On Wednesday evening, the 23 players who Port Adelaide has signed across the past two months will gather for the first time. Image: Matt Sampson.

HISTORY is to be made (again) at Alberton Oval on Wednesday evening. For the first time in the 142 years as home to the Port Adelaide Football Club, the spiritual reserve at Queen Street, Alberton will mark the starting point of a new senior football team.

When Port Adelaide started in 1870 and entered the SANFL as a foundation club in 1877, home was Buck's Flat at Glanville. In 1997, when Port Adelaide rose from the SANFL to the AFL, its first official training session was at an old teachers' college ground at Underdale while the district cricketers of Port Adelaide commanded Alberton Oval during the summer months.

But this Wednesday evening has Alberton Oval as the starting point for the first Port Adelaide team to compete for a national women's football title, the AFLW crown. History is being made ...

From the ground-up: Behind the scenes of building an AFLW team

In 1870 and 1877, the concept of coach was not part of Australian football. Captains ruled. In 1997, it was former SANFL club captain John Cahill as Port Adelaide's inaugural AFL coach. In 2022, it is Lauren Arnell - Carlton's inaugural AFLW captain, Brisbane premiership player and niece of Footscray club champion Ray Walker.

Cahill has in his meeting with Arnell relayed all that is the "Port Adelaide way", a concept not foreign nor incomprehensible to Arnell from her upbringing in the hard-working, blue-collar ways of Melbourne's west at Footscray.

Arnell will gather for the first time the 23 players - including the club's first female signing of 2015, Erin Phillips - who Port Adelaide has strategically signed across the past two months to form the inaugural 30-woman AFLW squad at Alberton.

There are new players with long-standing family connections at Alberton - the Cockatoo-Motlap twins.

There are new players forming new family traditions at Port Adelaide - 2022 mid-season rookie draftee Brynn Teakle in the AFL program and his 18-year-old cousin Julia in the AFLW, both signed from Western Australia to Alberton in the space of a week.

There is Phillips with all her understanding of Port Adelaide from the years when she would stand between the feet of her father, premiership captain Greg, while Cahill delivered the path to success with the record 10 SANFL premierships that delivered the club from suburbia to the national stage ... now for women and men.

The Port Adelaide AFLW pack will be completed at the national draft at the end of the month.

And in late August, Port Adelaide will enter the AFLW's seventh season as one of four new teams that completes the roll call of 18 national league clubs with both men's and women's football programs. Alberton Oval will be home. For the first time in the club's 152-year story, a senior team will start its journey from the spiritual home of the Port Adelaide Football Club.

History in the making ...

Erin Phillips joins Port Adelaide with a deep connection to Alberton having watched her father, Greg Phillips, win eight premierships with the club between 1977-1992. Image: Matt Sampson.

In 1997, Cahill assembled a group of 48 AFL and would-be AFL footballers who either knew Port Adelaide by their part in the SANFL or from the stories - and themes - that accompanied the Port Adelaide Football Club through its seven-year campaign to become a national league club from 1990.

In 2022, Arnell says she has a foundation group of players who WANT to be at Port Adelaide - and not just for the history that has made Port Adelaide the most-successful club in Australian men's football. They want to be part of a Port Adelaide that wants to be at the forefront of building the future of women's Australian football.

 "We have an amazing group of players; an amazing group of people," Arnell says of all that has been established at Port Adelaide under the direction of Olympians Juliet Haslam and Rachel Sporn.

"We have star players - and a core group of players who have put in so much work to earn their space at Port Adelaide.

"This football club welcomes people in. And I never expected the volume of players from existing clubs saying to me how the Port Adelaide Football Club's commitment to women has resonated with them. It is meaningful.

Coach Lauren Arnell with marquee signing, Gemma Houghton. Image: Matt Sampson.

"And if we show all that we are talking about in terms of culture on and off field ... you will find there are a lot of players around the country who WANT to play for Port Adelaide.

"For me it is exciting to provide a high-performance space for them; an inclusive space so that they feel they can be themselves in every moment.

"A key message from me and our list manager Naomi Maidment to the players we have brought in is, 'You have to be wanting to be the hardest worker in the room every single day ... but it is not just about you, it is also is about the person next to you - and you have to bring them along.' "

On Wednesday evening the key theme on the whiteboard in the new AFLW change rooms inside the Fos Williams Family Stand will mirror the ethos of the men's program housed in the Allan Scott Power Headquarters: Connection.

"On and off field," says Arnell. "And that will allow us to see the best of them.

"Hopefully, you will see that from the first training session. And I am bloody excited for it ... there is going to be a lot of energy."

 History is in the making at Alberton.