MAY 2, 1914 - yesterday, 109 years ago; a day to remember. The world was on the edge of war, the one that was supposed to "end all wars". The Port Adelaide Football Club started a campaign that is unrivalled in South Australian football history and created a club ethos measured by premierships.
By the end of the first round of league matches - when all seven clubs had faced each of their rivals - the Adelaide newspapers were describing Port Adelaide as "invincible". They formally became "The Invincibles" four months later with an unbeaten record in all SA Football League matches, a charity game against a select team from the rest of the league - and as Champions of Australia by beating VFL premier Carlton.
They are recognised in Port Adelaide Football Club folklore - and legend - for their phenomenal record of total dominance; a moment that defined the club even after the world was dramatically changed by five years of futile war.
For the AFL's first "heritage round" in 2003, at a home game at Football Park appropriately against Carlton, Port Adelaide wore the black-and-white bars for the first time in AFL company to honour the "Invincibles".
But who were these 21 men in black-and-white who put the exclamation mark on a defining decade for the Port Adelaide Football Club - an era that changed the club's image by far more than a jumper?
At the start of the 1914 season - in the Town Hall at Port Adelaide - club president Dr Alexander Vigors Benson paid tribute to players who in 1913 won the SAFL premiership and the Champions of Australia title by beating VFL premier Fitzroy.
"They are," said Dr Benson, "men of good character, both on the field and in private life. There is no-one who could point the finger of scorn at any of them."
The large gathering of members cheered in response.
"Wherever the team has been," added Dr Benson, "the general verdict was, 'They're jolly fine fellows."
More cheers came from the members who had taken their own collection to strike medals for each player from the 1913 squad at Alberton.
A year later, the 1914 Invincibles were worthy of statues.
Jack Londrigan was their captain. Originally from Sturt, Londrigan stepped out of league football at the end of the 1910 season to join amateur team Adelaide University in the belief the students would gain entry to the league to clear away the bye (a nuisance settled in 1921 with Glenelg's admission to the league).
A resolute defender, Londrigan was denied a longer career - and the challenge of a grand rivalry that was emerging with his former team-mates at Sturt - by the outbreak of World War I with league football being shut down.
Harold Oliver was their vice-captain. His reputation as a generational player who made fans flock through the turnstiles carried to the base camps of the Anzacs along the Nile where soldiers leapt into marking contests in their scratch matches yelling "Olivah-h-h-h!". He did resume league football after the war to captain Port Adelaide's 1921 premiership - and become one of the first stars to be known as worthy but without the Magarey Medal.
Jack Ashley was awarded the Magarey Medal as the SAFL's fairest and most brilliant player in 1914. Born in Port Adelaide, Ashley had carried the promise of "champion" from the moment he joined the club's junior ranks.
Jack Dunn topped the league's goalkicking with 33 goals. He was one of the newest members of the team - and clearly the recruit of the year. As with many of this time, his career - that spanned two States, South Australia and Tasmania - was interrupted by war and ended at Port Adelaide in 1919.
Seven Port Adelaide players went to Sydney to represent South Australia at the Australian National Football Carnival - and centre half-back Jack Robertson returned with a gold medal as the best player of the tournament as judged by the writers at the "Referee" newspaper. Ashley, Oliver, Angelo Congear, Frank Magor, Alex McFarlane and Joseph Watson were the other "Invincibles" who ranked second to Victoria in the six-team carnival.
The campaign began with a practice match against Semaphore Central on April 6, 1914 when Port Adelaide revealed the significant recruit of the new season - Dunn, who had transferred from West Torrens. "He is a fine mark and kick," the match notes say. "(Dunn) did good work forward, having been responsible for five of Port Adelaide's 14 goals."
The 1914 home-and-away season began for Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on May 2 with a 23-point win against South Adelaide.
By mid-June, after every league team had played its rivals once came the headline that stayed true and remains more than a century later: "PORT ADELAIDE INVINCIBLE". Port Adelaide had just "crushed" West Adelaide - 14.21 to 4.6 by 75 points at Alberton Oval - with the scribes noting "the black and whites seemed to do as they wished".
Port Adelaide fielded just 21 players in 1914; a dozen featured in every official match, the 14 (that included two finals) for the league premiership, the Champions of Australia play-off with Carlton and the challenge match with a select State team.
They were so dominant in the SAFL home-and-away series - where they established an average winning margin of 46 points - that the premiership table came to show only Port Adelaide having scored more (1068 points) than it conceded (510). The next-best was eventual grand finalists North Adelaide with a minus 46-point tally (723-769) on a 6-6 win-loss count.
This was, Port Adelaide first - daylight second.
Port Adelaide's work in September and October was of shock and awe proportions - a 54-point win against Sturt in the semi-finals; the 93-point thrashing while conceding just one goal to North Adelaide in the grand final; a 34-point win against Carlton for the Champions of Australia title at Adelaide Oval and then, across the street to the east of the Oval, a 58-point win against South Australia at Jubilee Oval.
(The 1914 SAFL grand final started eight minutes after its scheduled 3pm first bounce to allow the goal umpires to find their flags).
"From the beginning (of the season) they have towered head and shoulders above the other teams," Spectator wrote of Port Adelaide in his summary of the 1914 season.
"(Since 1897) they have missed playing off for the premiership on four occasions - and on one of those occasions they were minor premiers, but disqualified for refusing to play under an umpire. Only once (since 1897 when the league introduced boundaries along electoral districts to determine recruiting zones in Adelaide) have they been left out of the first four. That was in 1900 when they had a disastrous season and finished bottom."
Only two other Port Adelaide teams have come close to the shadow of the "Invicibles" - each in eras that reaffirmed all that was defined of the Port Adelaide Football Club by the Invincibles: Fos Williams' 1956 line-up that lost just one match while Dave Boyd claimed the Magarey Medal and Rex Johns topped the league goalkicking charts; and John Cahill's record breakers of 1980 when Tim Evans scored 146 goals and Russell Ebert claimed his fourth Magarey Medal.
After Port Adelaide forfeited the 1902 premiership - refusing, as minor premier to play South Adelaide in the semi-finals in protest to the appointment of field umpire Phil Kneebone - the club came to to the 1914 season with the record of:
EIGHT minor premierships - 1903, 1904, 1906, 1907, 1909, 1911, 1912, 1913.
TEN grand finals - 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913.
FOUR premierships - 1903, 1906, 1910, 1913.
It was an era of sustained dominance.
The image from the magenta years of the 19th century of being bridesmaids - usually to Norwood or South Adelaide - was not quite gone. As Dr Benson noted at that annual meeting at the start of the 1914 season, "It is not fitting that our team should be repeatedly runners-up."
Port Adelaide was addicted to winning - or, more to the point, not losing.
For 32 matches - from Round 8, 1913 (beating Norwood at Adelaide Oval) to Round 9, 1915 (winning against Sturt at Alberton Oval) - Port Adelaide established an unbeaten run that has remained unchallenged in South Australian football history.
At the 1915 annual meeting, Dr Benson was again praising the club's players as "manly on the field and for their gentlemanly conduct off it."
The notable statement at this annual meeting was the observation of how football success was changing the perception of Port Adelaide, the city.
"Port Adelaide for many years bore the stigma of 'Mudholia' but this sobriquet (nickname) is vanishing, particularly in the football world," said vice-president A W Brown with the members reacting with applause.
The Invincibles had not only changed the image of a football club, but also a community.
It lived to a mantra reaffirmed by the Port Adelaide Football Club a decade ago - Exist to win premierships and make our community proud.
The Invincibles have a legacy that stands the test of time, even the passage from century to century.
