Before the independents, teal was Port Adelaide’s colour, and it’s burned into Steve Price’s memory

The colour teal is associated with an AFL club, not just newly elected politicians, and the independents may just have a bit in common with Port Adelaide.

A sea of teal Port Adelaide fans stream towards the MCG in 2014 for the preliminary final against Hawthorn, which Port lost. Picture: Sarah Reed

In 2014 I had one of the worst Saturday afternoons of my life at the Adelaide Oval, sitting in front of TV star David Koch.

Koch was the chairman of the Port Power AFL team and I had landed two tickets to that year’s elimination final, which Richmond snuck into.

The Tigers fell over the line the week before in the last round of the home and away season in Sydney to make the final eight. On the bus on the way back from Homebush Stadium we booked flights to Adelaide.

The day itself became a nightmare as Port, in one of the most one-sided first quarters in AFL history, kicked 43 points before we scored. And it’s that day I came to hate the colour teal.

Back then Port was still proudly the Power, and their finals strip at home was the famous prison bars, black and white.

All season though, they had been tagged “the teal army” with their strip, which also included silver and white.

Richmond’s skipper that day, Trent Cotchin, started our horror afternoon by winning the toss and kicking against the wind.

Teal was a memorable part of Port Adelaide’s colours, when Steve Price attended a game he wished he could forget in 2014. Picture: Getty Images

The Power won that final 132 points to 75 in front of more than 50,000 lunatic Port fans.

If the score wasn’t bad enough, and being six goals down after 18 minutes an even bigger embarrassment, I had to put up with the nauseating You’ll Never Tear Us Apart song pre-match.

And Koch kept letting me know about it all day.

Now teal is back, bigger than Port has ever been, and all Australia knows about it.

Six women standing in seats across Australia; in NSW, Victoria and West Australia will sit on the crossbench in the new parliament of Anthony Albanese.

Branded independents, most of their community based campaigns were partly funded by the Sydney-based son of a billionaire, Simon Holmes-a-Court.

If Port’s win way back in 2014 was one-sided and impressive, the victory this six rolled out in some of the most blue-blood seats in all of Australia was incredible.

Port Power beat Cotchin and rising superstar Dustin Martin. The teals took out a potential future prime minister in Josh Frydenberg and scooped up areas like Brighton, Kew and Hawthorn in Melbourne, and Kirribilli and Double Bay and Bondi in Sydney.

If the colour teal triggers nightmares for me, imagine what it does to Liberal MPs around Australia, especially Victorian Liberals sitting in state seats that cross over those federal boundaries?

Writing in The Spectator, disgraced Victorian Liberal MP and member for Kew Tim Smith – who stands down at the November election – said he believed the teal revolution would spill over into the Victorian poll.

I’m not so sure of that, now that federal Labor has won its majority with 77 seats and has no need to deal with people like Dr Monique Ryan in Kooyong or Zoe Daniel in Goldstein.

The power of the independents would have been considerable if the Labor win had been dependent on their support, which is now not needed.

During the campaign the most vocal of all these female climate change agitators — people like Dr Ryan — refused to admit Labor support would have been a given.

That argument always sounded hollow given they all stood only in Coalition seats against male opponents who needed to be very careful about how they treated the person who wanted their job.

Any hint of an aggressive approach on policy differences would have had Frydenberg and people such as Tim Wilson, who lost in Goldstein, being labelled as bullies.

Monique Ryan’s teal army celebrates. Picture: David Crosling

It was the argument used in the campaign to throw the Coalition out, claiming their leader, Prime Minister Morrison, treated women poorly and was a bully.

They were on a hiding to nothing and, ironically, tying the former Treasurer down to fight to the death to keep his seat, robbed the Coalition of its best media performer to get out there and sell the economic story.

Talking this week to one of the freshly elected independents and the one who didn’t use teal – Kylea Tink – who won North Sydney, she made the point it was about taking the message of her community to Canberra because it felt it had been ignored.

While a valid argument, it hardly stacks up in Frydenberg’s case. Would you rather have as your local federal member the Treasurer of Australia or a crossbencher with no access to any policy decisions at all?

Like the feral crowd at Adelaide Oval screaming for Port in that final, the teals will make a lot of noise in Canberra when parliament resumes next month.

And just like Port in that 2014 finals series, it won’t amount to much. Port fell short by three points to eventual premiers Hawthorn in the preliminary final.

Voting independent a couple of Saturdays back sealed defeat for the Morrison government but Labor would have won anyway.

Good luck to all the independents and I’m sure they’ll make an impressive image sitting on the crossbench but, like Kochie and Port, you’ve fallen just short of the ultimate victory.

DISLIKES

Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp off on a junket to Singapore to apparently find out how to get rid of graffiti.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese not travelling to London for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations this weekend.

Labor appointing an Assistant Minister for the Republic when we don’t have a republic.

Violent street crime among younger people on the rise.

LIKES

Brighton resident Bec Judd calling out a lack of police patrols and protection in her suburb.

Jai Hindley the first Australian to win the Giro d’Italia.

Queen Elizabeth celebrating her Platinum Jubilee in style with pageants and parades.

Smell of wood smoke as the first cold snap of winter hits.