How John Cahill built a Port Adelaide empire at Football Park
JOHN Cahill never played on Football Park, but he guided Port Adelaide to 11 grand finals and 10 premierships at West Lakes.
JOHN Cahill never played on Football Park. He tore off his boots for the last time at Adelaide Oval in 1973 as the SANFL ended 112 years of sharing the city venue with cricket barons - and Cahill closed his 264-game career as one of Port Adelaide's greatest players.
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But for all Cahill achieved as a player - with four SANFL premierships on Adelaide Oval - that record of significant success falls in the shadow of his story as a coach at Football Park.
He not only guided the Magpies to 11 grand finals and 10 premierships, but he delivered the Port Adelaide Football Club to the AFL ... and to claim the first Showdown Trophy in the derby against the Crows in 1997.
No coach achieved more at Football Park. This was the house Jack built while creating an empire for Port Adelaide.
On the 40th anniversary of Cahill playing his last league game, Port Adelaide will leave West Lakes wearing the black-and-white jumper that put fear into its rivals in the SANFL and created a tradition that carried the club to the AFL. The storyline is to return to Adelaide Oval from March 29.
At a time when Port Adelaide is known to hate AAMI Stadium - simply because it became the home of the Crows in the 1990s - Cahill has memories that will never fade.
They define him, his football club and the stadium.
"It has been a really good place to me," says Cahill.
"And a very lucky place for me. I was fortunate to have players across two eras (1974-82 and 1988-1998) who listened, who worked hard, who believed in themselves ... and were mentally tough."
Cahill's right-hand man who prepped those young tryos to become conquerors on Football Park - regardless of how they were often said to be too old and too slow - made history on West Lakes himself.
Brian Fairclough coached the first premiership team on Football Park - Port's under-19 team that beat Central District by one behind in the 1974 grand final.
As an under-19, reserves and senior assistant coach and chairman of selectors at Alberton, Fairclough was part of 16 grand finals at Football Park. He won 15 flags.
"We loved that ground," says Fairclough, expressing sentiments lost on a new generation of Power supporters.
"With all that success on Football Park, we took it all for granted. It was Port Adelaide's ground. We owned it."
Fairclough, a former state amateur player, joined Port Adelaide as its under-19s coach in 1972 after twice leading St Dominic's from A2 to A1 in the amateur league. He played in Rosewater's only A1 premiership side in 1957 in the era when talented young players could not break into Fos Williams' great Magpie teams and club boss Bob McLean refused to release them to SANFL rivals.
Along with Cahill, Fairclough was the constant in Port Adelaide's phenomenal success at Football Park.
He won four consecutive under-19 flags, 1974-77 setting up the platform for success at Alberton.
"Bob McLean demanded we win everything ... because it built a winning culture throughout the club," said Fairclough.
Cahill carried the Port Adelaide Football Club through its greatest crises in the Football Park era. He ended the 12-year premiership drought in 1977.
Before he went to Collingwood in 1983, he won four flags in five years.
He returned in 1988 to take a club from near bankruptcy to push for a VFL licence in 1990.
He then rebuilt the club from the despair of being usurped on the national stage by the Crows to compel the AFL Commission to take Port Adelaide as SA's second entry to an expanding AFL. And he led the Power to victory in the first Showdown.
"There's quite a few moments of enormous pressure at Football Park that told you the mindset of the Port Adelaide Football Club," says Cahill.
"So often it was us against everyone else, particularly in 1990. But we succeeded."
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