PORT ADELAIDE Chairman David Koch has used his speech at the annual Best and Fairest event to urge the club to remain united and be courageous in its pursuit of premiership success.
Koch said the 71-point preliminary final loss to the Western Bulldogs had continued to “burn in our guts” but emphasised that staff, players, coaches, supporters and club partners would need to risk the pain again as the Port Adelaide chased greatness.
Reiterating that the club was in a strong position on and off the field, the Chairman insisted it was not all doom and gloom.
“If season’s 2020 and 2021 have left any impression on the football world it is that Port Adelaide is a very good football club,” he explained.
“A McClelland trophy for minor premiers last year; consecutive preliminary finals; more wins than any other club over the two years; this year we had a our best win/loss result since 2004; multiple All-Australian honours and now our first Brownlow Medallist.
“To win the ultimate, you have to be a strong and united football club. And we are that. The club is in a strong position with an exciting future agenda, despite the challenges of COVID.
“The support of our members and our partners has been incredible and we know they are on this journey with us and we couldn’t be more thankful of their support.”
Yet, Koch continued, the club had fallen short of its premiership ambitions.
He said every part of the season would be reviewed including the “devastating” loss to the Bulldogs to ensure the club learned from it and got better.
“There are two Port Adelaide stories at the moment. The first is of the strong, resilient home-and-away team taking all before it and winning home qualifying finals before banking a home preliminary final,” Koch said via video link from Sydney, where he remained in lockdown.
“And then there is the Port Adelaide in preliminary finals. There is no way of cushioning the devastation of these losing preliminary finals in the hearts and minds of our players, coaches, partners, members and supporters.
“So, we have established ourselves as a very good club but, as yet, not a great club.
“We offer no excuses for our performance in this year’s Prelim Final. We own it. Greatness was never going to be easy and yes, we were smacked in the face and reminded of that in the Preliminary Final in the harshest way.
“The club will review every part of our season, and the Preliminary Final performance, and ensure we learn from it, as hard as that will be.”
Koch reflected that it was only a few years ago that Port Adelaide “couldn’t crack finals” and it reinforced how far the club had come that it was righty being judged harshly for missing out on the Grand Final and ultimately the premiership.
He also drew comparisons between the hurt felt in recent weeks to the disappointment felt in the early 2000s when the club had three years of finals disappointment before reaching the AFL summit in 20004.
“Under that pressure the entire organisation held strong together. It galvanised everyone. It became a crusade, to learn, to get better and achieve the ultimate,” he said.
“There are no quick fixes or short cuts to success in this competition.
“Winning takes courage. Courage to believe in our plan and in our people and that’s exactly what we will be doing. We have everything we need to achieve that in this room. And it requires courage to persist and risk the pain all over again.
“And so, at Port Adelaide, we don’t give up. We get up and we go again.
“The only thing that matters is what we do now and how we get better. We’ve fallen short of our ultimate goal in both years and when it’s Greatness we are chasing, ultimately, we have failed in our ambition.”
Koch said change would and had already happened, thanking the outgoing assistant coaches Jarrod Schofield and Michael Voss and High Performance boss Ian McKeown, although he insisted there was no need to dramatically alter the program.
He also thanked everyone who had been involved in getting the group so close in 2021 for their commitment and hard work, and left a parting message, urging persistence and togetherness.
“Greatness is not an end point – it’s a journey of continual development, improvement and attacking the challenges head on,” he said. “So, with that in mind, we start the journey again.
“There’ll be the critics and naysayers…we understand that… but there is only one group of people whose job is to do something about it and we are all in this room tonight.
“I know this group will risk the pain again, and put themselves back into the arena. We will embrace the journey and the expectation. And we will persist… and this group will win our next premiership… I just know it.”
