Power of choice in Port's own hands

PORT was prepared to compromise its nickname (from Magpies to Power) and its famous black-and-white jumper just to enter the national AFL in 1997.

PORT Adelaide was prepared to compromise its nickname (from Magpies to Power) and its famous black-and-white jumper just to enter the national AFL in 1997.

The Port Adelaide Football Club should have no issue now in finally living the "One Club" mantra to ensure its success in the AFL.

The Power wants an AFL reserves team. It needs a reserves team to ensure Power coach Ken Hinkley's mission to deliver AFL premierships is not compromised by a competitive disadvantage against his AFL rivals.

SCROLL DOWN FOR RUCCI'S THESIS #3

It is already difficult enough as Hinkley works to a football budget that does not compare with the big players of Collingwood, Essendon, West Coast and Sydney (all of which will have reserves teams next year).

The Port Adelaide Football Club wants its presence in both the AFL and SANFL. And no-one is stopping this. The SANFL has left Port Adelaide to choose - it can have a Port Adelaide Power reserves in the SANFL or it can continue with the Port Adelaide Magpies.

There always will be a Port Adelaide in the SANFL, as there has been since the league was formed in 1877.

The problem is Port Adelaide cannot marry the Power reserves and Magpie league teams together.

The panel showing all the Magpies are today and all they would be tomorrow as the Power reserves team highlights how resolving the real issue of what "Port Adelaide" stands for in the SANFL rests at Alberton and not at West Lakes (home of the SANFL executives and the Crows).

Power reserves in the SANFL? Or an independent Magpies league team?

The choice does remain with everyone at Alberton and not the SA Football Commission, the SANFL league directors or the Crows.

Too often there is an "emotional" overreaction at Alberton where the thought of one club, one nickname and one jumper is too difficult to accept.

But do the Port Adelaide traditionalists want the black-and-white jumper to continue in the SANFL if the team wearing it does not have winning the premiership as its sole objective, as it has been since 1877?

Or is it better to honour the "prison bars" on the national stage by wearing the jumper against the Crows in Showdowns at Adelaide Oval where it was made famous with premierships ... and get on with the modern task of winning AFL flags?

The angry, the complex and the confused

 THESIS No. 3: SANFL fans:

WE continue the David Attenborough-style study of South Australian football fans this week by examining the SANFL variety. This follows the assessment Crows fans are angry and Power supporters are complex.

COLLEAGUE Scott Walsh poked the beast in his Saturday column in a way that was bound to send the computer boffins at Waymouth St into panic.

He said firmly of the SANFL: "The plain, brutal truth is the SANFL competition is no longer SA football's pinnacle. Ignorance of that is just a fear of change. As much as the words make many in SANFL boardrooms and terraces tremble, times have changed. SA football must change with them.

"Warm memories of the state's golden eras are just that - memories. We won't get another 1973 grand final, no matter how hard we wish for it."

Walsh left his email address. In the blogosphere, devoted SANFL fans pushed for a concerted campaign to bombard his inbox. The IT department prepared for a computer meltdown that could have stopped the Sunday Mail going to print. Anyone with their weekly Sunday Mail television guide in the lounge room will know the threat was overstated, like the Millenium Bug.

So who are these SANFL fans who make up the fine tapestry of South Australian sporting culture?

They are proud. They are devoted. They are convinced the SANFL game - including its umpiring - is superior to the AFL version.

They are delighted their clubs are still made up of players who are butchers, bakers and candlestick makers during the week (and there is much to admire of footballers who do not live in an artificial bubble).

The most obsessed SANFL fan will not watch the AFL game, not even on television.

And there is certainly a core group that is quite happy to live in total ignorance (and bliss) of anything that happens among the Crows, the Power or any AFL team.

They also live in fear of the AFL ultimately strangling the SANFL to take charge of SA football and badge it "AFL-SA".

But there are some inconsistencies in this tribe. There are those who argue the AFL - an organisation they do not like - should contribute more to SANFL coffers, particularly when AFL clubs take their young talent to fame and fortune in the big time.

They take exception to the thought the SANFL is challenged by a lack of growth, a view held by SANFL club presidents rather than any media agenda. One has taken to the blogosphere asking why is growth important ...

Does anything survive without growth? Perhaps the fear of the SANFL fan becoming an endangered species explains why Walsh's inbox is still working.