THE POWER and the Crows both went into the first Showdown with 1-2 records.

Adelaide – the eventual premiers of 1997 – had been shown up away from home with consecutive 28-point losses to Richmond and Carlton in Victoria.

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Port – the new kids on the block – were flying high on the back of their first ever victory, knocking off Geelong by 39 points as they entered a stretch of five straight games at Football Park.

The build up was pulsating, a ferocious rivalry before the ball had even been bounced.

And the players and coaches could feel it.

CROWS COACH MALCOLM BLIGHT: I’ve never seen so much hype around a game, other than grand finals or finals.

PORT FORWARD PETER BURGOYNE: It was pretty much the only thing anyone was talking about.

PORT SPEARHEAD SCOTT CUMMINGS: Shops were filled with flags, cars all week had their scarfs out the window and people would approach you in the streets telling you how important it was that we beat them. The history of the club meant so much to people and that was instilled in the first batch of (Power) players. That Showdown was when I went ‘right, now I get it’.

BLIGHT: It hit me like a wave, a massive wave. It was seriously like a grand final week. I expected it but not as big as it was.

CROWS FULL-FORWARD TONY MODRA: I remember how tense I was that week, really worried about the game thinking ‘we can’t lose this’. Because I lived down Port Adelaide way I could tell the tension was really up and at them up there. I always thought that it was one of those games where if we got up, living down Port Adelaide way, my old house would probably be burnt down. We lost and it’s still standing.

PORT VICE-CAPTAIN BRAYDEN LYLE: Growing up in the Port and having played for the Port Adelaide Magpies, I remember how much it meant to everybody. You just knew everyone didn’t like each other and the clubs and their history, and you took that on a bit.

BURGOYNE: We felt Port Adelaide should’ve got the first licence to be in the AFL.

CROWS CHIEF EXECUTIVE BILL SANDERS: There were a number of rivalries in the AFL but this was the first one we had with another AFL club. There was prize money on the end of it, a trophy and bragging rights in the town. It had an intensity about it we hadn’t experienced before. And we were favourites.

POWER COACH JOHN CAHILL: No one thought we could win.

CROWS DEFENDER ROD JAMESON: They were clearly underdogs and I think everyone had the expectation that we were going to win.

BURGOYNE: We were 100 per cent the underdogs. Adelaide Crows had been in the comp a few years and we were the new team. But we thought we could beat them.

BLIGHT: There was an underlying tone within our group and in football that we had to put this newcomer down. I wasn’t quite like that – I thought it was one round. That’s why the noise around the town was a bit different for me. I thought ‘hell, this is pretty serious stuff here, there is a bit of a dislike between each other’.

Port Adelaide had its first AFL win a week earlier – a 39-point home triumph over Geelong. The Crows were looking to respond after a 28-point away defeat to Carlton. Cahill, a 10-time SANFL premiership coach, was back in the VFL/AFL in 1997 after mentoring Collingwood from 1983-84, while Blight had returned home to SA that season, having led Geelong to three grand finals.

POWER RUCKMAN MATTHEW PRIMUS: The belief was ‘we’ve just knocked off Geelong, there’s no reason why we can’t knock off Adelaide’.

CROWS CAPTAIN MARK BICKLEY: We were three games into the Blighty era, getting the players to play a new style and we had one win and lost our previous two games, so we weren’t flying by any stretch.

BURGOYNE: I remember John Cahill giving one of his famous talks to the players, getting everyone fired up.

CAHILL: I just talked about us and how we love a challenge.

CUMMINGS: The way Jack Cahill coaches, he gives everyone belief in themselves.

LYLE: I remember walking out of the team meeting and I could’ve walked through a brick wall. You drew on a lot of emotions because there were a lot of years prior to that and it was for the members and people like (Port presidents) Bruce Weber and Greg Boulton, who’d tried to get the Magpies in the AFL.

CROWS RUCKMAN TOM GILLIGAN: It was my first game I’d played at Football Park and the roar entering the arena was one of the loudest things I’d ever heard.

