THE BIGGEST crowd since 1998 watched Port Adelaide's narrow loss to Sturt in Sunday's SANFL Grand Final.

While that fact will contribute nothing to ease the pain of that loss, the show of force from Port fans after low-drawing crowds in 105 and 2016 shows the importance of the Magpies to the SANFL competition.

In fact, Port Adelaide has featured in nine of the 10 largest-drawing crowds at a SANFL Grand Final since the introduction of the AFL to South Australia in 1991.

The only non-Port final among the top ten is the 1993 decider between Woodville-West Torrens and Norwood.

Sunday's crowd isn't an outlier either.

As a comparison, Sturt and the Eagles only pulled 30,000 in last year's decider.

In 2014, Port and Norwood drew over 38,000 - the biggest grand final crowd since those two clubs last played in 1999.