How Magpies captain Steve Summerton is the living reminder of the SANFL grandest traditions
SANFL football resumes this Easter weekend - and Port Adelaide Magpies captain Steven Summerton remains the league’s grandest poster boy.
Michelangelo Rucci
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WHARFIES still play for the Port Adelaide Football Club.
Some images - such as that of Magpies captain Steve Summerton working on the Port Docks - do live on at a time when many question where the SANFL is going.
The SANFL this Easter weekend starts its 141st year as the longest-running Australian football competition ... and Summerton begins his 13th league season as an enduring reminder of what Port Adelaide can mean to a boy on the LeFevre Peninsula.
For many, at least the old Port Adelaide guard such as his parents, Summerton is the SANFL’s pin-up boy. He is the reassurance that loyalty and passion to the neighbourhood SANFL club is not lost as would-be footballers are assigned by drafts, trades and free agency in top-notch AFL football.
Summerton, a ship-loading and clearing wharfie for the past six months after moving from a sales job, returns to Alberton Oval today (Saturday) still chasing that premiership feeling he has not known since he was an eight-year-old playing junior football at North Haven.
His Magpies fell one point short in last year’s SANFL grand final against Sturt at Adelaide Oval ... and at 30, Summerton’s dream to be a league premiership player - an honour many would say fits his reputation as a player - is working against a fast-approaching alarm clock. If only the Maggies had not botched that last quarter ...
“It’s hard to say what I would have done,” says Summerton of whether he would have followed Hawthorn great Shane Crawford in marking a winning grand final as his last game.
“I don’t know if I would have gone around again. It would have been a bloody nice way to hang up the boots had we won ... but we didn’t and it’s a tough question to answer.
“I’m am still chasing the dream ...
“I did have other clubs calling me, but I am not passionate about any other club. I don’t want to play for a club I am not passionate about - it is as simple as that. I want to stay here, where I love the club and love the people. That decision was easy to make.”
🎥 We followed Steve Summerton on his big milestone dayhttps://t.co/f5kjF6tm1c#weareportadelaide #sanfl
— Port Adelaide FC (@PAFC) May 10, 2017
The chase for an SANFL league premiership - that seems a birthright to Port Adelaide players - is not all-consuming for Summerton.
“It’s No. 1 but it’s not all that’s on my list,” says Summerton. “I am enjoying working with the younger boys - they have made my pre-season really enjoyable; they are an enthusiastic bunch. It makes it a lot easier for me.”
There are two notes always brought up with Summerton - his absence, as captain, from Magpie line-up last year when Port Adelaide (to meet SANFL rules) had to field all its AFL-listed players not selected for the national league.
And there is Summerton’s social media statement from 2012 when the Magpies and Power were put together in the “One Club” unity plan - a Facebook post that seems to be on an endless loop on Twitter.
“It was definitely tough,” Summerton says of the weekends he was kept out of the SANFL league line-up last season. “Probably the toughest situation I’ve been through in my footy career. I’m here to captain the Magpies in the SANFL. I was aware of the rules when it all began in 2014 ... but I never thought it would happen.
“I never thought the Power would have so few injuries as they did last season. I don’t think anyone thought it would come to that. But I knew the rules - and that was the risk I took signing my contract at the start of the year.
“I bit my tongue and did what was best for the team.”
Summerton was not so silent when the “One Club” concept at Alberton left the impression of the Power taking over the Magpies.
“At that stage (2011-12),” Summerton said, “the players seemed to be the last ones to hear what was happening. I didn’t think that was fair - and I don’t regret what was said at all.
“I was really passionate about my love for the Magpies. I wanted to make sure they remained in the SANFL - and as a strong force.
“I felt strongly about the group we had here as Magpies. Premierships are not built overnight - and we had a good group with Kory Beard, Zane Kirkwood (both of whom moved to Sturt) - guys who would have loved to have stayed had it not been for the merger.
“We were building towards something special ... and then overnight, everything we had worked for was snatched away. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, but I was the voice for a lot of people - and don’t regret what I said at all.”
Summerton likes the thought that this might be his “lucky 13th season”. It “has a nice ring to it,” he says. And his image as the “true” Magpies player sits well too. As Port Adelaide chief executive Keith Thomas noted last year as Summerton reached his 200th game milestone, he could be the last player to wear the Magpies jumper 200 times in the SANFL.