Adelaide was missing ruckmen Shaun Rehn, David Pittman and Aaron Keating to injury, along with key forward Matthew Robran, and star Darren Jarman to suspension. It left 18-year-old second-gamer Gilligan to ruck against the Power’s Matthew Primus and Brendon Lade.

SANDERS: Internally, we knew we were a bit light on.

BLIGHT: We had a ruckman who was a baby and we had a lot of blokes out.

CAHILL: We had belief in each other, belief in the game plan.

Port Adelaide defender Michael Wilson kicked the first goal of the match six minutes in. The Power led 1.6 to 1.1 at quarter-time.

BURGOYNE: Back in 1997, I used to work with Andrew McLeod. I kept asking him all week ‘who’s on me? Who’s on me?’ And he was like ‘I don’t know’. When the first bounce came over to me he came over to me. I said ‘you kept that one pretty quiet’.

JAMESON: If you look at the replay you can see bodies were flying to hip and shoulder, and shirt-front, and do the things that back then you were able to do and get away with. The feeling was certainly heightened throughout the game.

BURGOYNE: The ferocity of the game, it was just like playing in a final.

Power captain Gavin Wanganeen was carried off the ground during the first term after hurting his right ankle. He did not return.

CAHILL: He was one of the best players I coached, a brilliant player.

CUMMINGS: When your best player and your skipper gets carried off the ground, it takes the wind out of you. I was like ‘strewth, it’s going to be hard now’. I know it was only one player but it was Gavin Wanganeen.

LYLE: Gavin got crunched by Bicks and he did a bit of a death roll, like he was getting eaten by a crocodile. You knew Gavin was hurt but you didn’t know how long he was going to be off for.

CUMMINGS: Sometimes when your best player goes, others … think ‘righto, he’s not going to do it for us now, we have to step up’.

PRIMUS: That was what Jack built into you … ‘we’re up against it, it’s another opportunity to show what Port Adelaide is made of’.

Early in the second quarter, Jameson and Cummings get in a skirmish at the southern end.

LYLE: I remember looking down the field … and just hearing the crowd erupt and watching Scotty and Jamo going at it, and just getting a tingle, a bit of energy. It sparked things up tenfold.

SANDERS: You’d see a lot of that stuff at SANFL level but it was a bit rare in the AFL to see two guys go toe-to-toe at it, swinging and missing, and swinging and hitting. I don’t know what was said.

JAMESON: Scott Cummings had a big mouth and he’d been at Port Adelaide for a couple of months and thought he was black and white through and through. He had a crack at (Crows teammate) Jason McCartney and it spiralled. They had a history because Scotty had come from Essendon and Jason McCartney had come from Collingwood. Jase was standing Lade and Cummings was calling out to him from a distance, then he walked across to him and pushed him. Macca pushed him back and then Cummings grabbed him by the neck. That’s how it started – it wasn’t me and him having a go at each other.

CUMMINGS: I don’t remember that but I lipped off at anyone that would stand still long enough … so I don’t doubt his recollection.

JAMESON: I don’t know why he wanted to but Scott clearly instigated it. And I didn’t accept his position what he was trying to do and (laughing) responded accordingly.

BURGOYNE: I was looking at it thinking ‘this is ‘97 but this is like we’re playing in the ‘80s’. I’m not the biggest guy but they’re two big boys going at it. There’s no way I was going in there.

CUMMINGS: We worked together at the time at FIVEaa (radio station) and got along well together. I like Jamo and still do but once we crossed the line there’s no mates and you’re into it. Everyone knows I like to have a chat and get the last word. I think I got the last word in but Jamo got the last eight punches in.

JAMESON: I wish I had of landed a few more than I did.

BLIGHT: That was one of the highlights I showed to Rod in our review of the game. I’d never seen a bloke swing so many punches and not hit anything.

PRIMUS: (The fight) just added to the theatre and the noise. It goes down in folklore.

BICKLEY: We were probably overhyped a bit and tried to assert ourselves physically on the contest, and I’m not sure it worked.

JAMESON: How I responded was probably a sense of the occasion probably getting the better of me at the time but that’s how important the rivalry is. It was more than just a normal game. I’d only been reported once before and I think I responded very differently to how I’d normally hold myself. It wasn’t how I want to play the game or be remembered for playing the game, but if I had my time again, I probably would’ve done it again at the time.

