REPORTS, speculation or just gossip of the Norwood Football Club wanting to bid for the AFL's 20th national league licence is a reminder of what has been denied to South Australian football. An opportunity has been lost.
As John Adams noted during the mid-1980s in his reports for the long-lost National Football League and later the VFL, South Australia was to have been best served on the national stage with its two most-successful clubs - Port Adelaide and Norwood.
There was the traditional rivalry, since 1878.
There was the geographical divide - north and south of the River Torrens.
And there were two supporter bases who had built a healthy, respectful rivalry.
If - and it is highly unlikely - Norwood did follow Tasmania to the AFL after 2028, picking up the baton the SANFL club dropped during that turbulent winter of 1990, it would be entering the national league more than 30 years after Port Adelaide and Adelaide football clubs had established and reinforced a new traditional rivalry in town.
There would have been at least 65 Showdowns. The derby ledger would probably still be tight, as it is today with Port Adelaide leading 27-26. And at least two generations of supporters would have grown up in Adelaide knowing the Showdown in the same way the first two generations of South Australian football fans came to savour the Port Adelaide-Norwood rivalry:
Port Adelaide v Norwood on the national stage would fall in the huge shadow of the Showdown. It would require an extraordinary set of circumstances to have the same relevance it carried in the SANFL for more than a century after Norwood's admission to the league in 1878.
Opportunity lost.
And so it might be with Port Adelaide's traditional black-and-white jumper - the "prison bars" as the Norwood men referred to the guernsey in a backhander to the traditional rival beyond the Cheltenham cemetery.
Port Adelaide AFL premiership hero - and Showdown agitator - Chad Cornes made this interesting (and telling reflection) on the black-and-white jumper that changed the club's image from 1902:
"Having watched Port Adelaide beat up Glenelg (in the SANFL) so often in the 1980s and '90s the jumper was intimidating to me as a kid because of the passion it stirred in the Port Adelaide supporters while their players beat us up.
"I remember the first time I put it on (in 2003 v Carlton) ... I just felt tougher and stronger. There is an air of invincibility around it. It was an absolute honour to wear it. To wear it just two or three more times marks special moments in my AFL career."
How a guernsey was seen in the eyes of SANFL opponents was reaffirmed by the former North Adelaide and West Torrens wingman Kym Dillon while interviewing Cornes:
"You have to understand, as a kid I grew up seeing Port Adelaide as a really successful and powerful club. They won more they lost. They carried that aura of success. So when you get out there as a player (against Port Adelaide) there is that jumper, the history, the record of success of the Port Adelaide Football Club ... you knew you were up against it. Go up against another side, respectful said of Woodville, Central District, or even Glenelg, giving yourself a chance."
Today - and certainly on Saturday night at Adelaide Oval with Showdown LIII - the same cannot be said or thought by any AFL player facing Port Adelaide in black-and-white bars.
There is not one Adelaide-listed player - not even the Broken Hill-raised, Norwood-reared Taylor Walker - who would look at the "prison bars" with a sinking feeling in his stomach.
No Adelaide player, particularly those who grew up outside of South Australia, associates the "prison bars" with the pain of seeing Port Adelaide repeatedly beat their team in a grand final or a symbolic match.
This is the critical loss from a two-decade battle with departed Collingwood Football Club president Eddie McGuire to wear black-and-white as a Port Adelaide heritage jumper.
This is the challenge that falls on the shoulders of every Port Adelaide player who dons the bars in future Showdowns (hopefully, all derbies and not just those designated as Port Adelaide "home" Showdowns).
Connor Rozee, Jason Horne-Francis, Todd Marshall, Zak Butters, Lachie Jones, Jase Burgoyne and Co. during the next decade have to build a formidable image in black-and-white against Adelaide - just as Shine Hosking, Harold Oliver, Frank Hansen, Angelo Congear, Jack Ashley, Jack Quinn, Jack Woollard and the gang did at Alberton during the first decade of Port Adelaide-Norwood derbies with the bars honouring the club in SANFL football and nationally with the Champions of Australia titles before World War I.
Port Adelaide's current "Chasing Greatness" mantra is about building an era of great achievement to mirror the dynasties of previous generations.
It is up to a new group of Port Adelaide men to put honour in the jumper by the history they write - rather than read of the heroics in black-and-white by their predecessors at Alberton.
The modern Showdown has done such; the derby has created its own history to leave the AFL with no regret in missing out on the traditional Port Adelaide-Norwood rivalry that seemed - as Adams noted - so alluring for a national competition.
Adelaide's victory while carrying long odds proved how the underdog often bites in the derby. By every pre-game calculation, Port Adelaide was considered a six-goal stronger prospect. To lose by 31 points, Port Adelaide is left with the same pain it felt from a similar upset in the first Showdown of 2004 - that ended a seven-derby winning streak - at Football Park.
Yet again - as in the Russell Ebert tribute match against Hawthorn at Adelaide Oval last season - Port Adelaide has failed while carrying huge expectations. This also happened when wearing the bars in the SANFL, as many remember from the 1976 grand final loss to Sturt at West Lakes in the grand final News football writer Alan Shiell said would be "an injustice" without a Port Adelaide triumph.
As club legend Geof Motley says, players make the jumper not vice versa.
The post-mortem from Showdown LIII will be tough on many. Port Adelaide tradition dictates the toughest criticism comes from within - and the Creed left by club patriarch Fos Williams demands no excuse be made for a loss that is tough to defend and even harder to explain.
Port Adelaide wants to honour its heritage with the bars being worn in Showdowns.
It is up to the players who wear this traditional jumper to make history in black-and-white.
ON REVIEW: Before the 2021-22 pre-season, Sam Powell-Pepper was put on notice. He was mentally tested by over-inflated stories of being trade bait to West Coast in his home State of Western Australia. He was physically challenged to present in tip-top condition ... or else.
The SPP story in football and life - with fatherhood - is one of the more inspiring chapters of a book that has many more pages to fill rather than the full stop that loomed at the end of the 2021 AFL season.
Powell-Pepper is a standout example to all the current Port Adelaide players of all they need to embrace today when wearing the jumper from yesteryear. Then history will live ...
