After eight years in charge at Alberton, chief executive Keith Thomas has much to be proud of
Keith Thomas arrived at Port Adelaide with the club’s AFL licence at risk. He leaves with its future closer to true independence as craved by its fans, writes Michelangelo Rucci.
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Keith Thomas stepped into the Port Adelaide Football Club – as many were wanting to turn out the lights in 2011 – surrounded by suspicion and doubt.
The so-called “plant” – but at whose beckoning? – will leave in 10 months proving he has Port Adelaide at heart, just as he did when kicking a football to himself in the open paddocks outside his modest home in Adelaide’s north-east suburbs 50 years ago.
Most importantly, Thomas will hand to his successor on October 31 a re-established football club capable of staying true to its people rather than the calls of outsiders.
Not a bad result for a “Norwood flog” as he called himself this year.
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Thomas can step away from the all-consuming Port Adelaide having fulfilled the genuine measure that was once the golden rule of Australian football: Remember you are just a custodian. Leave the game in a better state than you found it.
Mission accomplished “KT” ...
It is impossible to forget how Port Adelaide was on the agenda for impending disaster when Thomas was ushered to Alberton.
It is now primed for an enormous anniversary party – and more likely to secure genuine control of its future.
True independence, as craved by the fan base since 1990.
Port Adelaide will have a 150th anniversary party next year.
This seemed most unlikely in August 2011 when Thomas put his feet under the chief executive’s desk at Alberton while others were preparing the final paragraph is Port Adelaide’s 15-year AFL chapter.
Changing this doomsday script is Thomas’ greatest achievement at Port Adelaide – and in football where he holds the highest honours from his 304 SANFL league games at Norwood.
Those who suspected Thomas was a “plant” to complete an SANFL conspiracy were so wrong.
Against so much doubt, Thomas has ensured Port Adelaide has reached the 25th anniversary of Greg Boulton’s famous declaration on collecting an AFL sub-licence in December 1994.
“There will be a Port Adelaide Football Club forever,” said then president Boulton.
Across at Norwood, where Thomas was in the halls of power at The Parade at the time, Redlegs president Nerio Ferraro responded “forever is a long time” and questioned if SA football could deliver on the financial demands imposed with two AFL teams.
In short time – and in stark contrast to the “forever” theme – Port Adelaide was on its knees, being torn apart inside and outside.
There was conflict and confrontation – neither eager playfields for Thomas – at every corner of Port Adelaide’s sinking swamp.
Building “One Club” with Magpies and Power; moving to Adelaide Oval; freedom from SANFL control; finding a sustainable new business plan and being good at football again marked Thomas’ diary on arrival at Alberton ... and later he was loaded up with taking the club to China.
The battle is far from won at Port Adelaide, but it is no longer a lost cause.
Thomas deserves credit for this.
The boyhood Keith Thomas had a dream he wanted to live out at the Port Adelaide Football Club.
He was denied the passage to being an SANFL league player in black-and-white by residential rules locking him to Port Adelaide’s grandest rival, Norwood.
And no-one at Alberton will forget how Thomas was the author of terror to Port Adelaide’s pain on the football field, in particular the 1984 SANFL grand final.
Now as an administrator, Thomas has written Port Adelaide’s survival plan.
At a time when succession plans for the presidencies of the SA-based AFL clubs seem so difficult, there is already a line-up to follow Thomas to a job that was recently considered a dead end.
Externally, there is West Coast football boss Craig Vozzo who would be returning to the club that traded Shaun Rehn to West Adelaide for Vozzo’s promise as a rover in the early 1990s.
Internally, there is Matthew Richardson who for the past decade has stood guard to protect all the traditional Port Adelaide values while the barbarians lined up at the gates at Alberton. There is Andrew Hunter, the astute diplomat who has built the club’s future in China but is eager to work on securing the prospect of growth at home.
A job filled with torment in 2011 is attractive again.
Thomas has put Port Adelaide in a better place.
This is his ultimate tribute.