SA football’s biggest modern rivalry - the Showdowns between Port Adelaide and the Adelaide Crows - turns 21

The Port Adelaide-Crows grudge match is now 21 years old and still creates great passion around the state and reminds all fans of the great clashes in the past.

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SA football changed forever on April 20, 1997 with the first Showdown between the well-established Crows and the AFL’s newest team, Port Adelaide.

The derby now has a new venue - Adelaide Oval rather than Football Park - and new combatants with the teams coached by non-South Australians (West Australian Don Pyke at Adelaide and Victorian Ken Hinkley at the Power).

But inaugural Showdown coach Malcolm Blight says the SA derby - that turns 21 on with Saturday’s Showdown 44 - remains “eagerly watched in every State more than any other non-Victorian derby”.

“My reaction after the first Showdown was to think, ‘This concept is unbelievable’ ... and it still holds,” Blight said.

The Advertiser has brought together five Crows and Power greats - Adelaide premiership captain Mark Bickley, Coleman Medallist Tony Modra, Brownlow Medallist Gavin Wanganeen and Port Adelaide premiership pair Chad Cornes and Brendon Lade - to celebrate the Showdown’s 21st anniversary and reflect on why the game divides SA and makes the rest of Australia watch with eager anticipation.

“It’s not just ‘another game’,” says Modra, the Crows key forward who kicked seven of Adelaide’s 11 goals in the first Showdown.

Modra rates the derby on the same level as an AFL final.

“Leading up to (the Showdown), I don’t care what anyone says,” adds Modra, “you’re always thinking about it.”

And then there is the post-Showdown bragging rights.

“The hurt of losing a Showdown,” said Cornes, “was always what drove me (to chase victory against the Crows).”

Adds Lade: “(Port Adelaide coach Mark) ‘Choco’ (Williams) could not stand walking around Adelaide if we lost one.”

History will always remember Port Adelaide won the first Showdown - 11.17 (83) to 11.6 (72) - in what was the Power’s fourth game in the big league.

“That is a definitive moment for the football club,” said Wanganeen. “We were basically a bunch of young fellas all thrown together. We’d only been training together for four to five months, if that, and were coming up against a remarkably hardened AFL team in Adelaide.

“We knew how big the game was and how important it was.

“To get the win was unbelievable.”

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