Port Adel Magpies

PORT ADELAIDE MAGPIES

Affiliated: SAFA 1877-1906; SAFL 1907-1926; SANFL 1927-present

Club Address: P.O. Box 2095, Port Adelaide, South Australia 5015

Home Ground: Alberton Oval, 9 Queen Street, Alberton

Formed: 1870

Colours: Black and white

Emblem: Magpies

Premierships: SENIORS - 1884, 1890, 1897, 1903, 1906, 1910, 1913-14, 1921, 1928, 1936-37, 1939, 1951, 1954-55-56-57-58-59, 1962-63, 1965, 1977, 1979-80-81, 1988-89-90, 1992, 1994-95-96,1998 & 1999 (36 total) RESERVES/SECONDS (from 1919) - 1923, 1933, 1936, 1947-48, 1952, 1955-56-57-58-59, 1963, 1980, 1983, 1988, 1996-7 (17 total) THIRDS/UNDER 19S (from 1936) - 1946, 1950, 1953, 1962, 1974-75-76-77, 1991, 1999, 2001, 2006-7 (13 total) COLTS/UNDER 17S (from 1939) - 1951, 1955, 1961, 1972, 1994 (5 total) (OTHER PREMIERSHIPS - Championship of Australia 1890, 1910, 1913-14 (4 total - record); Stanley H. Lewis Memorial Trophy 1962-63-64, 1970, 1977, 1979-80, 1988-89, 1992, 1994, 1999 (12 total); SANFL Night/Knock-out/Pre-season Series 1961, 1973, 1989 (3 total)

Magarey Medallists: Stan Malin 1899; Jack Mack 1907; Sampson 'Shine' Hosking 1910 & 1915*; W. John Ashley 1914; Charles Adams 1921*; Peter Bampton 1925*; Robert Quinn 1938 & 1945; David Boyd 1956; Geof Motley 1964; Trevor Obst 1967; Russell Ebert 1971, 1974, 1976 & 1980; Peter Woite 1975; Greg Anderson 1986; Scott Hodges 1990; Nathan Buckley 1992; Tony Brown 2001; Ryan O'Connor 2001; Brett Ebert 2003; Jeremy Clayton 2005 (19 Medallists/24 Medals)

All Australians: John Abley 1956, 1958 & 1961; John Cahill 1969; Greg Phillips 1980; Mark Williams 1980; Tony Giles 1983; Craig Bradley 1983 & 1985; Stephen Curtis 1983; Greg Anderson 1987; Martin Leslie 1988 (12 total)

SANFL Top Goalkickers: J.Litchfield (13) 1883; R.Roy (22) 1884; C.Fry (32) 1889; J.McKenzie (32) 1890; J.Tomkins (27) 1897; J.Mathieson (30) 1905, (42) 1906 & (33) 1908; J.Quinn (32) 1907; F.Hansen (46) 1910, (41) 1911, (37) 1912 & (39) 1913; J.Dunn (33) 1914; L.Lackman (25) 1919; L.Dayman (86) 1929; A.McLean (80) 1947; R.Johns (70) 1956, (55) 1958, (76) 1962 & (54) 1963; W.Dittmar (74) 1959 & (69) 1960; E.Freeman (81) 1966; T.Evans (87) 1977, (90) 1978, (146) 1980, (98) 1981, (125) 1982 & (127) 1984; S.Hodges (153) 1990, (129) 1994 & (117) 1996; M.Tylor (97) 1992 & (90) 1993 (35 total)

Port Adelaide's Official 'Greatest Team 1870 to 2000': Click here

Highest Score: 37.21 (243) vs. Woodville 13.4 (82) at Football Park in round 3 1980

Most Games: 392 by Russell Ebert from 1968 to 1978 & 1980-85

Record Home Attendances: 22,738 in round 11 1977: Port Adelaide 9.17 (71); Norwood 10.9 (69)

Record Finals Attendance: 66,897 for 1976 grand final at Football Park: Sturt 17.14 (116); Port Adelaide 10.15 (75)

Overall Success Rate 1907-2007: 68.8%

* indicates awarded retrospectively by SANFL in 1998

One of the most familiar sights in South Australian football as Port Adelaide players celebrate another premiership win (that of 1981 in this case).

