Port Adelaide’s players and staff back the two captain model but some traditional fans do not
Port Adelaide will either let down its team or its outspoken traditional fans when the decision is made in February on its captaincy model for next year’s AFL season, writes Michelangelo Rucci.
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Two wrongs do not make a right for Port Adelaide. It certainly will not as the Power’s captaincy saga enters its second chapter at Alberton during the off-season.
If Port Adelaide - after much deliberation in its football department and confirmation from its football sub-committee - concluded it was best for the team to have two captains, the Power cannot move away from the Tom Jonas-Ollie Wines partnership. This would be wrong.
The team’s needs to achieve on-field success should be first and foremost.
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If Port Adelaide - after much protest from a vocal group of hardcore supporters - decides to appease the militant members by restoring the club tradition of having one captain and generally (not always) in the No. 1 jumper, this would be wrong too.
The fans’ needs would be putting an image before what is best for the team. It would be fake ... everything Port Adelaide is not supposed to be, particularly in its 150th year.
Damned if they do; damned if they don’t.
The traditionalists want the Port Adelaide Football Club to stand out from the franchise-era of AFL expansion to emphasise its core values from a different time and a different league.
The Power’s football department - and, by extension, the football sub-committee that includes three former club captains - wants to maximise the AFL team’s prospects, particularly after so many have repeatedly questioned on-field leadership at Alberton in recent seasons.
This is now about progressive team management v tradition. And once a 148-year-old tradition has been broken by the appointment of two skippers, can it be restored (with everyone pretending Season 2019 never happened)?
Two wrongs certainly will not make a right in this case.
Port Adelaide now gets its wrong by letting down the team that wanted, needed and accepted two captains.
Or Port Adelaide gets it wrong by not appeasing the traditional fans after being handed a very strong message from the rebuff from as many as 3000 members at the renewal stand at Alberton.
Who wins in this doomed debate?
Jonas this week, in his regular radio spot on SEN1629, made it clear his feedback would endorse maintaining two skippers at Alberton. He regards a return to one captain as “crazy”.
“For the record,” Jonas said, “it is highly unlikely (Port Adelaide would return to one captain).
“One, Ollie and I worked well together this year and it was the right model.
“Two, after making such a big move like that, it would be pretty crazy to backflip on that.”
And who would be the lone captain if tradition wins against progress in this debate? The older Jonas, the younger Wines or the vice-captain Hamish Hartlett?
“If you lost the top job you would be disappointed,” Jonas noted. And if he was solo captain, “I’d be disappointed to not be working alongside Ollie anymore ... and being put on a pedestal a little bit.”
Port Adelaide is due to settle the captaincy debate in February when the club starts its 150th anniversary season. Club chief executive Keith Thomas, in another email to members and supporters, has declared the milestone moment at Alberton is about putting the fans first.
“(Season) 2020 will be a moment where we reset, unite and push forward with a clear vision for the next exciting chapter of Port Adelaide,” Thomas wrote.
Putting the co-captaincy model back in the box would seem a wrong to the team.
Putting the No. 1 jumper in mothballs in 2020 would seem wrong to the fans.
They cannot win at Alberton. Certainly not after making such a momentous decision this year to put away tradition dating back to 1924 (when Cleam Keal started the trend of Port Adelaide captains wearing No . 1) to do what was thought best for winning in the 21st century.
REALITY BITES
Former federal Senator Chris Schacht has every right to say, “I told you so” ... again and again.
After years of asking questions at Adelaide Football Club information meetings and writing op-ed pieces in The Advertiser on the governance issues at the two SA-based AFL clubs, the key message in Schacht’s sermons is sinking in.
“Independence Day” in SA football - for both the Crows and Port Adelaide - in March 2014 was marked with new constitutions for the SA-based AFL club as their sub-licences were put under AFL watch rather than SANFL control.
Adelaide’s constitution runs for 34 pages and has been studied carefully this week by a group of well-placed South Australians who question the power Crows members have to shape the Adelaide Football Club’s boardroom.
Critically, the members do have a right to vote for a nominee (as they did with lawyer Kym Ryder this year). But the chosen nominee needs to endorsed by the AFL, the owner of the Crows licence.
Now this group of “concerned” Crows high flyers want true independence from the AFL with a constitution that allows for at least half the board to be directly elected by the membership - and for term limits for directors, say seven years as is the case at West Coast.
As they say in the classics, watch this space.