Reality Bites: Prison bar guernsey issue is never all black and white
Port Adelaide’s black-and-white bars jumper creates more headlines than many other football guernseys — and is loaded with just as myth today as during its first use in 1902. Plus more of what’s cooking in world sport in Reality Bites.
Michelangelo Rucci
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Port Adelaide’s grand plan to wear its famous black-and-white bars twice in each AFL season — as its Showdown uniform — from 2021 is still on the table.
Port Adelaide certainly will return to black and white twice — once in a Showdown with the Crows — next year when the club celebrates its 150th anniversary.
But club chief executive Keith Thomas is dismissing all reports that Port Adelaide has signed away its rights to the 1902-designed guernsey for its 150th celebrations.
“Let me categorically say, there is no agreement signed that prevents us from wearing the prison bars post-2020,” Thomas told SEN1629. “Never; that agreement does not exist. Whoever presented that as a possibility, that’s a furphy.”
Thomas did not stop here.
In question for some time is the suggestion Port Adelaide came to an agreement with Collingwood — and the AFL — to put away the black-and-white jumper than annoys Collingwood president Eddie McGuire.
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Thomas confirmed the 2007 Port Adelaide administration — to secure placing the club’s 1870 start date on the back of the AFL jumper — conceded to Collingwood.
“There is a pre-existing agreement that we operate by which was signed back in 2007; that’s the policy that we’ve been operating on since then. No agreement exists that suggests we can’t wear (black-and-white bars) beyond 2020,” Thomas said.
“The agreement was that we would not seek to wear the prison bars on an ongoing basis in the AFL. There was a provision around having to consult with AFL if we wanted to use the prison bars on special occasions such as heritage rounds.”
Heritage rounds have gone. But the Showdown is played every year — and twice a season. Port Adelaide now needs to convert that 2007 agreement to allow for the black-and-white bars to be worn every season as the Power’s Showdown guernsey.
Thomas shot down a fair few themes in his media rounds last week, particularly where he made it very clear he is not clearing his desk at Alberton. This contradicts all the speculation — of a departure, perhaps for an AFL job — that swirled around Thomas during the Power’s season-closing clash with Fremantle last month.
Thomas will start his 10th season at Port Adelaide next year.
ALMOST LOST
Port Adelaide’s current black jumper — with the white-and-teal V neck line — almost never made it to the AFL.
Reality Bites can reveal that the guernsey, designed by then schoolgirl Lucy Burford in 2010, had to be fished out of a bin at Alberton.
During the club’s dark chapter in 2008-2011, there was the notion that if the Power was to grow in the AFL beyond Port Adelaide’s traditional roots it needed to move away from its Magpie heritage established in the SANFL. Of course, this marketing philosophy only weakened Port Adelaide by having thousands of traditional fans walk away from their club not knowing what it stood for anymore.
So Burford’s black jumper was too close to the Magpies roots. The kid-designed guernsey — for a new generation of fans — needed to work from the teal blue or silver colours to be attractive to non-Magpie fans.
One member of the Port Adelaide board, strongly aligned to the club’s traditional Magpies base, decided to look over the designs being sent in from hundreds of schoolchildren in the Planet Teal membership base … and, on noting the lack of black-and-white designs, fished into the bins holding the rejected competition forms.
And there was Lucy Burford’s much-admired black jumper that has advanced from a one-off Planet Teal guernsey to be the Port Adelaide AFL uniform today.
No one is quite sure how Port Adelaide came up with its 1902 black-and-white jumper. The untold story of Lucy Burford’s guernsey is now on the record.
CEO MATERIAL
David Noble left the Adelaide Football Club at the end of AFL Season 2016 to become Brisbane’s football chief — and highly touted as the Lions’ future chief executive.
There are many who wish Noble, who spent 12 years at West Lakes in roles ranging from assistant coach to recruiting to football chief, would return to the Adelaide Football Club as the Crows chief executive.
Noble certainly has ambitions to move from the football office to the big office at an AFL club, despite being repeatedly asked if he still holds hope of being an AFL senior coach.
Noble reaffirmed his move from the changerooms to the boardroom at an AFL club in speaking to SEN1629 saying: “That’s an aspiration … I have some more work to do (to advance to a chief executive job).
“I’m quite happy to not turn into a lunatic (as a senior AFL coach). I think my skill set is more suited to a broader role … I think I can offer more help and advice through this role (as football chief) and that is where I see myself staying.
“(But chief executive) would not be bad.”
Some Crows people would like to see that.
AFL ON NOTICE
AFL and AFL Players’ Association leaders seeking to protect Australian football from the heavy hit the sport is expecting to take from former AFL players seeking class action on concussion will feel a shiver in reading a Harvard University research paper on NFL players.
On surveying 3500 former NFL players, the research concluded former NFL players are:
SIX times more likely than members of the public to report serious cognitive problems such as confusion and memory loss.
AND the longer their professional football careers, the more likely the players were to experience cognitive impairments as well as signs of depression and anxiety.
The study — supported by the NFL players’ union — noted depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairments persisted in players even 20 years after the players retired.
SUBTITLES PLEASE
World football great Eric Cantona picked up another award — the UEFA President’s Award at the European Champions League draw in Monaco last week — and accepted with a speech that combined Shakespeare with the prediction man will find the way to live forever … and still kill others in war.
Make what you will of this: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport.
“Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the ageing of the cells, soon the science will fix the cells to the state and so we will become eternal.
“Only accidents, crimes, wars, will still kill us but unfortunately, crimes, wars, will multiply. I love football. Thank you.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
China is profitable this year.
Port Adelaide chief executive Keith Thomas who expects his AFL club to spend 20 years in China to strengthen a revenue stream that already contributes 10 per cent of the annual income on the Power’s books.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Make no mistake, if Tasmania is finally given an @AFL team, the biggest issue won’t be parochialism, it won’t be finances, it won’t be player retention...
— Brent Costelloe (@brentcostelloe) August 25, 2019
The biggest issue of all will be not having a stadium to fit all of its members! #hottestticketintown #sellouts
Brent Costelloe @brentcostelloe. Tasmania’s bid to be the AFL’s 19th team is becoming stronger … but there is that question of where will the team be based and with how many seats will the stadium offer?