SANDY Roberts was struggling to make the words flow in his usual masterful way behind the microphone.
The long-serving Channel Seven commentator had made the same journey as the team he was watching – from suburbia in Adelaide to the national stage at the MCG, albeit with a 17-year head start.
When he was sitting alongside fellow South Australian Bruce McAvaney in those wonky, open-air commentary booths for the Big Replay of SANFL games in Adelaide during the late 1970s, Roberts knew the team as “Port Adelaide”.
Now, at the MCG on March 29, 1997, Roberts was saying, with unease, “Port Power”. He recognised and acknowledged the fans behind the goals as the same “Port Adelaide” supporters he had heard with their passionate cheers from Alberton to Elizabeth to Norwood to Glenelg. He looked in the coach’s box to see a man who had significantly enhanced “Port Adelaide” as a player and coach for five decades, John Cahill.
No wonder Roberts was struggling to say anything but “Port Adelaide”. This was Port Adelaide, the Port Adelaide Football Club, before him as history was unfolding at the MCG.
The graphics on the screen were true to all that was written on the freshly minted AFL licence – and ultimately engraved on the AFL premiership trophy in 2004: “Won by PORT ADELAIDE”.
It has been that way since 1870. For a short moment, the club’s founders – recognising their established roots in local sport – badged it as the Port Adelaide Cricket and Football Club. But before a football was kicked in excitement in that three-game series against Young Australians in the start-up season of 1870, it was the Port Adelaide Football Club – and only Port Adelaide.
That historic day at the G in 1997 did bring much change, perhaps appropriately against the team that had claimed first rights to wearing a black-and-white jumper in the AFL’s origins of the VFL and had long been known by the nickname of “Magpies”: Collingwood.
The price of promotion to the national league in 1997 was adding teal and silver to the “traditional” Port Adelaide livery and a new moniker, “Power” when the expectation from many was the seaside location of the club’s roots would lead to “Pirates”.
But the club name did not change. It was Port Adelaide. Since 1870.
“The AFL,” recalls Brian Cunningham, the club’s SANFL premiership captain during those Sandy Roberts’ years at ADS7 when television went from black-and-white to colour, “invited us to join the (national) league as Port Adelaide.
“It is the name of our football club. It is the one thing we did not need to change entering the AFL from the SANFL. And it is the one thing we did not want to change,” adds Cunningham, the club’s chief executive from 1992 to AFL premiership success in 2004.
Since 1997, the club’s logo has changed – notably in the 150th anniversary season to emphasise the P and A initials of Port Adelaide, perfectly interlocked to underline “We are PORT ADELAIDE”.
The club’s home ground has changed from Alberton to Football Park to Adelaide Oval (again) during the AFL era.
The club’s jumper has changed a few times too, just as it did in the foundation years in South Australian football – and this week, on Friday, Port Adelaide reaches the 15th anniversary of its first outing as the “back in black” guernsey. Designed by then schoolgirl Lucy Burford for a club competition – and salvaged from the scrapheap by board director Alex Panas while the club was a political battleground with outsiders wanting to push a teal-dominant jumper – the V-line guernsey was first worn on July 19, 2009 at Football Park against West Coast.
“I love the guernsey we have,” says Tim Ginever, the man who added pride and premierships to the story of the “traditional” black-and-white jumper that became Port Adelaide’s image from 1902.
“That Lucy Burford jumper is fantastic. As (former team-mate and current football commentator) Dwayne Russell says, instead of going to a marketing agency for a new jumper we took our new look from a girl with a pony tail. How great is that? Love you Lucy Burford.”
But the club name has not changed since 1870.
In an AFL era when Footscray became the Western Bulldogs in late 1996 and North Melbourne from 1999 became the Kangaroos and back to North Melbourne in 2007, Port Adelaide has remained Port Adelaide. And often with outsiders claiming there was need to abandon more than a century of strong identification as “Port Adelaide” to gamble on finding broader appeal with a new name.
In Western Australia, sage men such as Hall of Fame broadcaster Dennis Cometti lament the AFL does not have a team that carries “Perth” in its name. There is the Perth-based West Coast and the cross-river rival at Fremantle.
“And why would it (change from Port Adelaide)?” asks Ginever. “I have always seen this club as Port Adelaide. Nothing else. Port Adelaide.”
Nicknames come and go. From 1870, Port Adelaide has been known by many pseudonyms – some far from complimentary. Even acknowledging the team as “wharfies” as said by rivals with a backhander tone was more about a sledge than recognising the men who came off hard shifts on the docks at the Port to flex their muscles as footballers.
There has been in print, since the start in 1870, “Ports”, “the Ports”, “seasiders”, “magentas” in recognition of the club’s first premiership colours, “black-and-whites” after the change to the bars in 1902 (despite the members fervently wanting to retain magenta) … and the long-standing nickname of  “magpies”.
There are many “magpies” in Australian football, but there is only one Port Adelaide Football Club. Since 1870.
“It is the name of our club,” reinforces Cunningham. “We went to the AFL to ensure there was a Port Adelaide Football Club forever.
“The nickname ‘Port Power’ did take on a life of its own; and something that you look back on with regret – but it was one of those things that happened while we were busy making sure we set up the football club and football team to be successful from the start.
“The nickname is something that should never overshadow your name, your real name. It is best to be known as Port Adelaide – and Port Adelaide Power is better than Port Power.”
Change is a constant in Australian football and in particular in the AFL competition that will expand to 19 teams in 2028 with the advent of a Tasmanian entry.
There also is the agenda item of establishing a national second-tier competition that would take Port Adelaide – finally – away from the State league competition where it was a founding club of the SANFL in 1877. That was the plan, after all, from national promotion in 1997.
All that was so sharp on March 29, 1997 when Sandy Roberts introduced Port Adelaide on the national stage against Collingwood would be finally resolved.
One Club. One league – the AFL (and its women’s series in the AFLW). One jumper. And certainly one name: Port Adelaide.
The emotional question is what becomes of the jumper that is admired well beyond Port Adelaide, the black-and-white bars that have been presented in many forms since 1902 and were even mothballed during the 1940s?
“We must honour that (black-and-white) jumper,” says Ginever.
“But we should not need to wear it every week when we have a great jumper today.
“Wear it in the Showdowns,” adds Ginever. And Port Adelaide will in the next derby on Saturday, August 17 for the night Showdown at Adelaide Oval.
“Wear it at home whenever there is no clash with the opposition team.
“And wear it only in the AFL leaving it to be honoured by the most senior team that represents the club, the Port Adelaide Football Club.”
Port Adelaide will constantly adapt as it has proved since 1870, most notably in 1990 when it took on a national agenda. But the one feature of the club’s image that is not to alter is its name: Port Adelaide. Since 1870.
Unlike Shakespeare’s rose when the English bard asked “What’s in a name?” – “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet – there is no gain in being anyone other than “Port Adelaide”.