CUMMINGS: If you’ve got a bloke like Jamo who is generally a pretty mild-mannered fella … to snap, it shows the pressure that was on the Crows and what the game meant and how much was riding on it.

JAMESON: After it happened it took me a while to settle down and think ‘that wasn’t ideal’.

CAHILL: I give Scotty Cummings credit, he concentrated back on the ball again. He was such a plus for us up at full-forward.

As the game went on, Primus and Lade began to assert their dominance over Gilligan.

GILLIGAN: I was the last man standing. I got plucked the week before out of the SANFL reserves to play against Carlton then stayed in for the Showdown. It wasn’t expected but it was enjoyable and very eye-opening. Unfortunately, I didn’t add a lot of value.

BICKLEY: Without being disparaging to Tom Gilligan, he was our number-one ruckman and it was his second game and he was 18 years old, and he was coming up against Matty Primus, who was an absolute brute. He gave them first look of the ball on most occasions and the longer the game went, it seemed they grew in confidence.

PRIMUS: He was just a young, tall skinny kid. It was an area for us to try to dominate against him.

JAMESON: Tom Gilligan really struggled. Matty Primus just outmuscled him in the second half.

GILLIGAN: The middle wasn’t as intimidating … because I could use my leap. Around the ground I got towelled up as a smaller-bodied bloke compared to Primus. He was an intimidating man.

The Crows kicked the first two majors of the second term through superstar full-forward Tony Modra, but the Power responded with goals to Cummings and Burgoyne. Port Adelaide took an 18-point lead into half-time, up 5.10 to 3.4.

JAMESON: Scotty gave me a fair serve leading off at half-time. You wouldn’t be able to publish it. He wasn’t going to give me any support in the tribunal and said a bit more.

BICKLEY: I think there was a bit of trepidation in terms of this would be shattering if we got rolled by Port in the first ever Showdown. As much as you don’t want to say that there was pressure there and we succumbed a bit and maybe didn’t handle it that well, that was definitely there, no doubt about that.

JAMESON: When you look back at Port’s side they had some quality players who went on to have some really good years. That was Josh Francou’s fourth game and he went on to win (three) Showdown Medals and Darren Mead at centre half-back was just impassable. Michael Wilson was a fitness machine and hard at the footy.

Port Adelaide extended its lead to 33 points at the last break. But by the fourth quarter, Power wingman Fabian Francis (knee) and debutant Tom Carr (ribs) had also succumbed to injuries.

LYLE: You knew there were some sore boys and things were starting to slip away. Everyone was getting tired and there wasn’t long to go but we just had to rally together and grind it out.

Modra spearheaded Adelaide’s last-quarter fightback. He finished with seven goals and a mark-of-the-year contender.

BURGOYNE: Back then, Tony Modra was probably one of the biggest things in the AFL. I just remember him sitting on people’s heads and kicking goals left, right and centre. I remember thinking ‘here he goes, Tony Modra’s going to win the game for them’.

JAMESON: He was just a freak. Sometimes we’d just put it up there and say ‘Mods will take care of this’. (Port Adelaide’s) Steve Paxman was a seriously good full-back at the time as well.

LYLE: I definitely felt for Packo. He was a pretty rock solid defender – he didn’t give away too much. But Mods just turned it on. He took a hanger and kicked all those goals.

PRIMUS: Some of his hangers, I made sure I didn’t get too close to him because I didn’t want to be on a highlight reel or a poster anywhere.

BURGOYNE: You’d sit back in awe. There was probably only a couple of players who could do things like that, guys like Modra and (Gary) Ablett.

Three consecutive Modra goals helped the Crows cut the margin to 12 points with three minutes remaining.

LYLE: You got quite nervous. We’d given everything and we didn’t have anyone on the bench to come on.

CUMMINGS: The last 15 minutes were probably the longest I’ve been involved in. I don’t think I ever looked at the clock more times.

MODRA: We were running short of time so every time the ball came down there we had to make the most of our chances.