"In 1997 the Port Adelaide Football Club joined the Australian Football League, in many ways the crowning achievement of more than 100 years of unrivalled success. It maintained its presence in the SANFL through the formation of the Port Adelaide Magpies Football Club, who share the records and history from 1870 to 1996."

(From The Port Adelaide Magpies Football Club Official Website)

On Saturday 29 March 1997, six months after defeating Central District in the 1996 SANFL grand final, Port Adelaide embarked on its 116th season of senior football in the state's premier competition with a 7 point win over Sturt. To all external appearances, it was business as usual - except that, underneath the facade of normality, everything had changed. No longer was the team that took to the field in the trademark black and white prison bar guernseys the primary manifestation of a club that could trace its origins all the way back to 13 May 1870, when John Hart R.W. Leicester, G.Ireland, J.A. Rann, R.Carr and L.Bridgland were voted into office as the inaugural committee of the Port Adelaide Cricket and Football Club. The club's primary manifestation was now playing on a bigger stage, and that very afternoon, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, it took to the field for its first ever fixture in a marginally expanded Victorian Football League competition that now endeavoured to portray itself as possessing a 'national' remit, purview and infrastructure.

While 50,000 fans, luxuriating in warm autumn sunshine at the MCG, watched the Power struggling to cope with the heightened intensity of AFL football, and ultimately going under by 79 points, an assemblage scarcely 5% the size back in Adelaide rolled up for a match that, two decades ago, would quite reasonably have been expected to attract 20,000 spectators, and have dominated the following morning's sports pages. From now on, press coverage of the Magpies would be negligible and often ill informed, while 'Port Power' (see footnote 1) would vie for column inches, if not perhaps adulation, with the state's other AFL representative, the Adelaide Crows.

Clearly, adjustment of a major kind was necessary, but for the first two or three years after the enforced parting of the ways, Port Magpies endeavoured, with some success, to make light of the transition, and to carry on as though nothing had changed. Apart from the reduced attendances and diminished overall profile, one of the key initial problems the club faced was a decline in its playing strength. With no fewer than a dozen of the players who had represented Port in the SANFL in 1996 now with the Power, this decline was appreciable, and in the round 5 ANZAC Day clash with Norwood it was emphasised in the cruellest and most embarrassing way imaginable: it was not just the scale of the Redlegs' victory margin - 122 points, which represented a record defeat for the Magpies - it was the enormity of the apparent gulf in ability that galled. In that one match, perhaps for the one and only time in the illustrious history of Port Adelaide, it was as though the club was performing at a level below league standard.

Port and Sturt players get better acquainted - click to enlarge.

That the Magpies ultimately recovered to not only participate in the 1997 grand final, their eighth such appearance in ten seasons, but to do so on the back of a 2nd semi final conquest of their ANZAC nemesis speaks volumes for the spirit, determination and drive of everyone connected with the club. Coached by Stephen Williams, son of the legendary Fos, it was clear that, whatever else had been lost, the central tenets of the club's unique and inviolable tradition remained. Those tenets had been famously encapsulated, in the form of a creed, by Fos Williams when he returned to Alberton in 1962 after a three year sojourn. They are eminently worth reproducing here:

Stephen Williams - click to enlarge.

We the players and management of the Port Adelaide Football Club accept the heritage which players and administrators have passed down to us; in so doing we do not intend to rest in idleness but shall strive with all our power to further this club's unexcelled achievements.

To do this we believe there is great merit and noble achievements in winning a premiership. To be successful, each of us must be active, aggressive and devoted to this cause. We agree that success is well within our reach and have confidence that each member of both the team and management will suffer personal sacrifices for the common end. Also we know that should we, after striving to our utmost and giving our everything, still not be successful, our efforts will become a further part of this club's enviable tradition.

Unfortunately for Stephen Williams and his players, in 1997 it was the final sentence of this creed which ultimately applied as Norwood gained revenge over Port when the two teams met again in the grand final. However, the club's accomplishment in going so close to a premiership when so grossly under-manned would stand it in good stead over the next couple of seasons.

