PANDEMIC-wrecked season such as 2020 excluded, Port Adelaide has needed more wins (13 rather than 12) this season to qualify for an AFL top-eight finals series. And never before has Port Adelaide locked its passage to September so early - game No.15 this year, the win against Essendon at the MCG on July 1.
The following eight weeks - as senior coach Ken Hinkley has repeatedly stated - have been about "finishing as high as we can".
This could be first with the club's fifth AFL minor premiership should both top-ranked Collingwood and second-placed Brisbane trip over against Essendon and St Kilda respectively at the weekend. Percentage might be an issue, however - as it was in deciding Port Adelaide's fate during its inaugural AFL season in 1997.
It certainly could be second - with the reward of a home qualifying final at Adelaide Oval - should Brisbane lose for the first time this season at the Gabba.
It is most likely to be status quo in third spot with an away qualifying final at the Gabba or MCG ... and it still could be fourth behind Collingwood, Brisbane and Melbourne with the first final, a double-chance qualifying final, on the road in Queensland or Victoria.
Port Adelaide will follow Collingwood and Brisbane in the running order during the weekend's home-and-away season finish - hosting non-contender Richmond at Adelaide Oval from noon on Sunday.
For the third time - after 2004 and 2021 with 22 home-and-away games - Port Adelaide could finish a qualifying series with 17 wins, this time from 23 matches ... and the 58th win from 86 games in the past four seasons (67.5 per cent winning record).
Since being promoted to the AFL in 1997 - and right from the start with that heady inaugural season - Port Adelaide has had some memorable finishes to a home-and-away season. One, the 2002 play-off for the AFL minor premiership, remains one of the classic matches of the national competition.
Not all five home-and-away finales were about qualifying for the major round - such as 2011 when Port Adelaide was seeking to avoid the wooden spoon and searching for its future amid heavy politics on each side of the SA-Victoria border.
The trip down memory lane begins from the beginning of the AFL journey in 1997.
ROUND 22 v St Kilda, Sunday August 31, 1997 at Football Park.
BEFORE Sunday twilight matches were the norm on the AFL fixture, the league executives recognised this game had significant ramifications to the finals equation - and delayed the start to 5.10pm to make it a stand-alone match with total national exposure on free-to-air television.
Those extra three hours also helped many compose themselves while the world learned of the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris. The usual escape from “reality” with a football game certainly could not be part of the experience at Football Park on this night - and the mood on the terraces at West Lakes did reflect this.
Port Adelaide simply had to win against top-ranked St Kilda at West Lakes to replace Brisbane in eighth spot. The Queensland-based team had - by losing to West Coast on the WACA Ground in Perth on Friday night - left the door open for Port Adelaide to mark its inaugural national league season with finals action.
At round 17, Port Adelaide was ranked fifth with a 10 wins - equal second with percentage splitting Adelaide, St Kilda, Sydney, Port Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs.
Finding the extra two wins to secure a finals berth proved elusive. From round 18, there was a hefty 85-point loss to then top-ranked Geelong at Kardinia Park, a seven-point loss in the Showdown IV after failing to score in the last term, the draw with Brisbane at the Gabba and another 85-point loss, this time to Richmond at the MCG.
By Round 22, Port Adelaide's equation for history - as the first non-Victorian team to play finals in its first national league season - required a win in the finale at Football Park.
Port Adelaide opened well - led by eight points at quarter-time and was paying for inaccuracy (9.11) at three quarter-time when St Kilda was ahead by a goal before winning by 33 points.
Port Adelaide was left in ninth spot with 11 wins and a draw - and out of finals action by an inferior percentage to Brisbane (91.8 to 105.2).
As a start to a national story, this was a strong opening chapter.
ROUND 22 v Brisbane, Saturday August 31, 2002 at Football Park.
FROM 1997, the rivalry with Brisbane was intense - and dramatic. The repeat draws at the Gabba in 1997 and 1998, the pre-season Cup final at West Lakes in 2001, the qualifying final at the Gabba ... and now this play-off for the AFL minor premiership, plus the certainty of home finals during an era when the AFL had contractual commitments for at least one preliminary final at the MCG.
The home-and-away season closer was true to football as we had known it for decades - a 2.10pm start on Saturday at a sun-drenched Football Park.
This was the classic play-off with a clearly defined agenda. Brisbane was top-ranked with a superior percentage - 139 to 133.6. Port Adelaide simply had to win to claim its first AFL minor premiership.
Port Adelaide was denied - by the broken jaw suffered in the Showdown a few weeks earlier - the experience of key defender Darryl Wakelin. Necessity brought the inspiring match-up of Chad Cornes at centre half-back with Brisbane lion heart Jonathan Brown. Cornes held Brown to one goal, had 26 possessions himself - and, as is often the case with defenders, was not recognised in the Brownlow Medal votes that were taken by midfielders.
