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Opinion
After being told the club was not able to wear its famous heritage jumper twice a year in Showdowns, Port Adelaide changed into their famous jumper to sing the club song after their 49-point win over the Crows.
If there ever was a statement by a club or franchise that essentially told the entire league honchos where to go, then Port Adelaide’s decision to change into their prison bar jumper post Showdown to sing the club song was it.
As you can imagine, the move was met with some who loved it (myself included, and even my father-in-law, who supports the Crows) and others who utterly condemned it.
Perhaps the biggest thing to come out of Port’s ‘statement’ was that the AFL was fine with what the club did. No ‘please explain’ from the club was needed and that speaks volumes.
Now, I cannot speak for every Port Adelaide fan, but it was fantastic. The fact that the whole club bought into the idea and that it was player-driven (led by Tom Jonas and other senior players) just shows how much it means to not only the fans but the players as well.
The fact that this situation is still going on is a little laughable. It is not like the club is asking for it to be our primary jumper for the season. All they are asking is to where it in two games a year.
Surely that is not an unreasonable request.
What Saturday night’s stunt does show us is that the club as a whole will not back down from this issue anytime soon and it almost feels like in the long-term, it will be better for both Port Adelaide and the AFL to agree on something.
(Photo by James Elsby/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The funny thing to me is that we have hardly heard publicly from Collingwood on this issue, rather their ex-president in Eddie McGuire, who now is no more than a glorified member of the organisation.
Why he still has so much power over the AFL is bewildering to me and likely to many others as well.
The one thing I will say on this issue, and echo Kane Cornes’ sentiment on The Sunday Footy Show: it’s time to put it behind us now.
We have made our statement, we put the prison bar jumper on post-game but now it is time to put that all on the back-burner and to focus on the huge challenge that the Western Bulldogs present us.
To see the entire playing group don the prison bar jumper to sing the song is probably the best Port Adelaide moment I have seen since the 2004 premiership win.
You could see how much it mean to the players and doing it after brushing aside their bitter rivals just added the icing on top of what was, overall, a decent night for Ken Hinkley and his side.
To essentially give the middle finger to the AFL, Collingwood and Eddie McGuire has been seen as a risky move and has been met with backlash, but it was worth it just to show that we as a club are not giving up on this anytime soon.
For more of my Port Adelaide pieces, you can visit my Twitter @adam_schultz15 or visit my blog.
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