WHEN you have waited 150 years, what is another month or two? Port Adelaide's 150th "birthday game" - Saturday afternoon at Adelaide Oval in the club's original blue-and-white hoops - is no longer.
In playing Carlton, as a tribute to the 1914 Invincibles - who won the club's fourth Champions of Australia by convincingly beating the Blues at Adelaide Oval in the end-of-season play-off between SA and Victoria's premier teams - Port Adelaide would have been awash in the pride established in the club's foundation years.
And those of the Australian game itself.
There is good reason why Port Adelaide more than a decade ago lobbied the AFL to have the club's 1870 start-up date placed on the back collar of its guernsey.
Across the 18-team national competition, there are just four clubs with more time in the Australian game:
Melbourne, formed on July 10, 1858 as the nation's first football club - and the oldest in the world.
Geelong, July 18, 1859.
Carlton, July 1864.
North Melbourne, 1869 - and in the VFL-AFL since 1925.
Too often, particularly after the rift that split the Victorian Football Association to create the AFL's foundation in the Victorian Football League at the end of 1896, the Australian game has brushed away its history. Even in South Australia, much of the SANFL's pioneer story was conveniently erased to have the game's records stand from 1907, the season the SA Football Association became the SA Football League.
[For the history buffs, the name change was adopted at the SAFA's annual meeting on Monday, March 25, 1907 "to bring (SA football's) governing body into line with the majority of those in the other States and New Zealand associated with the Australasian Football Council].
As former AFL Commissioner and current Geelong Football Club president Colin Carter repeatedly notes, no other sport in the world would wipe out between 50-70 years of its rich history just to work off "convenient" calendar dates such as 1897 in Victorian football and 1907 in Adelaide.
Carter, in his papers to the AFL Commission, wants Australian football to "reclaim history".
“I look at the history of football and it offends me because it’s wrong,’’ Carter says. “Ignoring (the game's foundation seasons before the VFL start in 1897) is grossly unfair to the players and administrators of that time. It’s time to give them justice."
Hence why Port Adelaide does not carry on its back 1997, the entry date to the AFL. This weekend was to celebrate the Port Adelaide Football Club's start, from that "think tank" meeting between three community leaders at North Parade, Port Adelaide on April 20, 1870 to the formal foundation of the club (as a preliminary add-on to the Port Adelaide Cricket Club) on May 12, 1870 - and that first practice game on May 14, 1870 at Buck's Flat, Glanville.
Port Adelaide's first encounter with Carlton unfolded soon after: On Wednesday, June 15, 1881 at Adelaide Oval. Pre-game expectations were built on great enthusiasm for Port Adelaide. As The Advertiser noted: "The Ports at the beginning of the football season were regarded as a very hard team to beat. This idea arose from the fact of their team including in its ranks Watt and Sandilands of the 'crack' Geelong club, and Frayne, of Melbourne, besides possessing some promising young players selected in Port Adelaide.
"Their subsequent play to some extent justified the confidence placed in them by their partisans that they would make a good fight with Carlton."
To use Carter's theme, there is no "airbrushing" of how the scoreboard told a very different story to the previews - and the hopes of the Port Adelaide fans. After the Port Adelaide players arrived late at Adelaide Oval, they were dispatched early - losing 13.17 to 0.3 (or 13-0 as it was recorded at the time).
Much had changed by 1914 when the two pioneer clubs met again for a title - and Port Adelaide was invincible in one of the club's proudest seasons of unmatched achievements.
Even more change has overcome Australian football in its national era (and looms again with the COVID-19 pandemic). While the Port Adelaide Football Club is one of the game's oldest clubs, it is a relatively new player in the nationally extended VFL (AFL). On the eve of the "birthday game", the Port Adelaide numbers against the "traditional " Victorian-based teams underline how the only non-Victorian club to rise from suburbia has held its own on the big national stage.
Port Adelaide has winning record against seven of the 10 Victorian-based clubs of the old VFL:
| Carlton | 18-1-13 (win-loss-draw) |
| Essendon | 17-14 |
| Hawthorn | 19-16 |
| Footscray/Western Bulldogs | 16-14 |
| Melbourne | 21-13 |
| Richmond | 18-1-13 |
| St Kilda | 20-10 |
Only Collingwood (16-15), Geelong (22-1-10) and North Melbourne (22-13) have winning records against Port Adelaide in AFL premiership matches.
