"There is more to football than just knowing the score."

The late Des Flavel, a pioneer in sports telecasting in Adelaide, made this line the catchphrase slogan of his station's exclusive coverage of SANFL football as the game went from black-and-white to colour in the 70s - and not just in its vision.

He also lived the theme in how football was presented beyond the simple numbers on the scoreboard.

Flavel orchestrated the famous "Comment Wally May" line, demanding the former Essendon and Sturt hardman make the tough calls on the plays that had unfolded before the Channel Nine cameras - and thousands of viewers in lounge rooms all across the state.

Flavel created the panel shows, immediately after the full round of five Saturday afternoon matches and the Sunday midday football show. He was indeed a pioneer without peer.

Five decades after Flavel emphasised there is more to a game of football than the final score, it is no surprise more and more coaches, players and administrators sing "I don't like Mondays" (appropriately released by the Boomtown Rats in 1979 when Flavel penned his key mantra on how football was to be presented from his North Adelaide television studios and outside-broadcast units in SANFL suburbia).

Monday is - when football resumes - analysis from dawn to midnight. Everyone has an opinion on just how the scoreboard came to be on Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. Talkback radio, podcasts, social media, newspaper columnists, television panel shows from the couch at Fox Footy to the hot desks at Talking Footy (Channel Seven) and Footy Classified (Channel Nine) ... and now even the league's and the club's official websites.

Everyone has an opinion.

Many say it is a new phenomenon. The first seemingly obvious change came at the time Flavel was winning the rights to live telecasts - rather than delayed replays or simply showing the last quarter - in the late 1970s. Newspaper match reports could no longer simply begin, as they did after the 1936 SANFL season finale, with: "The grand final resulted in Port Adelaide 13.19 defeating Sturt 14.10." Nor could they be the kick-by-kick, goal-by-goal account, particularly when the majority of fans had seen the game unfold on the "Big Replay" or in a live presentation on television.

As Flavel noted, there is much more to a football game - particularly a grand final - than just knowing the score. In this SANFL season finale, that carried a special trophy to mark South Australia's centenary from proclamation in 1836, there certainly was the question of just what did Port Adelaide defender Bobby Meers say as he stood the mark to make Sturt's legendary goalkicker P. T. "Bo" Morton completely miss a set shot from 30 metres - and reward Port Adelaide with the flag after a dramatic last-quarter comeback?

In Adelaide, 1961 All-Australian forward Geoff Kingston, in his role as chief football writer at The Advertiser, changed the tone of football match reports with a masterful touch in taking the story beyond the score. Very few could match Kingston for capturing attention with his first 25-30 words. Most memorable is one of Kingston's Monday reviews from Alberton Oval that began not with what had happened on the field or in the changerooms from 2.20pm Saturday to the final siren, but outside the northern gates on Brougham Place as night fell and a father dealt with his son's dismay (or vice versa) from Port Adelaide's rare home loss to South Adelaide.

It is fair to say the old switchboard at The Advertiser's old King William Street building did melt down. Yet Kingston's match report had perfectly captured the agony of unexpected defeat for a Port Adelaide fan.

Experienced West Australian football writer John Townsend learned last week the move from recording the score - to capture the essence of the result - might not have been a recent concept inspired by newspapers losing ground to television. He found a 1915 newspaper report of a WAFL game between Perth and South Fremantle that began with: "Perth lost. They deserved to." Short. Sharp. And to the point.

The power of the pen - and the commentary box and the panel shows - has never been more influential in shaping the storyline in Australian football. But is it a new concept with the media pre-empting rather than reporting the story?

Apparently not.

The SANFL - formed as the SA Football Association on April 30, 1877 with Port Adelaide as one of the foundation clubs - and the game in Adelaide appears to have been significantly influenced by a landmark newspaper column in the South Australian Register 21 days before that pivotal meeting at the now-lost Prince Alfred Hotel that was next to the Adelaide Town Hall.

Writing under the name of "Nomad", The Register's correspondent set a template for South Australian football - that through the pioneer days of the 1860s and 1870s was being played under varying rules from one side of Adelaide to the other.

