It's supposed to be Round 3. Port Adelaide at Marvel Stadium in the Melbourne Docklands on Saturday afternoon, playing North Melbourne in a game that was to have had the easiest of pre-game scripts.

But we are in "shutdown" for the second consecutive week of the AFL home-and-away season (until May 31). It does make you wonder how football fans once coped with waiting for the premiership season to begin on Anzac Day.

In "normal times", every preview of the planned North Melbourne game - and almost in every interview with the Port Adelaide coaching staff and players - would have reflected on avenging last season's 86-point loss in Round 22 at the Docklands ... the defeat that dragged Port Adelaide from eighth to 11th and out of hard-earned AFL finals contention.

This script can wait.

In these days of "footy flashbacks" on television and radio, if you could nominate a game to relive from the 35-game duel between Port Adelaide and North Melbourne in the AFL, would it be:

1)

The first win, after 10 attempts (reminiscent of the Port Adelaide-Norwood rivalry in the SANFL)? Football Park, May 17, 2003. Port Adelaide by 54 points with the Burgoynes, Peter and Shaun (four goals) making their mark as another potent set of brothers at Alberton; North Melbourne branding itself as the "Kangaroos" and Che Cockatoo-Collins finishes the game with 1.1, putting his AFL career tally at 199.

2)

The 2007 AFL preliminary final at Football Park with key forward Warren Tredrea taking a bow as Port Adelaide blitzed North Melbourne by a record 87 points. The non-encore performance the following week is still too raw to revisit.

3)

Port Adelaide's first AFL final, the 1999 elimination final against eventual premier North Melbourne at the MCG? It was a significant moment, three years into the club's AFL story.

4)

The season-opener at Football Park in 2010 when Port Adelaide led North Melbourne 70-26 after a 10-goal first half ... and coped with the sting in the kangaroo tail to win by 14 points after North Melbourne dominated the first 20 minutes of the last term?

5)

Or the Paul Stewart game in Round 8 on May 19, 2012? North Melbourne, on Cam Pedersen's goal in the ninth minute of the last term, led by 32 points - 14.9 (93) to 9.7 (61). Port Adelaide held North Melbourne dry while its own scoring sequence went with two goals to Jay Schulz, one to Justin Westhoff, four behinds, another goal to Schulz to make it a four-point game ... and then the Stewart's bold run to victory on the members' flank at West Lakes.

With 29.43 on the clock - and less than a minute to play - Stewart ran onto Matthew Broadbent's kick from half-back and worked off North Melbourne defender Michael Firrito's tackle. On entering the 50-metre arc, Stewart kicked the winning goal; Port Adelaide's sixth with no reply from the anchored Kangaroos.

Memorable as Stewart's running goal was, there just is not enough dust on the DVD of this match to make it the moment to relive today ... and it does not have the "avenge/revenge" script planned for this game day.

So it is to another game against a blue-and-white team, one that a year earlier had denied more premiership glory to Fos Williams as he was seeking to win his third consecutive flag as a non-playing coach at Port Adelaide - and eighth in a row as a coach after taking a break from Alberton between 1959-1961: Another of the SANFL's foundation clubs, South Adelaide.

From the archives is the black-and-white television film of a game that lives on at sportsman's nights if Port Adelaide premiership ruckman Steve Traynor is the guest. The label on the film can simply reads: Saturday, September 18, 1965. Adelaide Oval. SANFL second semi-final, Port Adelaide v South Adelaide.

History remembers this game served as a rematch of the 1964 grand final, won by South Adelaide (with the Panthers rising from last to first, as they did in 1935 under the coaching of Port Adelaide's 1928 premiership captain, William "Vic" Johnson).

Port Adelaide, as minor premier, had led the second-placed South Adelaide at every break of the 1965 second semi-final - 14 points at quarter-time; 25 at half-time and 17 at three quarter-time.

With two minutes left on the clock (a true countdown clock at Adelaide Oval), South Adelaide took the lead by one point, 16.11 to 16.10.

With six seconds to play, Port Adelaide was left with one "Hail Mary" play after Bob Elix intercepted South Adelaide captain-coach Neil Kerley's blasting kick to clear the play from defence. Elix's long kick from the northern end of the Oval's cricket pitch came off hands from a pack into Peter Mead's outstretched arms.

As Mead bounced the ball in front of him, he was tackled. Play on.

"Should have been a free kick (for holding-the-man, as the rules were written then)," said Mead, who came to know a fair bit about umpiring as a South Australian Football Hall of Famer with 285 league games, including six SANFL grand finals.

"Just as well I didn't get it ...."

With four seconds to play, Mead - who had chased his own spill - was again tackled after bouncing the ball. But this time the lone field umpire, Ken Cunningham, did penalise South Adelaide half-back Bob Schmidt for holding-the-ball, setting up one of South Australian football's classic after-the-siren moments.

Mead was at least 50 metres from goal. There was no 50-metre arc on the field in 1965. In the Press box, the estimates were "50-55 yards".

To Mead's side, he had team-mate Dave Gill "giving me a big serve, like a lunatic, about not missing it." Out of sight, but later in Mead's earshot as he watched the television replay, the lead commentator declared, "I don't think he can get the distance".

And that would have been a good call had it not been for the man who is just as famous as Mead for those few seconds that put Port Adelaide into its ninth consecutive SANFL grand final under Williams: Steve Traynor.

"Steve makes more of that kick than I do, I can assure you - and rightfully so," said Mead. "It was a tumble punt ... into the wind ... and Steve gets 10 out of 10 for holding back all of Adelaide Oval as they came over the fence (at the Torrrens end). The kick just made it over the line because Steve was keeping everyone back. There is no doubt that kick would have struggled to have made any score had Steve not been there.

"I went for it as hard as I could ... it was on the edge of my max (maximum kicking distance). But it was meant to be. I was lucky to be picked that day. Some days the luck rolls your way."

Mead's kick (and the five-point win) put Port Adelaide one game from becoming the SANFL's most-successful club (a title the Port Adelaide Football Club has never lost since 1965). The three-point win against Sturt in the grand final - at the best-attended sporting event at Adelaide Oval, 62,543 - gave Port Adelaide its 23rd SANFL premiership and captain Geof Motley his record ninth. Williams also had nine premierships at Port Adelaide to add to his flag won at West Adelaide in 1947.

"We were a great group of players who had formed our ways by being in a settled line-up for as many as five years," said Mead, a 55-game player for Port Adelaide from 1963-1967.

"We were coached by a demanding man (Fos Williams) who knew how to get the best out of you - and you wanted to give everything you had; that is what Port Adelaide is all about.

"And Port Adelaide also is all about winning. And in 1965, that's why you either loved us or hated us. And it is still that way.

"My time at Port Adelaide was short. But three grand finals - 1963, 1964 and 1965 - made it good."

Mead, after breaking an ankle in 1967, joined athletic groups for running sessions to aid his recovery - and moved from playing league football to umpiring on the boundary for one season and then, with the half-time replacement of field umpire John Caulfield at Glenelg Oval, to a stellar career with the whistle.

And how did the football world take to a Port Adelaide premiership player as a league umpire?

"There were (non-Port Adelaide) players who felt I favoured Port Adelaide; and there were Port Adelaide players who said I cheated against them ... there was no win for me," Mead recalled.

"I made decisions as quickly as I saw them," added Mead, a three-time Golden Whistle winner as the SANFL's best field umpire.

Mead today lives at Noosa, Queensland where he runs a housekeeping business with 40 staff servicing the resorts.

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