Port Adelaide has once before honoured the 1914 Invincibles in an AFL game - in the league's first heritage round in 2003. At Football Park, in the black-and-white bars jumper with white sleeves, Port Adelaide appropriately beat Carlton by 44 points, 18.17 (125) to 12.9 (81).
In 1914, the sun-baked Adelaide Oval scoreboard read at the end of the "Championship of Australia" game: Port Adelaide 9.16 (70), Carlton 5.6 (36) with Port Adelaide finishing the duel a man short.
The Mail reported Port Adelaide owed a medal to Angelo Congear "whose roving and forward play (for four goals) were invincible; he played the game of his life."
It was an extraordinary season for Port Adelaide - unbeaten in home-and-away football against its six SAFL rivals with the leanest winning margin at 21 points against North Adelaide; dominant in the grand final in which North Adelaide was held to just one goal; Australian champions against Carlton and untouched in a season-closing game at Jubilee Oval against the SAFA's combined team. The game, played on the public holiday to mark Eight-Hour Day (Labour Day), highlighted the power of the Invincibles who won 14.14 (98) to 5.10 (40).
The Daily Herald reviewed the 1914 season concluding: "There can be no two opinions as to the outstanding merit of the (Port Adelaide) team which has won the premiership for the second year in succession. They have gone through the season without a single defeat ... if the reason is to be put in a nutshell, (it is from) the all-round excellence, combined with a (powerful line in the centre) from goal to goal which, perhaps, is not surpassed in Australia.
"They knew this, and appreciated it, and they, with supreme accuracy, confined the game, whenever possible, to this splendid arm of their equipment. Port Adelaide always remember that the centre path was the shortest way to the opponent's goal and with such an overmastering centre there was no cause to lean heavily on the wingmen, good as they were.
"Their goalkicking has been almost beyond criticism, for they kicked more than 10 goals in every game they played."
It was a year to remember - and a phenomenal Port Adelaide team that should never be forgotten in Australian football history. All of it, since 1870 - as Colin Carter would say.
BIRD SEED
(Or, the little things we say count the most)
PORT ADELAIDE v CARLTON
IN AFL
Played 31 times. Port Adelaide won 18, drawn once, lost 13.
Port Adelaide won first two encounters and had 11-1-3 record by mid-2006.
Biggest win: 103 points by Port Adelaide in the clubs' AFL first meeting at Adelaide Oval on August 22, 2014.
Tighest game: The draw at Football Park in April 2005.
By the venues - Football Park (Port Adelaide 8-1-7), Princes Park (3-1), MCG (2-1), Docklands (2-4) and Adelaide Oval (3-0).
On State lines - SA (Port Adelaide 11-1-7); Victoria (7-6).
Most-memorable individual performance: Warren Tredrea, 18 kicks, 17 marks, four handpasses and 8.4 at Princes Park on May 9, 1998.
SIX MEMORABLE CLASHES
1) FIRST GAME
Round 10, 1997: Port Adelaide 14.9 (93) d Carlton 7.13 (55) at Football Park.
Port Adelaide was outside the top eight by percentage; Carlton was seventh. Both teams had 5-4 win-loss records, but the Blues were 101.1 in the percentage column; Port Adelaide had 95.4. In the lead-up, Carlton had beaten Fremantle at Princes Park to extend its winning streak to three; Port Adelaide had dominated Melbourne at Football Park, keeping the Demons without a goal in the first half.
Port Adelaide fielded a side with a total of 723 AFL games to the players' names; the most-experienced was captain Gavin Wanganeen with 135. Carlton's experience tally was at 2179 and included former Port Adelaide player Craig Bradley (224 VFL-AFL games), Stephen Kernahan (241), Peter Dean (222) and Brownlow Medallist Greg Williams (243).
Port Adelaide's accuracy - 5.2 to 1.6 - in the second term and strong finish - 4.2 to 0.1 - marked the difference on the scoreboard. On the field, half-back Adam Heuskes put his name before the All-Australian selectors and on the umpires' ballot for the three Brownlow Medal votes.