After leading by a game-high 33 points during the third term and by 28 points at three quarter-time, Port Adelaide fell two points behind deep into time-on ... and was saved by Roger James scoring the team's lucky 13th goal in the 29th minute.
The six-point win locked away top spot for Port Adelaide - the first of three consecutive minor premierships leading up to the breakthrough 2004 crown.
ROUND 24 v Melbourne, Sunday September 4, 2011 at Adelaide Oval.
NOT every page in Port Adelaide's dark chapters from 2010 to 2012 are loaded with gloom. Indeed, at the darkest hour there was the brightest dawn at Adelaide Oval - just before the $535 million makeover that changed a football club, a city and a State.
"We were told hell would freeze over before we played at Adelaide Oval," recalls then Port Adelaide Football Club president Brett Duncanson.
AFL season 2011 did have the home-and-away season close with Port Adelaide hosting Melbourne at Adelaide Oval in the most joyful play-off to avoid the wooden spoon for the first time since 1900.
Port Adelaide did avoid that pain - and remains the only AFL club without a wooden spoon - by beating Melbourne by eight points.
But the most significant achievement this day was from the Port Adelaide fans - who had been mocked for their absences from Football Park - in declaring they wanted to be at the true home of South Australian football in the city confines at Adelaide Oval.
And there was a victory for a Port Adelaide board under siege.
"I deliberately walked the line outside the oval that day knowing if we had 10,000 at the game we would get smacked," Duncanson said. On that sunny Sunday afternoon in late August, there was a full house of 29,340.
"The overwhelming reaction from the fans was, ‘Make sure we come here’. They told me Adelaide Oval felt like home, something Football Park was not.
"Halfway through the second quarter, (AFL chief executive) Andrew Demetriou was saying to me, ‘You guys were right (about Adelaide Oval rather than a new city venue near the old Coca-Cola bottling plant at Port Road). Adelaide Oval is going to be sensational’.
"I go to Adelaide Oval today proud of what we set up. It formed the nucleus of our resurgence as a football club and has done pretty well for the Crows, SANFL and the city as well. Even the Adelaide Football Club would acknowledge Adelaide Oval has far exceeded expectations.
"I am overwhelming proud of what we did to make Adelaide Oval work."
ROUND 23 v Carlton, Saturday August 31, 2013 at Football Park
BEFORE the return to Adelaide Oval from 2014, there was the exit from Football Park. It is a strange note that Port Adelaide was handed in the AFL fixture the right to bring down the final curtain at West Lakes.
Most notable for this game was Port Adelaide walking away from Football Park in the same way it arrived for its first game at West Lakes (on Saturday, June 8, 1974 against South Adelaide) - in black and white.
For just the third time in its AFL story - after heritage rounds in 2003 and 2007 - Port Adelaide wore the black-and-white bars and laced the guernsey with a tribute to the 13 SANFL league premiership teams that carried the Thomas Seymour Hill trophy from Football Park.
The fans came back - 45,127 of them to mark the biggest crowd to a Port Adelaide home game in four years and second-best non-Showdown attendance (behind the 46,439 who watched the Round 22 finale against Brisbane in 2002).
Carlton won, by one point, to qualify for the finals.
Port Adelaide closed its Football Park story with the AFL chapter marked by 213 games, 127 wins, two draws, 2903 goals and total crowds of 5,586,783 at 186 home games and 10 finals.
ROUND 23 v Western Bulldogs, Friday August 20, 2021 at the Docklands
AT 10.01pm, seconds after (as they say) "a most famous victory", Port Adelaide president David Koch was photographed having fallen to ground not spilling a drop of his red wine and having heart massage at his Sydney home.
"Bloody hell," Koch declared to sum up the two-point win against the Western Bulldogs in Melbourne that was secured off Robbie Gray's boot - a victory that came with the right to hold second spot and a home qualifying final at Adelaide Oval against Geelong.
The Western Bulldogs led for 105 minutes before Port Adelaide claimed the lead (66-63) from Gray's goal with six agonising minutes still to unfold in one of the most-intense games played in 2021.
Willem Drew, in his 32nd AFL game, savoured an extraordinary battle with Western Bulldogs playmaker Tom Liberatore, holding him to just 17 touches.
Gray's goal - from a set shot at 35 metres on a 45-degree angle - added to his league-record catalogue of kicks that won matches for Port Adelaide.
The six minutes that followed tested more than Koch's heart.
One season ends on Sunday. Another begins with a qualifying final a fortnight later.
