How Adelaide Crows fan Adam Isitt stopped hating on Port Adelaide

ADAM Isitt, a Crows fan his whole life, had been led to believe the best hate was always reserved not for one individual, but a whole club: Port Adelaide. But now he’s had a change of heart.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - SEPTEMBER 20: Travis Boak of the Power is congratulated by team mates after scoring a goal during the AFL 2nd Preliminary Final match between the Hawthorn Hawks and the Port Adelaide Power at Melbourne Cricket Ground on September 20, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

LIVING in Perth, I get this a lot.

“You’re from Adelaide? Who’s your team?” (Think Melbourne is the capital of football? Think again. The Sandgropers are mad for this game like no-one else.)

My answer: Crows. (Always have been. Always will be.)

“Second favourite team?” Like most South Australians, the answer has always rolled off the tongue: Any team that is playing against Port Adelaide.

I used to say that. Not now. Maybe age has mellowed me. Maybe I’ve been away for too long. But something happened a couple of years ago and I’m still coming to grips with it.

I’m digging Port.

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Let me put this in context. I grew up watching Norwood, pre-AFL.

The era of Michael Aish, Garry McIntosh, and Michael Taylor. The playmaker, the brute and Mr dependable.

It was also the era of Paul Bagshaw, Graham Cornes and John Duckworth.

Opposing, legendary players who I was taught from a young and impressionable age to, well, hate.

And hate as I did, it was drummed into me that the best hate — the most vitriolic, poisonous bile — was always to be reserved not for one individual, but for a whole club: that filthy group of riff raff from down at the port.

They played dirty, I was told. They keyed your car if you parked at Alberton, they said. Most of their fans had incomplete sets of teeth, I was duly informed over and over.

Perhaps there was some truth to it, maybe. But there was something else no-one needed to point out. They knew how to win.

Robbie Gray slips past a Brad Hill tackle. Picture: Colleen Petch.

With more silverware in their cabinet than any other team in the country, they know how to win.

Rain, hail or shine, at home or away to a stadium of screaming haters, they know how to win. And so often, with ten minutes to go and five goals down? As we saw Saturday night — and as those of us who grew up with the SANFL have seen so many times before — Port Adelaide just Do. Not. Stop.

RETROGRAM: Rookie list to the Grand Final

When I announced to my son that Port was my number two he nearly choked on his Weeties. How could I? You see, I too had fed him from birth on the same Port-hating diatribe that was fed to me.

How could I? Well, not lightly.

I’m a Crows supporter. I can’t change that. Even through the last couple of seasons of fumbling, chasing-their-tails, caught-in-the-headlights football, stick with them forever I (sigh) shall.

Crows leave Adelaide Oval after losing to Richmond. Photo: Sarah Reed.

But the Power have my respect. And while a few teams have played great football this year, try as I might I can’t ignore the pride I feel when maybe the most entertaining, beautiful football of all has come from my home town.

And as we watched Port Adelaide last weekend, as I’ve watched them for the last couple of seasons, playing to win — fast, brave, inventive, a team that does not stop — it was not only me cheering them onward, but my son, screaming from the edge of his couch.

How could he not, he offered, a little sheepish. After a game like that, how could he not.

Originally published as How Adelaide Crows fan Adam Isitt stopped hating on Port Adelaide