In 1998, despite displaying some worryingly inconsistent form at times, the Magpies finished the season in style, winning their last two minor round matches before comfortably accounting for Central District by 61 points in the elimination final, Norwood in the 1st semi final by an eminently satisfying 76 points, and West Adelaide by 77 points in the preliminary final. The grand final afforded an opportunity for old time footy fans to reminisce, featuring as it did the two great SANFL rivals of the 1960s and '70s, the Magpies and their all too frequent nemesis, Sturt. Pleasingly, however - at least as far as Port supporters were concerned - this time it was to be their beloved Magpies who would emerge triumphant, although as the final margin of just 9 points indicates it was no easy matter. Final scores were Port 11.9 (75) to Sturt 9.12 (66) with the victors best served by rover David Brown, half back flankers Jarred Poulton and Stephen Carter, centre half forward Brett Chalmers, centreman 'Daisy' Borlase, and half forward Peter Burgoyne. Tellingly, of these six players, only Borlase had not played AFL football. A crowd of 44,838 attended the match, which in some respects represented a kind of 'Indian summer' for the old-style SANFL. It will be extremely surprising if a crowd of such magnitude ever again attends the SANFL's premiership-deciding match.

The Magpies' 2001 Magarey Medallist, Tony Brown.

Having done things the hard way in 1998 by winning the flag after fighting their way through from the elimination final, the Magpies in 1999 took a much more familiar route to success. Having won the minor premiership for the 38th time since 1907 - easily a record - they comfortably overcame the Eagles in the 2nd semi final, and then survived a couple of late scares against a plucky Norwood side in the grand final to edge home by 8 points. Once again, the best players list was dominated by players with AFL experience: former Power player Darryl Poole was best afield, closely followed by ex-Richmond defender Brian Leys. David Brown (ex-Power and Adelaide), Simon Tregenza (Adelaide) and Brett Chalmers (Power) were among the others to shine.

The Maggies in action at Football Park - click to enlarge.

Sadly for the club's supporters, the period since 1999 has constituted something of a 'reality check', with 4th place in 2000 and 3rd in 2001 being followed by a scarcely credible - to fans of longer standing - two successive failures to qualify for the finals. Much more worryingly, by 2003 the Magpies found themselves, in common with a number of other SANFL clubs, in a somewhat precarious financial situation. Regrettably, existence for clubs in what have increasingly come to be regarded as 'feeder leagues' for the AFL - the SANFL, WAFL, VFL and so forth - is an insecure, volatile and thankless affair, where tradition and past importance count for little or nothing.

At the end of a 2003 season which saw the Magpies finish 5th (see footnote 2), Stephen Williams gave way as coach to former Richmond star Matthew Knights, who faced an unenviable task in endeavouring to restore the club to something approximating to its former glory. This he ultimately failed to do, and in 2005 he was replaced by club legend John Cahill, working in harness with recent triple premiership captain Tim Ginever. Under this duo the Magpies reached the finals, ultimately finishing 3rd, while under Ginever alone in 2006 they ended up a disappointing 5th after starting the season superbly. The 2007 season produced an even more disappointing 6th place finish.

Meanwhile, the Power continued to go from strength to strength, attracting new support from across Australia as well as abroad. Such is by no means a bad thing, of course, but to the objective observer it seems little short of scandalous that, because of the artificial and arbitrary schism invidiously imposed on the Power and the Magpies by the SANFL, the latter club, which shares to the hilt the unique and incomparable Port Adelaide tradition, is unable to partake, even in a second hand way, in the glory, esteem and welter of opportunities currently being enjoyed by the former.

Where now?

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Footnotes

1. Despite the fact that, particularly in Melbourne and what might be termed the 'anti-Port' sections of the South Australian media, this label for the club continues to be used, it has never, at any stage, constituted the club's name. The club is officially Port Adelaide, with a nickname of 'the Power'. In contrast, the 'Port Adelaide Magpies' has its nickname as an intrinsic part of the club's official designation. Return to Main Text

2. For one season only, the SANFL reverted to a 'top four' finals system in 2003. Return to Main Text