BLIGHT: At three-quarter time I told Jason McCartney ‘listen Macca, you hang around centre half-forward and all you midfielders, instead of getting easy kicks to the side, just run to that spot and see what happens’. I don’t think Jason got a kick – he may have got a handball – but he played his role and so we stopped mucking around a bit with the footy.

CUMMINGS: The play was mostly down their end so I was riding every kick and bump with the boys. I turned into a supporter, rather than a player, barracking for the boys to hold on.

PRIMUS: I remember thinking ‘we’re going to win this, we just have to hang on a bit longer, keep the ball up our end or keep it out of bounds’.

Peter Vardy was not paid a likely mark 45m from goal then Bickley missed a shot that could have left Adelaide six points down with 30 seconds left. The final siren sounded after a throw-in on the outer side as the Power triumphed 11.17 to 11.6.

JAMESON: Ifs, buts, could haves, but in the end, Port Adelaide was too good on the day.

CAHILL: I knew we might get tired because we’d given so much for three quarters. But you can’t beat heart – they never, ever gave up.

BICKLEY: It was the worst possible scenario – a loss. There was a sense we’d let our supporters down because they were going to cop it.

CAHILL: I was just so happy for our supporters, the club and the players.

BURGOYNE: It was great for our supporters to give them the bragging rights. We can always say we won the first Showdown. It was a big win for us to give us some credibility in the AFL.

CUMMINGS: To win that was one of my favourite games of my career. It was sheer elation and one of those underdog stories we all love. You stop and look around the crowd and see all the Port supporters and people were in tears, so excited and so pumped.

BLIGHT: I actually thought our last quarter was something to actually build on. But I went into the rooms afterwards and … some players had tears and some officials had tears. It was amazing actually the effect that it had on some people, that loss.

SANDERS: I walked across myself to the change rooms and you could see the crowd converging on the players’ race to vent their displeasure. One bloke said ‘get Ben Hart out here and I’ll spit on him’. That demonstrated the emotion of the crowd and the supporters. The reaction from our people, I’d never seen anything like that before in the sense of spitting and wanting to spit on players. And I’ve probably not seen it since. We had no Shaun Rehn and were missing a couple of other players. We made a run for it late but still didn’t get there and that didn’t satisfy our supporters.

MODRA: I wasn’t very happy at all and in the change rooms I let loose at myself a bit, doing a bit of a rant. I told them I lived down Port Adelaide way and was going to cop it.

LYLE: (With Wanganeen injured) I remember having to hold up that cup at the end. I was thinking ‘I’m the captain at the moment, this is pretty exciting’ but then going ‘hang on, I can’t hold this cup above my head like I’ve seen (past Port Adelaide skippers) Russell Ebert do and Tim Ginever, and all those guys who’ve won premierships’. It’s significant but not a grand final. I need to be a little bit calm with this.

When Crows players turned up to training on the Monday, Blight had written the number 18 on a board for the players.

BICKLEY: We thought it was a stat from the game but (teammate) Matty Liptak, who was probably the smartest bloke in the room, realised there was 18 rounds to go.

BLIGHT: That’s the way I treated it, like it was another loss. Because it was Port Adelaide it was much higher in people’s minds than mine. It was ‘I can’t do anything about it now, what do we do from here?’

That week, Jameson headed to the tribunal and received a three-game suspension. He and Cummings also had to face each other in their weekly FIVEaa segment.

JAMESON: We were doing a 30-minute spot on Baz and Pilko from 7.30am to 8am. I was a bit embarrassed, not because of the fight but the result, the expectation, plus I got reported. We walked in and there was boxing gowns in the studio, boxing gloves and they played Rocky music. I opened myself up and those guys were really lighthearted.

Twenty-four years later, those involved say the first Showdown helped establish something special.

BLIGHT: I think in the AFL, it’s the best rivalry – there’s no doubt about that.

CUMMINGS: Players try to play it down and say it’s just four points, but it’s not. It’s probably the biggest rivalry that I’ve faced and I’ve played in Derbys, Anzac Day and Collingwood-Carlton. The pure dislike for each other … makes it so great. The players feel that and it’s impossible to remove yourself from it.

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