2) TREDREA!
Round 7, 1998: Port Adelaide 25.15 (165) d Carlton 11.10 (76) at Princes Park.
Warren Tredrea was playing his eighth AFL game; he had celebrated his 19th birthday just four months earlier and his resume included just seven goals. By the end of this match, everyone knew Port Adelaide had a star forward who would dominate the club's goalkicking list for more than a decade and command All-Australian selection for four consecutive seasons (2001-2004).
The numbers were staggering - 8.4 from 22 disposals and 17 marks. He finished the game in the medical rooms with a knee injury, a curse his father Gary also carried in his league football career at Port Adelaide (65 games, 1973-1979).
3) THE DRAW
Round 4, 2005: Port Adelaide 15.19 (109) drew with Carlton 16.13 (109) at Football Park.
Port Adelaide made a strong six-goal start, led at every change - but only by four points at three quarter-time. Carlton took the lead for the first time in the match with the opening goal of the last term from a former Port Adelaide ruckman, Barnaby French.
The final 12 minutes are a television executive's dream, particularly on a Saturday night. Deep in time-on, Carlton claimed a two-point lead with Trent Sporn's goal at 26:31. At 28:05, Adam Kingsley scored a behind to make it one point; at 29:46, Brendon Lade levelled the scores with Port Adelaide's 19th behind of the match - and the only draw of the 2005 season was complete. Those two premiership points ensured Port Adelaide's premiership defence continued to September by holding eighth spot with an 11-1-10 win-draw-loss record, ahead of the Western Bulldogs (11-11) and Fremantle (11-11) that both had stronger percentages.
4) LAST TIME AT WEST LAKES
Round 23, 2013: Port Adelaide 15.13 (103) lost to Carlton 15.14 (104) at Football Park.
Port Adelaide took to the last AFL game at West Lakes in the bars, to recognise the club's players who had featured in 13 SANFL league premiership teams at Football Park (10 won under John Cahill's watch and three with Stephen Williams). Carlton was in white.
Port Adelaide led 83-54 at three quarter-time, but with 5:13 was 90-92 behind after Tom Bell kicked Carlton's 13th goal from outside 50.
Port Adelaide defender Matthew Broadbent's run through the midfield and long "Hail Mary" kick found a goalpost - leaving the final margin at one point and putting the club's AFL story at Football Park at an end with at 127 wins, two draws and 84 losses. Remarkably, there was the post-game theme that Broadbent had deliberately aimed for the post to achieve a result that locked Carlton in the AFL finals (on Essendon being barred in the fall-out from the 2012 supplements saga) ... and put September out of Adelaide's reach. Conspiracy theories!
5) FIRST AT ADELAIDE OVAL
Round 22, 2014: Port Adelaide 20.20 (140) d Carlton 5.7 (37) at Adelaide Oval.
First in AFL company that is - and first between the clubs at Adelaide Oval since the 1914 Champions of Australia title. Robbie Gray dominated with 31 touches and four goals - and not surprisingly had the umpires' nod with three Brownlow Medal votes. The 103-point margin remains the biggest in any Port Adelaide-Carlton game.
The match marked Port Adelaide's ninth win in 12 matches at Adelaide Oval during the 2014 AFL home-and-away season in which Brownlow Medallist Gerard Healy, as a Fox Footy commentator, referred to the Oval as "The Portress".
6) MARK, NO MARK
Round 12, 2015: Port Adelaide 16.10 (106) lost to Carlton 17.8 (110) at the MCG.
Carlton had a caretaker coach, John Barker. Port Adelaide was on the march with a five-goal last quarter cleaning up the 23-point margin from three quarter-time that had become 29 (103-74) with Troy Menzel scoring for Carlton in the opening minute of the last term. With 1:10 on the clock - and Carlton holding a four-point lead - Port Adelaide midfielder-forward Sam Colquhoun was awarded a mark inside forward-50 off a pass from Brett Ebert. Controlling umpire Brent Wallace was then told by one of his colleagues that Ebert's kick had been touched by Kade Simpson, forcing the mark to be over-ruled and replaced with a field bounce.
