OFTEN we are reminded it is "just a game of football". And that commandeering terms such as "going into battle", "trench warfare", "blitzkrieg attack" and "general on the field" are taking a liberty.

This weekend, for good reason, we certainly will be uneasy with such comparisons. Anything that happens on the football fields across Australia cannot compare with the sacrifices made by the Anzacs in war and in keeping the peace as many members of the Australian defence forces do today.

Port Adelaide's small annual list of requests to AFL House with the home-and-away fixture always seeks the privilege to honour the Anzacs of yesterday and today with a home game at Adelaide Oval.

This time - and for the 18th time in AFL company (COVID cancelled Anzac Round in 2020) and with strong endorsement from the RSL - Port Adelaide will have, as club chief executive Matthew Richardson notes, "the enormous honour to host an Anzac Round game ... an honour that we will never take for granted". Nor should it.

With Anzac Day next Monday, Port Adelaide gets its moment of tribute in the timeslot that is favoured by the club's fans - Saturday twilight. The opponent for this tribute match is West Coast.

The rituals remain strong, such as honouring the player who best carries the Anzac spirit - skill, courage in adversity, self-sacrifice, teamwork and fair play - with the Peter Badcoe VC Medal.

Major Peter Badcoe VC is the last South Australian to have been decorated with the military's highest honour of bravery, the Victoria Cross, for his sacrifice in Vietnam in April 1967.

The Port Adelaide Football Club's connection with Anzac Day and the military long precedes the club's move to the AFL in 1997 or the current alliance with the Australian Defence Forces and partnerships with the submarine projects in the heart of the club's community on LeFevre Peninsula.

There are the 22 Port Adelaide heroes, players and club officials, who left the football fields of Adelaide - where they had formed an invincible team when war broke out in Europe in July 1914 - to become the first Anzacs: Arthur Biscombe, John Robertson, Samuel Howe, Clem Dayman, Thomas Sard, Arthur Channon, Gordon Inkster, Roy Drummond, William Theodore, Horace Hoare, Edward Foggo, Lawrence Levy, Maurice Allingham, Edward Oatey, David Bower, William Marshall, Charlie Badcock, Clarence Latimer, Robert Coffen, William Boon, Joseph Watson and Albert Chaplin.

Some did not return. Boon. Watson. Chaplin.

Lest We Forget.

There is the memory of Port Adelaide legend Bob Quinn, who left Alberton as a Magarey Medallist in 1940 and returned with the honour of the Military Medal for his leadership and courage at Tobruk on August 2 and 3, 1941 when he took command of the 10th platoon and suffered serious injuries while he and his men attacked an enemy post.

"Courage, leadership and devotion," read the military citation.

How often those tributes were used to describe Quinn, the Port Adelaide and State footballer who won a Magarey Medal on each side of his service in World War II ... yet those words read with greater meaning in acknowledging his commitment as a soldier, particularly to his comrades in the trenches of North Africa.

Quinn carried the middle name of Berrima, his father Jack's tribute to the troop ship he worked on while on the Port Adelaide docks and in the Port Adelaide changerooms as a captain and premiership hero.

Quinn's younger brother George also went to war. He did not return.

Lest We Forget.    

There is the memory of Fos Williams, the World War II serviceman who made every game of football that involved Port Adelaide on Adelaide Oval on Anzac Day - while the tradition of grand final rematches began in the 1960s - stand as a tribute to the Diggers.

They marched in the morning. They continued to Adelaide Oval. They were welcomed into the Port Adelaide changerooms where Williams spoke as if he had returned to naval service. They watched footballers take to "battle on the football field". They were to leave having felt honoured for being remembered - and appreciated for their sacrifices that allows the game to be played.

"On Anzac Day," recalled club legend Russell Ebert of his Anzac Day football memories that began with a six-goal performance in the win against Sturt in 1968, "it was a game of footy ... but a game like no other.

"Fos was emotional ... leadership, courage, looking after your mates ... play like soldiers. And show respect for the real soldiers who were there to watch us. It was their day."

No-one should ever forget such.

On Saturday, the Port Adelaide Football Club will remember them. The commitment to the Australian Defence Forces and their families is far more than one football club during the Anzac Round.

There have been strategic partnerships between the ADF and the club - and this year the Port Adelaide Football Club launched special membership packages, with discounted pricing, for current ADF personnel and veterans.

The football match on Saturday night could easily draw symbolic comparisons with what Robertson, Boon and Quinn faced at the start of each world war of the previous century. Two AFL teams grasping for a much-needed victory to stay in the battle among many enemies. But in many ways there is no comparison in "just a game of football" ...

Lest We Forget.