If you live in Adelaide and follow the footy at all in the last 23 years, you’ll be familiar with the divide that separates the Adelaide Crows and the Port Adelaide Power. One has been a team that for all intents and purposes claimed to represent all South Australians, and the other has been something of a football pariah – not wholly welcome in South Australian football circles, and not fully understood in the AFL sector either.
Students of football history will well be aware of the events of 1990, when Port Adelaide allegedly stabbed the SANFL and its constituent clubs in the back by attempting to join the AFL. We wont dwell on that specifically, although you can read about that here.
In 2004, Port Adelaide won its first, and so far only AFL Premiership, defeating Brisbane at the MCG by 40 points in front of just over 77,000 people. At this one point in time, all things were possible for a club which had been one of the most successful in Australian elite football, and had finally taken arguably its ultimate prize.
By 2010 however, there was a sense that something was wrong at Alberton. The club was losing money hand over fist, and required handouts from both the SANFL and the AFL. Crowds were dropping and the much hated sight of black plastic covered much of Aami Stadium during its matches. Its membership remained steady, but with almost no growth.
By 2012, Ports troubles had cost the club its senior coach in Matt Primus, its President in Brett Duncanson, its CEO in Mark Haysman, and several board members. The threat of a SANFL takeover was imminent.
Port Adelaide could gain no traction in the media, with numerous outlets referring to the club as a basket case, and wondering aloiud when the AFL would intervene. The Adelaide Advertiser, long considered a bastian of anti-Power rhetoric, was particularly scathing.
The road to recovery is a long one, and by no means complete. There were many steps along the way, and many more to come.
It began with the One Port merger strategy that finally settled the question as to which club was AFL and which was VFL, and for once all of its fans fell under the one umbrella. A major part of Keith Thomas’s role at Port Adelaide as CEO has focussed on getting this goal to be a reality. In September 2013, that goal was finally achieved when the Port Magpies were announced as the stand alone reserves side for the AFL Power.
By mid 2011 the situation had become so dire that the SANFL was considering taking over the club rather than pay a $2 million grant that had been promised the year before. This was staved off by a financial AFL intervention which loaned the grant money to the SANFL to grant Port Adelaide, while at the same time providing other assistance to Port Adelaide for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons leading up to the Adelaide Oval move. The SANFL ended up removing Port Adelaide CEO Mark Haysman from office and appointing former Norwood champion Keith Thomas to the position. (For the uninitiated this was the SANFL equivalent of appointing Nathan Buckley as CEO of Carlton)
Thomas was greeted with no small degree of skepticism at Alberton. He had worked with Gary Pert at Austero, and even played with him for two years at Fitzroy. He immediately instituted a review of Port Adelaide’s workings and was instrumental in bringing back fitness guru Darren Burgess. He successfully unified the club, removing decades of uncertainty over the status of each part. He was instrumental in the recruitment of Ken Hinkley to the club.
Another major part of its recovery was the appointment of David Koch. Originally the clubs number 1 ticket holder, he took office in 2012 and was a huge breath of fresh air for a publicity shy Port Adelaide.
Plenty has been written about him and the man has been ever present on our tv screens ever since. Publicly available and highly vocal in his support for the club, he’s a showman and a promoter in the vein of Eddie McGuire, sort of an Eddie Lite as it were.
One if his first acts was to remove as much of the black plastic from the stadium as he was contractually allowed. There are other benefits, Koch has an excellent reputation as a finance analyst, and such a man is needed at Alberton. He was an outsider, who missed all the unpleasantness over the years at board level, yet came when the call was made despite being based in Sydney.
Another big part in this recovery was the decision to take the brand national. Port Adelaide respects its SANFL roots, but the time for small time thinking was clearly over, and its decision to announce its sponsorship with Renault at the MCG last year, clearly reflected a change in attitude. Such announcement would previously have been made at Alberton, or worse at West Lakes. No longer content to be a small fry in its own city, Port Adelaide was showing it was one of the big boys. Renault announced in September 2013 that it would be extending the deal for another two years through 2015.
Another step in this recovery was the appointment of Ken Hinkley. The former Geelong defender who was overlooked for coaching roles at so many clubs over the years, took to the Port Adelaide job like a man possessed – and it paid off in spades as the players and fans responded to good coaching and attractive play. Port Adelaide, a hopeless club in 2012, made it to the second week of the finals in 2013.
A minor step it may seem, but the retention of Travis Boak in 2012 has turned into an excellent deal for Port Adelaide, who managed to keep him despite the keen attention of Geelong. He was rewarded with the captaincy in 2013 and hasn’t looked back – he recently resigned until 2018.
The fifth step, and perhaps the one that will have the biggest impact on Ports future is the new Adelaide Oval. The move away from a Crow-centric Football Park to a neutral, central stadium with excellent public transport access and a nearby city is already having a palpable effect on its fans. Membership is up more than 15,000 on the same time in 2012 – and last year they set a membership record of 40,000. The days of black plastic covers are soon to be over. Port will host the first AFL game at the redeveloped stadium in 2014, when it plays Adelaide in the first Showdown of 2014.
The next step is coming. The inevitable handover of its license from the SANFL to the AFL will remove a much derided conflict of interest between the SANFL directors and the Power, while finally removing a SANFL shadow that has hung over the club since 1990. The SANFL Magpies will become even more integrated into the AFL club as they become the Powers reserve side in 2014.
Perhaps the biggest step will be its financial one, in 2013 Port yet again registered another multimillion dollar loss, after several years of the same. However all revenue indicators were up. There is no simple fix for this, it will take time and patience. Increases in sponsorship and membership will go some way towards addressing that. With those things merchandise sales tend to rise as well, and there are other flow in effects that will reflect positively on the balance sheet as time moves on.
Patience is the key. A positive outlook doesnt hurt either – and Port Adelaide folks have this in spades for the first time in a long time. We might finally be about to see the Port Adelaide juggernaut we first heard about all those years ago begin to finally awaken.
