power with a $3.5 million a year windfall, hopefully enticing the club’s supporters and neutrals alike to get to games. But Port Power can’t rely solely on the Oval move.
The problems for the club and limitations of its market reach are too severe and deep-rooted to be solved by the city relocation. It is, after all, a city that is in the main incredibly hostile towards the Power – and there appears no end in sight to that hostility.
Generations of non-Port fans who grow up despising the Magpies/Power aren’t suddenly going to switch their allegiance to the black, white and teal.
With the Power now in the AFL’s hands, one wonders whether the league should take the brave step in pushing for a partial Power relocation to Darwin, perhaps with a handful of home games up north – but not too many, as the league cannot jeopardise its commitment to the new Adelaide Oval.
Power has made seven trips to Darwin for home and away matches and is in the best position to represent Darwin, the Northern Territory, not to mention Port Adelaide and the parts of South Australia outside of the Adelaide Crows’ net. Given the historical and geographical ties between South Australia and the Northern Territory, and the Power’s desperate need to expand its reach, Port is the perfect fit to become Darwin’s de facto AFL club.
Such a move would obviously be a big undertaking for the AFL, and they would need to sell the idea to other clubs as, for the move to work, it would need to close the opportunity for other clubs to sell their home games to Darwin (as Richmond did last round). But that should be a motivating factor for the AFL: stopping that loophole which makes a mockery of the home and away competition while giving Darwin a greater AFL presence and connection.
The reality is it may be the only way to adequately increase Port Power’s fan base and market reach, unless Adelaidians end the hostility and embrace their second AFL team.
Follow Adrian on twitter @AdrianMusolino