He pre-empted the need for organised football:  "The first step towards popularising football in the colony should be the establishment of a Football Association, worked on the same principle as the Cricketing Association [formed in 1871, a year after the Port Adelaide Football Club]. Such an Association would be able to make arrangements for an intercolonial match, and be useful in arranging Club matches— (may I hope supporters of football will subscribe for a challenge cup [premiership]?) — appointing umpires, and settling a great many other minor matters. Indeed, the usefulness of such an organization is self-evident."

He might have changed how the clubs appointed captains: "It is very evident that the plan of electing a captain on the field is an entirely rotten one.

"The unfortunate fellow, who perhaps has not counted upon being raised to such high eminence, has in a couple of minutes to put his team into their proper places,

"(He does so) with a great risk that he will give offence to men who generally go in one place if he puts them at other posts which he may think them more fitted for,

"And of getting generally abused at the end, to say nothing of the probability that he will get but very scanty obedience from his team, some of whom will perhaps be captains over his head another day.

"Every Club should at the beginning of each season elect a captain for the whole season and a vice-captain to take his place when he may be obliged to be absent. Much more depends upon the captain than is generally believed. "

And what makes a good captain? "Nomad" based his opinion on his reading of "Melbourne Footballer", "... a capital little book which I can confidently recommend, the following description of the qualities necessary to make up a good captain:

"'The captain should be a cool, capable player, with decision of character and plenty of nerve and judgment, popular with his men, who will consequently have a personal pleasure in doing their utmost for him apart from Club considerations; a man who can play the game, loss or win, and if possible a good back, because from that position his eye can take in the whole team. If nature has endowed him with a good pair of lungs, so much the better, as few can but appreciate the value of a good rallying cry.'

"To this I would add, let the captain above all things be a man able to keep his temper under all circumstances, and of what I may call a conciliatory disposition. It will also not be amiss if I recommend to all players good discipline and perfect soldierly obedience to their captain, as being the best way to secure victory."

"Nomad" was not keen on paying to watch football:  "Gentlemen interested in football and spectators should remember that whereas they must pay to see a cricket match on the Oval, the best football matches can be seen by everybody gratis. I am glad this is so, and would not wish to see the poor man deprived of the enjoyment of looking on at a game of football.

"Non-players who wish to further the interests of football might enrol themselves as honorary members of the Clubs they support."

"Nomad" wrote this for a Monday morning read across South Australia 143 years ago. And Monday after Monday in every football season ever since has become loaded with more and more opinion - the best of which reshapes the game for the better.

As former St Kilda and Fremantle coach Ross Lyon - now a media commentator - famously said of Mondays in the AFL: "It's an opinion business."

Even without football on the weekends, this has not changed ...

TAKE IT TO THE BANK

(Five things we have learned in the past week)

1) For all the debate (and perhaps hysteria) on how the AFL premiership season could resume, perhaps as early as mid-June, there is this reassuring statement from Port Adelaide ruckman Scott Lycett: "I just want to play footy. People are crying out for it to come back and put some happiness in their lives."

2) Football's passage to Season 2021 will be difficult - and require difficult decisions - as the AFL, the 18 national league clubs and the game that underpins the elite competition works to major debt and the need to work to leaner budgets. So this is the moment when we learn who is selfless - and former Port Adelaide captain Travis Boak certainly is. Despite the "security" of a two-year contract extension signed in the lead-up to the premiership season, Boak is willing to revisit his deal to strengthen the club's immediate and long-term future. Again, a club first moment from Port Adelaide's longest-serving AFL skipper.

3) Football does not need any paparazzi when players - both in the AFL and NRL - are loading up dubious photographs on social media. Very silly ....

4) Port Adelaide did not play an SANFL game in April. The last time this happened? The 1936 SANFL season when Port Adelaide opened its run to the league premiership with an eight-point win against North Adelaide at Prospect Oval on May 2.

5) One member of the victorious Port Adelaide 2004 AFL team has two premiership medals - the original collected at the MCG after the club's breakthrough success in the national league ... and a replacement after he could not remember where he had stored the real thing.