“A few people would look at it that way,” Summerton said. “I’m happy for people to view me (as the last true Magpie).
“If people look at me - and cling to that old Magpie feel - then I’m happy to play that role.”
And the image is complete as a wharfie.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
I don’t even know why I was arguing the point to be honest.
Melbourne midfielder JORDAN LEWIS on the dig he had at an AFL umpire leading to a 50-metre penalty.
REALITY BITES
BIG PICTURE
WHY will the AFL inevitably progress the plan to introduce a costly national reserves competition? And would the Crows and Port Adelaide leave the SANFL, universally regarded as the best state league, to be part of this 18-team reserves series?
As sound as second-tier football is in Adelaide and to a lesser extent in Perth and Melbourne, there is the concern for how the expansion clubs north of the Murray - Sydney, GWS, Gold Coast and Brisbane - are limited in their development programs with the NEAFL.
Note the words of new Gold Coast coach STUART DEW: “(A national reserves competition with reserves games as curtain-raisers to the AFL matches) would actually bring the club closer if you travelled together.
“The younger players that are playing then watch the senior players afterwards.
“At the moment they are connected all week and then they split.
“In terms of having the club all together, that would be a positive.
“You’d have to grow the (AFL player) list at each club; there’s things around that, but in the small scale it would be fantastic.’’
Why would the Crows and Power abandon the SANFL? Because the two SA-based clubs would want the chance to work with bigger squads and to the same framework offered to its 16 AFL rivals.
The SANFL might be breathing easier with assurances from AFL House that the national reserves competition is not unfolding in 2019. But the SANFL also needs to take this opportunity to reflect on the recruiting rules it has handed the Crows and Power to find a system that does make it more attractive to stay at home rather than sign up for an inevitable national reserves competition.
BUILD IT ...
AND they don’t always come. Perth’s new $1.8 billion stadium opened for AFL action on Sunday with West Coast hosting Sydney, but “just” 53,553 fans filling the 60,000 seats - and rewriting the record books for attendance figures to an AFL game in WA.
Why not a full house for such an eagerly anticipated - and much-wanted - new venue?
West Coast has sold 50,000 season tickets and has a waiting list of fans wanting to have a regular seat at the new Perth arena. Eagles boss TREVOR NISBETT wants his club’s allocation of season tickets to increase to avoid seats being left empty at West Coast games.
“We’ll be talking to the State (government) about that, because at the moment the mix is not right and we probably need to improve that,” Nisbett says.
Fremantle, which has not sold its allocation of 50,000 season tickets, gets its first look at the new venue this weekend while hosting drawcard Victorian club Essendon. If there is not 50,000 at the Saturday night fixture there could be some reflection on just what is the appropriate capacity for a new venue today ... and a rethink from those who keep pushing for a northern stand at Adelaide Oval to increase that venue’s seating count to 60,000.
More is not always better.
THEY SAID IT
ADELAIDE coach DON PYKE on the injury keeping his bullish midfielder BRAD CROUCH on the sidelines: “Unfortunately for Brad Crouch, it’s a delayed start to the season. It’s not osteitis pubis; it’s groin soreness which has flared up. So we’ll get him fit for the later part of the year.”
CROUCH on his injury: “I’m still pretty sore in my groin. I’m just resting and I hope it comes good. It’s osteitis pubis and it’s bloody frustrating.”
AND the Crows website: “Brad Crouch (groin soreness) – 5-7 weeks.”
HE SAID IT
“EVERYONE around Australia will have their own ideas on that. I don’t expect anyone to agree with me.
“Let me just tell you what I think about it. I think it was a disgraceful performance from a captain that got his sums wrong today, and I think it should never be permitted to happen again.”
“We keep reading and hearing that the players are under a lot of pressure, and that they’re tired and jaded and perhaps their judgment and their skill is blunted. Perhaps they might advance that as an excuse for what happened out there today.
“Not with me they don’t.”
RICHIE BENAUD ... after the underarm incident in 1981 with remarks that echo with Australian cricket’s latest moment of shame.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
DID Labor’s fall in the recent state election bring to an end the move by a renewable energy company to become a major sponsor at the Port Adelaide Football Club?
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au
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