Russell Ebert's third SANFL league game was on a Thursday afternoon - no ordinary Thursday - at Adelaide Oval in 1968. It was a grand final rematch. But more importantly, most importantly, it was Anzac Day.
In his first six seasons of his club record 392-game career, Ebert played on Anzac Day four times at Adelaide Oval that was a two-up throw from the end of the Anzac march along King William Street.
"With (coach and war veteran) Fos (Williams) having the Diggers in the room, with their medals polished for the Anzac Day march before the game," recalled Ebert, the four-time Magarey Medallist.
"There was Bob Quinn (the Port Adelaide Magarey Medallist who was awarded the Military Medal for his courageous acts and leadership while under enemy attack at Tobruk in 1941).
"There was sadness (for those who had not returned from the battlefront or not returned for the annual Anzac Day march).
"There was elation for seeing old mates, old comrades.
"And on this day, football was their outlet. They embraced the occasion; we (as Port Adelaide) players absorbed their eagerness for the game. They pumped us up.
"We certainly appreciated what they had done in war to give us what we had in peace - and on Anzac Day it was a game of footy, but a game like no other."
Williams, a returned serviceman from the World War II campaigns, had every right to speak in military terms and themes in his pre-match.
"He was emotional," said Ebert. "Leadership, courage, looking after your mates - play like soldiers ... and show respect for the real soldiers who were there to watch us. It was their day."
Ebert had grown up at Waikerie in the Riverland knowing more of the Anzac legend than most league footballers. Around him - from Loxton to Renmark to Barmera - were veterans starting their post-war lives on the fruit blocks granted to their return from World War II.
"I grew up knowing just the significance of the Anzac story from those veterans and their memories, as difficult as it was for them to tell their recollections from the war," said Ebert, born in 1949 - four years after the war's end.
"In 1955, the school assignment was an essay on what Anzac Day meant. For research, you speak to your uncles, your aunties to learn of their wartime experiences. They never spoke too much, not when their stories were pained from memories of POW (prisoner of war) camps or the other horrors of war. You not only learned what Anzac Day meant - you learned to respect the men and women who made great sacrifices in war, for us."
Ebert drove to Adelaide that Thursday morning, reached Adelaide Oval as the siren sounded to start the reserves game at 12.01pm. And as the Diggers rounded up the beers after their march, Ebert collected his boots to continue being Port Adelaide's answer at the goalfront in the absence of Test cricket-playing full forward Eric Freeman.
At three quarter-time, with Port Adelaide leading by 35 points, Williams approached Ebert at the huddle to declare: "Kick two goals this quarter (after 4.4 in the previous three) and we will win."
With no more than a sandwich and a slice of fruit cake in his stomach - and the understanding of the need to honour the Anzacs on his mind - Ebert found the energy to kick two goals. Port Adelaide won by 19 points to be unbeaten after three games.
"And then I was back in the car driving home to Waikerie at the end of a terrific day," Ebert said. "And the next day it was back to work at the Savings Bank at Waikierie."
The Port Adelaide Football Club has a strong commitment to honouring the Anzacs with its annual requests to the AFL on the fixture including the wish to play a home game at Adelaide Oval in the Anzac Round.
This was to have been an Anzac Day night clash with the Western Bulldogs this season. The match is another loss from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Port Adelaide Archives Collection - the 150-year account of the club's rise from a social club in 1870 to a powerhouse in Australian football - pays special tribute to the Port Adelaide footballers who have served their country in war and in military service.
LEST WE FORGET
Adelaide was the setting of the first "Anzac Day" - on October 13, 1915 when the Eight-Hour Day (Labour Day) public holiday was dedicated to the raising awareness and funds for the servicemen in battle in World War I. The first solemn Anzac Day ceremonies to honour those lost at Gallipoli was on April 25, 1916 - and each Australian state observed an Anzac Day public holiday by the late 1920s.
SA league football, which traditionally had started its premiership season in May before World War II, had its first Anzac Day game (West Torrens v Sturt at Adelaide Oval) in 1949. The annual tradition of a grand final rematch began in 1958 with Port Adelaide and Norwood.
The SANFL recognises the player who upholds the Anzac tradition in the grand final rematch with the Bob Quinn Medal, honouring the Port Adelaide legend who won the Military Medal for his courage under enemy fire in north Africa during World War II.
Some notable Port Adelaide "first moments" on Anzac Day:
1) FIRST ANZAC MATCH
Port Adelaide's first league match on Anzac Day was in 1952 - but not as a grand final rematch with North Adelaide. Rather, the opponent on the Friday afternoon at Adelaide Oval was Glenelg.
With 27,000 at Adelaide Oval, Port Adelaide won by 43 points - and denied itself a bigger margin by kicking 11.22. Centre half-back Roger Clift proved he had overcome an injury curse from 1951 to be the game's dominant player. Captain-coach Fos Williams, fellow rover Ray Whitaker and wingman Harold McDonald set the tone of the game in Port Adelaide's favour.
