ANNIVERSARY dates are always tough to nail with the Port Adelaide Football Club.
Did the club start in late April 1870 when John Rann, George Ireland and Richard Leicester met on North Parade at Port Adelaide appreciating the need to give the youth of the growing Port Adelaide district a social activity to enhance their lives?
Or was it during the second week of May 1870 when Rann's Port Adelaide Cricket Club leaders met to add football to their agenda - or was it that first practice session at Buck's Flat at Glanville on Saturday, May 14?
Or should history start with that first competitive match on Saturday, July 28 when the first Port Adelaide football team - draped in blue-and-white hoops that matched the sailors' uniforms often seen on North Parade in the 1870s, as captured in S T Gill's paintings - played Young Australians for a 1-1 draw on the North Parklands?
It is all in 1870, however.
Port Adelaide's AFL story is much more convoluted, from July 1990 to the club's first official national league match on March 29, 1997 at the MCG against Collingwood. There are so many critical dates.
Not in question is when the club's call to the national stage began: Wednesday, July 4, 1990 when VFL secretary Alan Schwab is working the telephone network to find Port Adelaide president Bruce Weber. Three days later, both men sat face-to-face in Melbourne for two-and-a-half hours to set the frame work for Port Adelaide's entry to an expanding national competition.
One man was part of the full seven-year journey - from that telephone call from Schwab to ultimately watching as club president the start on the MCG in 1997. Seven years later the dream was fulfilled on the G in 2004 with the first national crown since the four Champions of Australia triumphs before World War I.
Greg Boulton's leadership - along with the courage and conviction of his fellow board colleagues from 1990-1997 - was recognised this year with induction to the Port Adelaide Football Club Hall of Fame.
"Unexpected," says Boulton of the honour.
"I have not craved public recognition. But I enjoy the satisfaction it has given people around me, particularly family," added Boulton who - as current club president David Koch noted at the Hall of Fame ceremony - knows the price paid by the families of Port Adelaide directors during the tumultuous first battle to achieve AFL status in 1990 that reaches its 33rd anniversary this week.
"And it brought back some memories ... we came through it," Boulton says.
Much of the 1990 saga is shrouded by conflicting tales - and emotional opinion takes on Port Adelaide's actions and motivations.
But the successful campaign from 1993 to confirmation of AFL promotion in December 1994 is an open book ... to an extent. And it is a tribute to Boulton's leadership of a club that could have been crushed under the weight of disappointment in 1990 and the backlash from a South Australian football community seeking retribution.
"Everyone was against us, everyone," recalls Boulton.
At Norwood - the only real challenger to Port Adelaide's national ambitions - the admiration of Boulton's leadership was well noted by club president, the late Nerio Ferraro. He had regarded Boulton's predecessor Bruce Weber as true to the Port Adelaide way on field - "break or break through," as Boulton put it last week.
But Boulton was, in Ferraro's eyes, strategically more challenging.
Accustomed to solving logistic issues as a leader in the IPEC transport group, Boulton's first challenge was breaking down the lingering anger against the Port Adelaide Football Club.
"That was evident when the SANFL set up its 'Future of SA Football' sub-committee," recalled Boulton of the initial stages of the so-called "second licence" debate in 1993.
"The process (towards setting up a second AFL club in Adelaide) included solving the SANFL's need to get back to an eight-team competition with a forced merger."
Norwood complied with a proposed amalgamation with Sturt.
"That was not going to be Port Adelaide was it?" notes Boulton. "Who was going to merge with the Port Adelaide Football Club?"
Ultimately, the AFL was to put down its own demands - as might be expected.
"Before the tenders for the second licence began with the SANFL," recalls Boulton, "(AFL leader) Ross Oakley came to Adelaide, met us all in a hotel on Hindley Street and set the parameters for finding a bid that would contrast the team that came from the first licence battle in 1990.
"It needed to be - 1. working class; 2. a club with noted success on the field; 3. a strong supporter base. That was not going to be a club that was merging for SANFL purposes.
"We left that meeting with (Norwood delegate) Phil Gallagher and (South Adelaide representative) Peter Alexander expressing their feelings forcibly."
And still the final field for the AFL licence was loaded with submissions that contradicted Oakley's guidelines. There was Port Adelaide on its own - and every other SANFL club in partnerships: Norwood-Sturt; Glenelg-South Adelaide; and the cartel of the rest, Central District, North Adelaide, West Adelaide and Woodville-West Torrens.
Port Adelaide filed its final submission with two suitcases loaded with business studies to justify its AFL entry. The rivals were basically putting their aspirations in a Manila folder.
From the ashes - and disappointment - of 1990, Boulton emerged as Weber's successor with one immediate thought: "If there was to be a second licence, we would be ready for it. There was a vibe we would have two AFL teams in Adelaide. We needed to be ready for it.
"We had the benefit of hindsight from our first bid. We did not have enough gold in the bank to fight for that first AFL licence when the debate went to the Supreme Court. The AFL wanted a quick decision on South Australia - not a long court battle.
"Second time, we made sure we had as much as $2 million. We started fundraising success stories such as the Magpies Odyssey car rally.
"We were determined to win the first time (in 1990). We were determined the second time. We never thought of failure. We planned for success. We were guaranteed nothing from the AFL (as a consequence of the first bid that broke the long-standing impasse between the SANFL and VFL).
"We never felt the AFL owed us.
"But we felt we owed it to the Port Adelaide Football Club - to its fans, to its heritage, to its culture that we had to be in the AFL.
"In hindsight, do we regret what happened in 1990? History speaks for itself as to where football is today with our actions. And where is the Norwood Football Club today?"
Weber, by his death in 2006, is not here today to answer why Port Adelaide acted as it did in 1990. Boulton is.
Was there a "lightbulb moment" that led to the 1990 bid?
"No," says Boulton. "From our strategic meetings at the time it was as evident - as Big Bob McLean had been saying since 1982 - that there would be an AFL team based in Adelaide. We had to be ready for that. We were thinking that way well before 1990."
Why did Port Adelaide delegate Dave Boyd vote with the SANFL at the club's' meeting at Victor Harbour in 1990 to put off the AFL call until 1993?
"We, as a board, wanted to abstain from that vote," Boulton said. "We simply did not want to say where we stood. We did not want to show our hand. We wanted to keep that discussion among ourselves - that is why we wanted to abstain from a position with the SANFL."
And the pride in the on-field team that for four months defied the hatred towards Port Adelaide to win the 1990 SANFL premiership?
"There was great pressure on John Cahill and his players," Boulton recalled. "We demanded continued on-field success to justify our ambition to be in the AFL. Winning the flag was fundamental to our 1990 bid - as 1994 was with that grand final triumph while Ross Oakley sat there at Football Park knowing he had a ready made supporter base with Port Adelaide.
"Jack did it, his teams did it ... under amazing pressure. They put a lot on the line and the hardest footnote from that story is how when we achieved our AFL licence, so many of those Port Adelaide players could not be part of our inaugural AFL squad. That is one of the hardest - toughest - memories from a seven-year battle to get to the AFL. But we don't forget what those players did for us on the field."
Many want a statue at Alberton to keep the memory of Bruce Weber alive.
Boulton has his living legacy. As he said to the club faithful at Alberton in December 1994 - while holding the AFL licence that was hard earned - "There will be a Port Adelaide Football Club forever."
