IT was a simple question asked with sincerity rather than to load a gun (or as Eddie McGuire says, to make some "fizz" to stoke the Port Adelaide traditionalists).
"Ed," after the pleasantries were exchanged with the Collingwood Football Club president in the media centre at the MCG before Port Adelaide's 2019 AFL season-opener against Melbourne, "there will be no issue with Port Adelaide wearing its black-and-white jumper in its 150th year, will there?"
The reaction from Eddie McGuire can best be described as "volcanic" (and last week we all learned the crater is still fuming). In brief, the theme Eddie worked in his response more than a year ago was that he had given the Port Adelaide Football Club an inch and now it was back for a mile.
This moment was, apparently, the last straw that broke the camel's back. By the time McGuire had taken his hot cup of coffee - that was luke warm compared to his emotional temperature - it was clear another chapter in the long-running sequel in Collingwood-Port Adelaide relations had begun.
What was it that AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan said of jumper rows in the lead-up to the 2014 AFL elimination final against Richmond at Adelaide Oval, the last time Port Adelaide wore the "bars" in an AFL match?
"Who would have thought grown men would care what other grown men are wearing?" McLachlan said after his AFL had ruled Port Adelaide had to concede its home jumper for a home final - and the first AFL final at Adelaide Oval.
"But that passion is to be ignored at our peril."
Yes Gil, some cloth does indeed mean more than others.
A few minutes later, former Port Adelaide forward Dwayne Russell - who made his mark in the VFL with the blue-and-white Geelong against a few other blue-and-white teams in the same league - passed by with the look of horror on his face: "What have you done?"
It was a simple question, Dwayne. No agenda. No hint of provocation. Just a basic enquiry to get a feel for how a strangely tricky part of Port Adelaide's 150th party was playing out.
But McGuire had taken the cup of hot coffee and the even hotter debate on Port Adelaide's rights to wear black and white in an anniversary season (let alone beyond 2020) to the Fox Footy commentary box as the proverbial bee in a bonnet.
At half-time, Ed was back. Much calmer. And - as he said - he had given the issue a lot of thought in the hour or so that had passed. He wanted to deliver the answer to the long-running saga. His solution: Port Adelaide should indeed wear the bars jumper, every week - home and away. And now the bee had its sting. "In your original colours," McGuire said, not meaning the foundation hoops combo of blue and white from 1870.
Magenta and blue, McGuire put forward noting such colours would cause no conflict with any AFL club. Melbourne, in red and blue, might argue.
A few days later, he was so convinced on what Port Adelaide should wear, McGuire was making his concept public on SEN radio saying: "Is the 'prison bars' important? Of course, it’s important to Port Adelaide.
"Does it need to be black and white? Maybe it doesn’t, you could be creative, use the teal, use the magenta which was one of your original colours.
"Use the black, use the white, use the silver, there’s plenty of ways of doing these things, but let’s come up with something," added McGuire, insisting Port Adelaide had signed an agreement to never again wear the bars - an agreement never produced in public and repeatedly denied by inaugural AFL chief executive Brian Cunningham.
In black and white is Collingwood's own declaration from its media stream on May 14, 2007:
"After numerous approaches by both the AFL and Port Adelaide, Collingwood was prepared to permit Port Adelaide to wear its black and white 'prison bar' guernsey for heritage round games where Port Adelaide was the home team other than when they play against Collingwood."
Officially listed "heritage rounds" are off the AFL fixture, but heritage moments - such as the Port Adelaide Football Club's 150th anniversary - go on.
Eddie last week - in a repeat of the MCG moment - used his television platform on Footy Classified to put the Port Adelaide Football Club and the game's controlling body, the AFL Commission, on notice that he is prepared to go to court to leave the issue with "the bloke with the horse-haired wig".
Just what the courts need ....
But the defence rises.
First, contrary to McGuire's rant, Port Adelaide does not want to wear black-and-white stripes (as the club did when Fos Williams delivered the first of his Golden Era premierships in 1951). Port Adelaide wants to wear its jumper - its treasured and admired bars that pose no threat to the Collingwood image and market. Collingwood will sell its jumper in the merchandise store; Port Adelaide will sell its guernsey. People will buy to declare their allegiance to a football club - not for a fashion statement, even if some Port Adelaide and Collingwood fans would choose to wear their jumpers on non-football occasions.
Port Adelaide's black-and-white jumper is a significant part of the club's image from 1902 (after the members first took issue with the end of the premiership-winning magenta strip). This cannot be denied - and no-one, not even Eddie McGuire, should ask Port Adelaide to ignore its past, its heritage, its tradition.
Does Eddie want all the Port Adelaide photographs in black-and-white jumpers on the internet wiped as well as they infringe some "trademark" right supposedly held by the Collingwood Football Club?
Second, again contrary to McGuire's tirade, Port Adelaide is not seeking to be branded as the "Magpies" in the AFL. But it also will not distance itself from that image in the SANFL, particularly after fighting so hard from 2010-2012 to correct the mistake made by the SA Football Commission to split one club into two once Port Adelaide entered the AFL in 1997.
In the US of A they say, don't mess with the Stars and Stripes of the USA's national flag.
And so it should be with the Port Adelaide Football Club's black-and-white bars, first presented as the club's uniform - moving away from the magenta and blue - in 1902 (the season the club refused to play finals, after winning the SAFL minor premiership, to protest on an umpiring appointment for the semi-final against South Adelaide).
