The AFL has committed to including the records of players killed in active service from outside Victoria in its honour roll from next year, after a push by people in other states – including Port Adelaide supporters.

The AFL put out a list of players killed on active service during the Boer War, World War I and World War II this week but it included only those who had played for clubs in Victoria.

The operator of the @Ports1870 twitter handle was one of the first to react, saying the omission of servicemen from the Port Adelaide Football Club was “absolutely disgraceful”

“In truth the AFL is a national competition and servicemen from the WAFL, SANFL and TSL should also be included,” the Twitter message read.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane was questioned about the matter on ABC Radio Adelaide and said from next year, the AFL hoped to recognise servicemen from the SANFL and WAFL, plus those from other states and territories.

“We’re well aware that we have a significant gap for players outside of Victoria and it’s something we need to address and we intend to from now,” Mr Keane said.

“Basically the records that we’ve had are for players who originally played for a Victorian-based club who died on service either in the Boer War, World War I and World War II.

“Those records have been compiled by people outside the game over the years and kindly provided to us and we’ve always re-printed them basically as an item of interest for those who wanted to know.”

Port Adelaide has a long and proud history of players serving their country and has recognised as many of them as possible on its website here and in a book called Footballers to Foot Soldiers written by Matthew Agius.

Mr Keane said it was a good point that other elite state league players went away on service and didn’t return.

“The first thing we can do is, while we don’t have the resources to gather all that information, certainly we’re going to put the call out publicly to all the senior state-league clubs in those competitions for whatever records they have of players who went on service and then equally put the call out to the general public and try and gather information,” he said.

“We think this will be a gradual process and even with Victorian players we’ve had names added in the last two or three years and 50 and 60 years after people have died in some cases when we’ve been able to verify their service record and playing record.

“The callout will go out after this weekend but we have been looking at this for a couple of weeks having had the discussion last year and saying we don’t have the information, we don’t have the resources ourselves because what’s been provided to us is in some cases six or seven years of work by an author writing a book.. but that doesn’t stop us from making the effort and trying to approach people and anyone who has the information we’d like to hear from them.

“There are people who feel very strongly about this, and rightly so. Hopefully we can eventually recognise everyone.”

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