SANFL finals open with a grand match-up from an old era as Sturt and Port Adelaide Magpies revive memories of their duels at Adelaide Oval
THERE is no AFL this weekend, but the national competition’s shadow on the SANFL finals will still create much debate.
PORT Adelaide-Sturt finals in the SANFL define state league football in Adelaide since the 1960s when Jack Oatey and Fos Williams put their differing theories to the test along with their longstanding rivalry.
The 1998 Magpies-Double Blues SANFL grand final drew 44,838 to Football Park to underline the spirit and passion this match-up invokes, on and off the field. No SANFL grand final since then has drawn a bigger crowd — not even the “traditional rivalry” between Port Adelaide and Norwood, either at Football Park (39,135 in 1999) or Adelaide Oval (38,644 in 2014).
The strength of a Port Adelaide-Sturt match-up in September was much admired in 1998 because the grand final stood up as a spectator event against the Crows celebrating their second consecutive AFL premiership — and SANFL football seeming to be more diluted by the advent of the Power as SA’s new AFL team.
Almost 20 years have passed since that superb SANFL grand final. There has not been a Magpies-Sturt final this century, the last being a semi-final (won by the Double Blues) in 2000.
Their SANFL qualifying final at Adelaide Oval on Saturday marks the first Port Adelaide-Sturt final at the cricket ground since the 1968 grand final. And how much has changed since then and since 1998?
Sturt is Sturt. True blue SANFL. Saved from collapse by a dedicated volunteers on a board who recognised a club is made up by the heartbeat of its current supporters rather than polishing those premiership trophies won under Oatey in the 1960s and 70s.
Port Adelaide is ... an AFL reserves team. And the debate of how the Magpies will field one player — always ruckman Matthew Lobbe — who is paid as much, if not more, than the entire Sturt salary cap has no end.
The Double Blues are defending a premiership won to maintain the record of no AFL reserves team at the Crows and Power winning the SANFL flag since the State league was reconfigured in 2014.
The Magpies are charged with winning to uphold the club’s traditions — and to give Power coach Ken Hinkley more options to consider for his AFL elimination final against West Coast at Adelaide Oval next Saturday.
And this is the first SANFL final that puts a limit on how many AFL players can be fielded — 16 for the Power.
For all that will be said again and again of the SA-based AFL clubs having their presence in the SANFL, Sturt is one of the State league clubs that has emphasised the positives more so than the noted negatives in this hybrid competition. Certainly Sturt coach Martin Mattner has had worked to his plans this week rather than wait — as was the case before 2014 — on Hinkley or Crows coach Don Pyke to decide which AFL players can fall back to their SANFL clubs.
It will be tough for Sturt working against so many AFL players on six-figure pay scales. But not impossible.
And how many go to watch this grand match-up will make for more than a footnote this weekend.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au