Advertiser football writer Harry Kneebone noted at the end of the match: "Port Adelaide showed very distinctly that individual effort, however brilliant, on the part of the opposing teams will not stop the Alberton team from winning another title this year. To defeat Port Adelaide, its opponents must either break down or match the quick-thinking combined play with which that team extricates itself from tight corners and turns defence into attack."
Port Adelaide finished the home-and-away season in second spot, one win behind North Adelaide. It made a straight-sets exit from the SANFL's top-four finals, losing to North Adelaide by three points in the second semi-final and to Norwood by 11 points in the preliminary final.
From 1951 to 1968, Port Adelaide always ranked in the SANFL's top three.
2) FIRST ANZAC GRAND FINAL REMATCH
Port Adelaide's first grand final rematch to fall on the Anzac Day public holiday was on Monday, April 26, 1954 - against West Torrens, the winners of the 1953 SANFL premiership by seven points - with 28,000 at Adelaide Oval.
A dominant third term - 5.5 to 2.0 - set up Port Adelaide's nine-point win with Advertiser chief football writer Keith Butler concluding the victory was built on a "blistering last half of high-pressure football". After dominating play - with the ball in Port Adelaide's forward half for 75 per cent of the game, by Butler's count - captain-coach Fos Williams made strategic changes after half-time.
From Butler's notebook: "The change came in the third quarter when Luke, who had been trounced by Carr at centre wing, was moved to a half-forward flank, Jaggard went to centre wing and Motley took over at centre half -forward. But it was Garland's grand marking at full forward that enabled Port Adelaide to establish a superiority in attack that it had lacked earlier in the match."
From 1955 to 1960, when Port Adelaide started each season as the defending SANFL champion from its record "Six in a Row" run of premierships, the club featured in Anzac Day rematches in every season bar 1955 when the league had Norwood and West Adelaide play the stand-alone match on the Monday public holiday.
3) FIRST ANZAC DAY AT THE PARK
Port Adelaide's first appearance at Football Park - then the new home of SA football - on Anzac Day was in 1977 for the grand final rematch with Sturt.
Just seven months after losing the 1976 grand final to the Double Blues - the match News chief football writer Alan Shiell pre-declared would stand as an "injustice" without a Port Adelaide victory - John Cahill's team put away some of the deep pain from September '76 with a commanding third term.
Leading by a goal at half-time (8.1 to 6.7), Port Adelaide ended the contest with a nine-goal third term to lead by almost 10 goals at the last change. The 60-point margin at the end (21.9 to 11.9) can never be described as avenging what had happened on grand final day when Football Park was overwhelmed by a record crowd of 66,897 (that was actually closer to 80,000 considering SANFL officials stopped counting the fans streaming through the gates).
The grand final rematch on a Monday afternoon at West Lakes drew 32,395.
4) FIRST AFL ANZAC GAME AT ADELAIDE OVAL
Anzac Day fell on a Thursday; Port Adelaide honoured the Anzacs at Adelaide Oval for the first time with an Anzac Round game in the Sunday twilight timeslot - against Geelong in 2014.
Port Adelaide won by 40 points (16.11 to 9.13) - to join Hawthorn and Geelong at the top of the AFL ladder - and midfielder Travis Boak (32 disposals, two goals) was awarded the Peter Badcoe VC Medal for the first of three times (followed by 2015 and 2019).
The medal was first struck in 2004 to honour Major Peter Badcoe, who was killed in action during the Vietnam War and was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross - the highest military decoration in the Australian Honours System. The VC accords "recognition to persons who in the presence of the enemy, perform acts of the most conspicuous gallantry, or daring or pre-eminent acts of valour or self-sacrifice; or display extreme devotion to duty."
5) FIRST AFL ANZAC DAY GAME
On a Sunday afternoon at Football Park in 2004 - against the Western Bulldogs, as part of a triple-header of Anzac Day AFL games from coast-to-coast with Collingwood-Essendon at the MCG and Fremantle-Geelong at Subiaco Oval in Perth.
There were 26,839 at West Lakes; Port Adelaide sharped its goalkicking in the second term while the Western Bulldogs did the opposite (scoring 1.10 in the second term) and the game was pretty much told on the scoreboard at the end - Port Adelaide 17.17 (119) won by 55 points as the Western Bulldogs scored 7.22 (64).
The notable moment - most significant considering Port Adelaide had lost captain and lead ruckman Matthew Primus with a season-ending knee injury two weeks earlier - was Dean Brogan limping out of the first ruck contest and to the bench after landing awkwardly on an ankle. Brendon Lade completed the ruck assignment while Brogan feared a serious injury, even bone chips in the ankle. He was back in training three days later and playing the next weekend.
Port Adelaide midfielder Josh Carr was awarded the first Peter Badcoe Medal.
