The 10 most influential people in Port Adelaide’s AFL journey
WHO has had the greatest influence on Port Adelaide’s AFL journey after the failed bid to join the national competition in 1990. Here are the top-10.
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PORT Adelaide decided in 1990 that a suburban football league, the SANFL where it had won more premierships than any rival, was no longer suitable for its ambitions.
It took two bids, seven years of waiting to be endorsed as an AFL entry and much pain along the way to eventually get to the “big league”.
In 2004, with the breakthrough national title, all seemed fulfilled. And then came the great crash in 2011 ... and recently the revival.
Here are the 10 most-influential people in Port Adelaide’s march to the AFL since the second bid for a national league licence was crafted in 1993:
1. JOHN CAHILL
INAUGURAL Power coach. A massively influential player and coach in Port Adelaide’s SANFL story in the 1950s-80s, Cahill carried enormous responsibility after the failed VFL bid in 1990. He had to keep Port Adelaide relevant on the field as the landscape changed in SA with the Crows in the AFL. He had to win SANFL flags to give Port Adelaide’s AFL bid undeniable credibility - a task achieved in 1988, 1989, 1990 (while his club was being smashed off the field), 1992, 1994, 1995 and 1996.
Cahill’s work in that decade before the Power played its first AFL game - with Cahill in the coach’s box in 1997-98 - was extraordinary and would have broken lesser men. His triumph in the first Showdown against the Crows in 1997 was his crowning moment.
2. BRIAN CUNNINGHAM
INAUGURAL chief executive. Port Adelaide’s image was severely tarnished during the ugly battle for the first SA-based VFL-AFL licence in 1990. The club’s administration was virtually destroyed, as highlighted by the horrible personal cost of 1990 president Bruce Weber in a city that was not prepared to forget let alone forgive.
Cunningham’s return to Alberton in 1991 - after being a premiership captain and champion rover - immediately gave the club a trustworthy image. His tireless work in making sure the Port Adelaide bid for the second SA-based AFL licence was successful was followed by putting the club on sound footings for its first seven years in the national league.
3. MARK WILLIAMS
PREMIERSHIP coach. Returned to Alberton in 1997 to be Cahill’s assistant and with an urgent eagerness to change Port Adelaide to appreciate the demands in the AFL are vastly different to those in the SANFL.
Delivered the Power to the AFL finals in his first season as senior coach (1999) and established a powerhouse from 2001 when Port Adelaide won 16, 18, 18 and 17 home-and-away games in each season leading up to the breakthrough 2004 flag. He should have taken up the offer to coach Essendon after the 2007 grand final disaster.
4. GREG BOULTON
INAUGURAL president. A board member in the failed 1990 bid, Boulton led Port Adelaide out of the SANFL’s bad-boy corner (critically appointing Cunningham), to the long-awaited AFL entry in 1997, the AFL premiership in 2004 and to the storm clouds that gathered at Alberton in 2008.
Boulton’s ability to command, negotiate and endure against the SANFL old guard that carried a scorebook against Port Adelaide cannot be underplayed. His decision to block Williams’ move to Essendon at the end of 2007 does not read so well in hindsight.
5. ANDREW DEMETRIOU/KEVIN FOLEY/BRETT DUNCANSON/MARK HAYSMAN
AS a unit, these four men took Port Adelaide out of a bad stadium deal at Football Park to the nirvana at Adelaide Oval; reunited Port Adelaide as “one club” across the AFL-SANFL with the Power and Magpies; and took the club’s AFL licence out of SANFL hands to establish financial security through AFL House.
The major refit was costly to all but Demetriou. Even Foley was not able to petition to become the Power’s president after Duncanson and Haysman were forced to fall on their swords and be served up as sacrificial lambs.
6. DAVID KOCH
REVIVING the so-called “basket case” to an AFL club capable of putting on an historic premiership-season match in Shanghai, China in just five years is no easy task. And the challenge carried great personal risk to Koch, particularly while remaining based in Sydney. The television personality and financial guru has made Port Adelaide relevant again - and he certainly realises the power his provocative statements carry both inside Alberton and at AFL House.
7. KEITH THOMAS
STEPPED into the hot seat at Alberton before the four key pillars (Koch as president, Ken Hinkley as coach, Travis Boak as captain and Thomas as chief executive) were set in place in the great turnaround at the end of 2012. A Port Adelaide fan as a lad before he became a playing hero at the SANFL rival Norwood, Thomas’ greatest influence at Alberton is recognising the club is made up of its people and its community - in particular the traditional heartland of Port Adelaide people.
8. MATTHEW PRIMUS
INSPIRING leader as the club captain from 2001-2005 - and an imposing ruckman with a powerful figure that gave both his team and his club a telling presence in the AFL (where then league boss Wayne Jackson changed the ruck rules to counter his dominance). Incredibly cursed by a knee injury denying Primus a premiership medal in 2004 - and the club’s off-field problems denying him the resources to be a successful coach when he took on the thankless task after Williams’ exit in 2010.
9. GUI GUOJIE
WHO would have ever thought a Shanghai-based billionaire would one day turn up at Adelaide Oval, watch Port Adelaide play against Fremantle and fall in love with both the game of Australian football and the Power to open his wallet for millions ... and to play an official AFL game in China?
10. CHAD CORNES
NO Power player has captured the passion from Port Adelaide’s SANFL traditions and translated them to the AFL era in the way Chad Cornes did in his 239 AFL games from 1999-2001. Not bad for a kid who grew up thinking (or being told) the Port Adelaide Football Club was an evil empire. And he deserves to be in the top-10 for his emotive expressions in the Showdowns against the Crows alone.
Originally published as The 10 most influential people in Port Adelaide’s AFL journey
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