Set for its first ever Showdown next month, soaking up history and embracing tradition is front of mind for Port Adelaide's AFLW side. Image: AFL Photos.

FOR the 52nd time (LII by the Roman numerals) all that has defined Port Adelaide - well, almost all - in South Australian football will manifest in the "them v us" match known as the "Showdown".

Since April 20, 1997 at Football Park, this extraordinary South Australian derby on the national stage captures and oozes all that made the Port Adelaide Football Club stand out from the rest in 1990 by declaring its big-league ambitions; all that made Port Adelaide the most-feared on-field rival across the SANFL through the 20th century when it became Australia's most-successful league club; all that grew from 19th century roots on the Port Misery docks that underlined how Port Adelaide would be different to the rest. It is the Port Adelaide that a decade ago went against the grain to take South Australian football back to its 1860s cradle at a "new" Adelaide Oval on the north parklands.

Everything - everything that makes "them" and us - emerges in the Showdown.

There has been an SANFL "equivalent" for this rivalry since 2014. That State league derby has in battle the traditional Port Adelaide black-and-white jumper that is synonymous with the "them v us" battle of South Australian football. Home and away. But there is the reality this is not the biggest game the Port Adelaide and Adelaide football clubs can put on between March and August. An SANFL grand final Showdown in October, however, would be entertaining in its build-up ...

The crowd would be Port Adelaide and the rest of South Australian football. "Us v them".

And from Friday, September 30 - at Adelaide Oval before the cricketers return - the Showdown theme becomes part of the AFLW national women's competition in this league's seventh rendition.

Port Adelaide's AFLW side will face Adelaide in a historic Showdown to be played at Adelaide Oval on September 30. Image: AFL Photos.

For the sake of truly testing the hornet's nest, why would the black-and-white jumper that defines Port Adelaide be denied to the club's first national women's team? Does anyone have any agreement about what is to be worn in the AFLW?

Why shouldn't Port Adelaide's newest team be part of the debate?

To captain Erin Phillips and her Port Adelaide AFLW pioneers, there is no question on where they fit within the halls of a famous, old football club. They are not just adding to the Port Adelaide Football Club's history from the end of the month when their on-field campaign begins in Perth against West Coast on Saturday, August 27. They want to absorb all that has defined and made Port Adelaide since 1870.

It is now about "One Club - Three senior teams". And it is still, as the promotional sheet read after the re-unification of the Port Adelaide Football Club along AFL and SANFL lines a decade ago, "One History".

"One club ... and proud of where we have come from," says Port Adelaide AFLW vice-captain Ange Foley.

Port Adelaide, adds Foley, is "very steeped in its traditions and its history and its family and its culture".

Inaugural vice-captain Ange Foley alongside Lauren Arnell and Erin Phillips. Image: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos.

And just as Australian football at the elite level is no longer exclusive to men, nor are the traditions and the history of the Port Adelaide Football Club solely in the hands of men.

So many of Port Adelaide's inaugural AFLW players come without the loading of emotional baggage that challenged young men drafted to Port Adelaide during the 1990s. Filled with ambition to be successful AFL players, they left changerooms and SANFL clubhouses filled with hatred towards the Port Adelaide Football Club - ask Chad Cornes of how the Showdown reflects the "them v us" spirit built from the mid-1880s and taken to a defining level by Fos Williams and his men during their golden era of SANFL dominance during the 1950s and 1960s.

The inaugural AFLW squad has entered the refitted changerooms of the Fos Williams Stand at Alberton Oval wanting to know of the men who walked before them carrying the hopes, honour and aspirations of a football club that stood alone in the "them v us" divide of South Australian football.

"We have had a lot of people teach us the history of this club," says Foley who has arrived at Port Adelaide from the "them" with aspirations to "be a better player - but if I can help this team grow, use my leadership skills and experience to help establish this club (in the AFLW), then I will be pretty happy."

With such ambition and cultural awareness, Foley could enter those changerooms at Alberton rekindling the spirit George Cairns carried in 1884 while establishing Port Adelaide's first South Australian premiership team.

"It is going to take us a long time to really understand where (the Port Adelaide Football Club) has been and where it is from," notes Foley. "For us, (today) is more starting to think about how we can contribute to that history.

"It is only the beginning. Understanding the prison bars (guernsey) and all that, it has been a pretty exciting part of the journey for us as well."

Ange Foley says learning about Port Adelaide's deep tradition and history has been important an important part of the inaugural AFLW players' journey. Image: AFL Photos.

"Culture" remains the hardest element to define in a football club. Yet, in a Showdown week, it becomes so obvious when Port Adelaide stands out from the rest. Hence, the "them v us" philosophies stoked by Fos Williams and certainly advanced at an AFL level while his son Mark created an intense rivalry in the Showdowns at Football Park from 1999-2010.

In the awkward - and at times uncomfortable - transition from the SANFL to the national competition, the meaning of the traditional black-and-white jumper worn since 1901 has been repeatedly misunderstood by those outside Alberton. It is a guernsey that defines heritage. Port Adelaide heritage.

Such a theme is being increasingly appreciated by AFL clubs. Sydney pays homage to its South Melbourne past with the jumper the Swans wore before they left a lake at inner Melbourne for a harbour in Sydney 40 years ago. Brisbane recognises the Fitzroy connection that made the Bears become Lions in 1997. Fremantle has decided purple is not enough ... drag up the anchor, even if it has just 27 years of rust and barnacles (rather than 121 years of tradition)!

Where else other than a Showdown - at AFL and AFLW levels - would it be more appropriate to honour one of Australian football's storied jumpers?

It is the guernsey that captures all that gave South Australian football a "them v us" divide that makes the Showdown the intense rivalry appropriately measured with a 26-25 count (in Port Adelaide's favour) on the derby ledger.

For a new group of Port Adelaide footballers, those history makers in the AFLW squad, to embrace and crave these traditions says so much.

So does a jumper designed with so much mystery in 1901. Where else in the world would any sport ignore the power of such a story?