In recent times there have been many concepts put forward, even by passionate Port Adelaide fans, to re-design the bars jumper in black and teal. It is a striking guernsey. But it is not the original - the one that Australia's most-respected football commentator Dennis Cometti recognises as the "best uniform in Australian football". And why stop at just Australian football?
As in 1902, when Port Adelaide stood firm on principle during the finals series, so it is in 2020 and beyond that there should be no teal-tainted compromise to the bars jumper.
If Port Adelaide is to wear the club's most-famous guernsey in the AFL, it must wear the jumper to its traditional and true design: Black base, white bars, white horizontal strip. No teal. No silver. No magenta. No blue.
But when to wear it?
Ditching the current AFL home jumper - the black strip with the white-and-teal V designed by Lucy Burford during the club's dark chapter leading up to the unification of the club in 2010-11 and the revival from 2012 - would be wrong. That jumper, always to be remembered for some stirring Showdown wins against the odds, in particular the last at Football Park in 2013, is a symbol of survival against enormous challenges. It is the image of "Never Tear Us Apart".
The story of how Burford's design was saved from a bin - after it had been discarded by those who felt Port Adelaide needed to get away from its black-and-white past to find a new future - is a tale of defiance. It cannot be consigned to a museum. It is a significant part of Port Adelaide's story moving forward.
The bars jumper needs its place beyond the SANFL - and with the power to revive SANFL legends on the national stage. It needs to be presented - regularly - on a platform that tells of its story. And there is none better than the Showdown. Twice a year, Port Adelaide should wear the bars on Adelaide Oval in the derby to remind all that the Showdown carries on the "them against us" theme that has been the fabric of the Port Adelaide Football Club's ethos - and the catalyst for a the great rivalry that is the Showdown.
It is the ideal way to remember how the Showdown spirit is born from SANFL traditions - and how these live on with an epic AFL rivalry.
The bars do not need to be worn every weekend, just as they have not been worn every year since they were first taken to the field on May 3, 1902. In the 1930s, the great Bob Quinn wore many variations of black-and-white jumpers while crafting a celebrated career at Alberton.
Fos Williams arrived at Alberton in 1950 to create his traditions with Port Adelaide wearing the Collingwood-style black-and-white stripes.
But this stopped during the six-in-a-row premiership run (1954-1959). Bob McLean (another club great to have worn the stripes rather than just the bars with Quinn in the 1930s) made the decision (with Sir Donald Bradman's noted approval) to always have Port Adelaide in the bars.
Always wearing the bars in the Showdown - and only the Showdowns, both home and away - would seem the perfect answer to a saga that is now 30 years old and in need of a satisfactory resolution. Those 30 years are at least a decade longer than one AFL chief executive expected as he let the debate roll on without any AFL-led outcome. But Wayne Jackson did not imagine McGuire standing firm as Collingwood president for 21 years and counting.
TAKE IT TO THE BANK
Five things we have learned in the past week
1) LESS IS BEST
AFL games will restart this week - with Collingwood and Richmond at the locked MCG on Thursday evening - with shorter quarters but not longer benches. So the season will resume as it began in March: 16-minute terms and four interchange players with coaches limited to 90 rotations in each game. Consistency has its merit.
2) MORE HONOUR, LESS DEBATE
Australian Football Hall of Fame inductions - quickly approaching the 25th anniversary of the hall in 2021 - continue to create more debate about who remains to be honoured and less focus on the greats being inducted to the game's greatest pantheon. It seems wrong - or at least a poorly timed moment for such a debate.
3) TURN BACK THE CLOCK
From the AFL while the league clubs deal with no State league platforms for their players to push for senior selection: "AFL umpires are not available to officiate these (practice) games .... (clubs) will need to allocate staff approved to make contact with players to serve as umpires)." We are returning to the 1800s when there were captains' calls and club-supplied umpires. Some coaches might get a new appreciation of the umpires' lot.
4) LION TAMER
Brisbane is considering entering the VFL State league should it have no NEAFL platform for its reserves team. Does a return of the Lions to the VFL demand the team be known as Fitzroy, the VFL foundation club that merged with Brisbane at the end of 1996? One club, two teams, two competitions. Even two jumpers? Sounds familiar.
5) QUOTE OF THE WEEK
From Mark Williams on his Port Adelaide premiership team-mate Greg Phillips as a tribute for his Australian Football Hall of Fame induction: "Everyone at Port Adelaide would be as proud as he would be, but Greg won't change. He'll be exactly the same tomorrow as he is today."
THIS WEEK
Showdown XLVIII
Port Adelaide v Adelaide, Adelaide Oval
Saturday, 7.10pm (Channel Seven)
For the first time in the Showdown's 23-year run there is no recent nor relevant form line for the derby - no pre-season game played in the fortnight leading up to the SA football classic; no AFL match from five, six, seven or eight days earlier.
Port Adelaide last played on March 21 beating Gold Coast on the Gold Coast by 47 points; Adelaide lost to Sydney at Adelaide Oval by three points earlier in the day.
So the coaches - Ken Hinkley at Port Adelaide and first-year Adelaide mentor Matthew Nicks - will be working on calculated hunches at selection. Shall be interesting how they react.
