AFL Port Adelaide v Hawthorn semi final: A look back at 2001 Footy Park epic

Ahead of tonight’s game, take a look back at an unbelievable semi-final between the Power and Hawks in 2001 that took place just days after the 9/11 attacks.

A postal plane, the magic hands of a club president and conquering the “dead pocket” at Footy Park.

Port Adelaide and Hawthorn clash in a cutthroat semi-final on Friday night, pitting a young and exciting Hawks team against a Power side seeking to avoid a straight-sets exit on home turf.

But while this is the theme of the 2024 edition between the two, 23-years-ago the Power and Hawks met at Footy Park among a similar backdrop.

The 2001 clash, a Hawks victory by three points, ended up being a thriller, but what happened before the first bounce combined with what happened on the ground ended up making the clash one of the more unique finals that was played at Footy Park.

The Hawks and Power did battle in a 2001 semi final in Adelaide.

Played just four days after 9/11 it was already going to be a journey from Melbourne to Adelaide for the Hawks.

Ansett Airlines, the league’s sponsor, had recently collapsed so how would the Hawks get to South Australia for the clash?

“The big thing for us was finding a way there,” Hawks 153-gamer Daniel Harford said.

“There was a lot of talk about what it was going to look like, were we going to have to catch a bus or find another plane?

“And it was after September 11 so we were a bit jumpy about the world.”

The solution for the Hawks was a bit of a left-field one, an Australia Post plane was fitted out and the team flew from Essendon Airport to Adelaide on the Friday night.

“We weren’t jumping in mail bags on the side of the cabin, we had seats,” Harford said.

“It was a plane and it just had to be adjusted for as many passengers as we had coming across.”

Hawks forward John Barker, who would prove to have a huge impact on the game, told the club’s Golden Years’ podcast in 2020 it was like nothing he had seen.

“I remember sitting there in a long row, one side of the plane players and staff, the other side players and staff, and it honestly reminded me of the movies when you see those guys piling out of the army planes,” he said.

Both teams had plenty to be optimistic about coming in.

Port Adelaide gave themselves a big chance heading into the game.

The Power had a poor 2000 but bounced back in 2001.

“In 2000 we came 14th so it was a pretty ordinary year and we bounced back in 2001 and finished third and lost the first final to Brisbane,” Power premiership player Roger James said.

For the Hawks, they had accounted for Sydney the previous week by 55-points.

But it was the Power who started the game stronger and Jarrad Schofield kicked the first goal of the game.

“I remember bloody (David) Goldspink didn’t pay a freekick and they got the first goal through Schofield, we should have had a freekick so that was the sign of the night early on,” Harford said.

Daniel Chick kicked the Hawks first goal of the game, before Stuart Dew and Chad Cornes’ majors gave the Power a 12-point lead at quarter time.

Despite the fast start by the Power, it was the Hawks who wrestled back momentum and with a three goal to one term of their own took a one-point lead into half-time.

“But we kept coming and we had a team that at that stage hadn’t really realised its potential,” Harford said.

“But we played for each other and we had struggled for the previous couple of year and there had been a bit of a build up to this and we felt like we were a team that could come together and do something.

“So I remember they got off to a good start and the crowd got involved a bit but we kept coming, Mark Graham had a good night, Johnny Hay had a good night on Tredders (Warren Tredrea).

“Bloody (Che) Cockatoo-Collins was causing us grief, Nick Stevens was causing us grief and we just had to find ways to keep getting hands on the ball.

Nick Stevens battkes with Daniel Chick.

“We just kept fighting, that was one of the things I loved about that team we just kept fighting.”

Down in the Hawthorn change rooms at half-time, everybody at the club was doing their bit.

“One of the great visuals I remember was that Johnny Barker was either crook or got whacked and was concussed and he was having some vision problems and he was lying on the bench at half-time and lying down a bit crook with the world and the president Ian Dicker was in the change rooms,” Harford said.

“And I just remember looking over and seeing Ian Dicker massaging his (Barker’s) temples and thinking “what the hell was going on here the president is massaging the temples of our centre-half forward” this is an unusual sight of a semi-final.

“But we got Johnny Barker back out there and he was one of the ones who helped us turn it around.

“We had to thank the magic hands of Ian Dicker.”

Three goals in under four minutes in the low scoring game looked to have the game well and truly on the Power’s terms, with Port taking a 17-point lead into the final break.

It was in the fourth when Barker stamped his mark on the game.

Despite having blurred vision, nauseous and nursing a migraine, which in today’s game would have had him subbed out well and truly before, Barker kicked two huge fourth quarter goals.

The first was from the notorious “dead pocket” on the right of the broadcast side at Footy Park.

John Barker stood up on the night. Picture: Neon Martin.

In between Harford himself kicked a goal as the Hawks got themselves in front in the game’s dying stages.

“Johnny Barker was a left to right specialist,” Harford said.

“He kicked one from that dead pocket, the right forward pocket there and he kicked another from the left half forward to hit the lead.

“I kicked one between that, but Johnny was a left to right specialist. He was the best at those right forward pocket kicks, I don’t know how he did it but he was very good at it and every time you had Johnny Barker in those right forward pockets you felt like you had a chance.

“He is like Tom Hawkins, it is just that left to right fade.

“And that got us back into the game because we were under the pump at three-quarter-time.”

But the Power very well could have killed the game before Barker’s matchwinner.

Just three-points down Fabian Francis - the dad of now Power star Jason Horne-Francis - steamed unimpeded inside Port’s forward 50 and for some reason tried to steer it low from 40m and the ball thudded into the base of the goalpost, giving the Hawks’ one more chance.

That would be Francis’ last game for Port and at AFL level as he was delisted at the end of the season following a pay dispute.

It ended up being a heartbreaking night for Port Adelaide.

“That miss by Fabian was the biggest part I remember,” James said.

“If he kicked that we would have hit the front again and who knows?

“It was his last game... I think there’s a bit of a story to it.

“Leading by 17 points at three-quarter-time you think we should have been able to go on with it, but to Hawthorn’s credit maybe we dropped our heads at the time I don’t know but they got a bit of a roll on and got up at the end.”

The three-point win was the first time the Hawks had made it past the second week of the finals and Harford said the celebrations that night were large.

Chick with Angelo Lekkas and Shaun Rehn celebrating the win.

Ben Dixon hugs Nick Holland and Nathan Thompson.

“In the end it was such an epic night, it was such a physical game and I remembered being absolutely knackered at the end of the game and it was such a draining week,” he said.

“And then we had just about every Hawthorn fan on the planet back at the InterContinental Hotel where we were staying back on the main strip.

“We had a great night, a really good celebration that night. People were coming out of the trees to celebrate that one.”

The Hawks went down to Essendon in the preliminary final in another thriller the following week as the optimism started to return to Hawthorn.

“It had been a real lean patch for the footy club, we had the merger and we got through that and in 97 and 98 we started to build,” Harford said.

“In 2000 we played finals and we just wanted to have a crack at it, even though we finished out of the four we finished the season well and we took that momentum into the finals series.

“At the time we thought it was going to be the group to achieve something for the footy club, obviously we weren’t but had we won that prelim against Essendon who knows?”