Michelangelo Rucci: Port Adelaide playing in the AFL national competition should mean more than living in a traditional SANFL jumper

PORT Adelaide should care about where it plays rather than the jumper it wears, writes Michelangelo Rucci.

HERITAGE. Port Adelaide last wore the “prison bars” in the AFL during the 2014 elimination final against Richmond at Adelaide Oval. Many Power fans wish the jumper would be worn at all AFL games at the Oval. Picture: Sarah Reed.

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BYE, bye Magpies. It has been coming, either by SANFL plots in the 1990s, financial crises in the early 2000s — and now the fast-advancing AFL national reserves competition.

But one note stays true at Port Adelaide. There is Greg Boulton’s declaration at Alberton — while holding up the AFL licence he had signed as club president in 1994: “There will be a Port Adelaide Football Club forever.”

It has moved to the highest level of Australian football ... and on the world stage in China.

It will be Port Adelaide — as the Power — with one black-white-and-teal jumper, playing in the AFL, the AFL national reserves and, ultimately, in the AFLW women’s competition.

This is the price of playing in the big league rather than suburbia. And it is the cost of being part of an AFL that fears Collingwood and Eddie McGuire and — unlike other competitions — continues to forbid two clubs from wearing black-and-white stripes.

The Port Adelaide Football Club started in 1870 in blue and white. It existed for 30 years in various jumpers and combination of colours before taking on black-and-white in 1901. And the “Magpies” have not always worn that famous “prison-bar” guernsey, occasionally reverting to the Collingwood-style stripes.

But more recently the “Magpies” name and the jumper, in particular the guernsey, have become emotional symbols at Alberton. There are diehard Port Adelaide fans who still wish club president David Koch would fight to have the prison bars worn on Adelaide Oval for AFL home games or at least Showdowns with the Crows.

On the eve of the club’s 150th anniversary in 2020, the new AFL football department led by Steve Hocking — much to the surprise of the 18 clubs — could launch a national reserves competition for 2019. This is at least 15 years before Port Adelaide — and the Crows, who have bought and paid for a long-term SANFL licence — imagined the AFL getting its act (and budgets) together.

Ultimately, Port Adelaide cannot work in both the AFL and SANFL. Managing three senior teams (AFL, AFL reserves and SANFL league) is beyond the club’s reach.

So it is bye, bye SANFL — and bye, bye Magpies.

At best, the Magpies prison bars can be taken out of the museum for anniversary matches at Adelaide Oval (but not against Collingwood). It might be able to live on with academy and junior teams, if they can work in the SANFL game development system.

But as a senior jumper, it is mothballs. And that is the price of the club’s ambition to play at the top flight.

Port Adelaide wanted to be in the AFL. The name on AFL scoreboards — and on national premiership trophies — should mean more than what jumper Port Adelaide wears at the MCG on grand final day.

Did Richmond fans ultimately care that their premiership drought ended last September without the Tigers in their traditional black jumper?

The SANFL without a Port Adelaide team for the first time since the State league was founded in 1877 will be fascinating. So will the merit of the SANFL competition when it is on the third tier, behind the AFL and the AFL reserves.

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