From Football Park to Adelaide Oval, the Showdown has become a derby with very South Australian habits

It is Showdown week. For the 46th time during an AFL premiership season, the state of South Australia will be divided along a clear derby line — tradition runs deep and sweet.

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Did we really promote the Showdown - that grand Australian football duel between Port Adelaide and the Crows - with iced donuts from Balfours?

Did anyone ever work out what flavour that teal-blue icing on the Power donuts was? Or which of the team-themed desserts was more popular ... by flavour and not because of the club the donut represented?

Showdown 46 at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night - with Port Adelaide hosting the 46th derby played in the AFL premiership race - marks the start of the 23rd season of the AFL derbies that “divide the state”.

The donuts are gone as the price of attaching a brand to any AFL game became too rich for local baker, Balfours (that remains a strong supporter of SANFL and local football). Although the memories linger ... Brownlow Medallist Patrick Dangerfield still shakes his head at the memory of he and his former Crows team-mates being sent to Rundle Mall and major shopping centres to compete against their Power rivals in donut-making competitions.

Adelaide Crows chief executive Steven Trigg, with Balfours' SA general manager Darryl Pritchard and Port Adelaide's chief executive John James holding trays of donuts at the launch of the Balfours Showdown at AAMI Stadium.

The venue has changed from Football Park at West Lakes to the redeveloped, 50,000-seat Oval. (For the record, two of the top-five attended AFL games at Adelaide Oval are from Port Adelaide-hosted derbies - 53,698 in 2017 and 53,518 in the Phil Walsh tribute derby in 2015).

Also gone are the original and second trophies for the derby winner (both created by the local brewery to promote its West End brand; SA Brewing also hired the man who came up with the “Showdown” theme). Finally, after far too long a wait, the Showdown Trophy last year became a shield with the image of the rain-soaked Bond Brothers, Troy and Shane, walking off Football Park arm-in-arm at the end of Showdown II in 1997.

Not even Pro Hart is here today to captured with his hand the image of the new Showdowns at the Oval as he did with the first derby at Football Park in April 1997.

Mark Williams, who led the Power in 23 derbies with a 13-10 win-loss count, has moved to coaching in the VFL (at Werribee), denying Port Adelaide a provocative coach who will seek an edge by rattling the opposition with a pre-derby bard or two.

Crows co-captain Taylor Walker and Port Adelaide co-captain Ollie Wines hold the Variety Showdown Shield for the 46th contest. Picture SARAH REED

Malcolm Blight is in the radio commentary box still calling match-changing moves, but no longer with a lever in the Adelaide coaching box. The 23-22 count favouring the Crows on the derby ledger does continue to give credence to Blight’s long-standing claim that the Showdown is the AFL’s best rivalry.

So much has changed - not just in Showdowns, but also in football that has had almost 50 rules rewritten in the 23 seasons of derbies - that it is worth asking: How much of the Showdown ritual started in 1997 remains today?

And which traditions are to emerge in the next decade?

Clearly Port Adelaide, as it prepares for its 150th anniversary next season, wants to create a link to the past by seeking to wear its “traditional black-and-white prison bar” guernsey in the Showdowns.

That jumper does perfectly capture an enduring Showdown image - “them against us” as Port Adelaide patriarch Fos Williams wanted when he took charge at Alberton in the 1950s and made his premiership-winning club the most-envied in SANFL football. If the Showdown is the match that is to divide the state along a clear line of loyalty, the Power might as well wear the jumper that represents that division in SA football history.

Port Adelaide’s Travis Boak applauds the crowd as he leads the team off after the 2014 elimination final against Richmond at Adelaide Oval. Photo Sarah Reed.

Someone will inevitably say, do the Crows get a Showdown-specific jumper ... such as the State team guernsey that Nigel Smart tried to claim in 2014 for the Adelaide Football Club’s first steps on Adelaide Oval.

That traditional red jumper is best left with the State teams - SANFL and amateur - isn’t it?

The other big question with the Showdown is with the AFL fixture?

Should the Adelaide and Port Adelaide football clubs make a joint submission to the AFL to find a fixed date - a public holiday - for the Showdown? The national interest in the SA derby is strong enough to challenge the AFL leaving the Queen’s Birthday holiday Monday solely to Collingwood and Melbourne.

And there is still that unfulfilled promise from then-AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou to deliver the Showdown a Friday Night Football timeslot as a reward for taking elite football to the Oval.

Still donuts on that count ....

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