SIX weeks without a home game is an enormous test of any football team, more so in a national competition crossing guarded State borders during a pandemic crisis.
Full back Trent McKenzie notes he "never thought" on leaving the Gold Coast Football Club at the end of 2017 that he would play more home games for Port Adelaide at his old base at Carrara (two) than at Adelaide Oval (one) in 2020.
The absence from home ends on Saturday night (against St Kilda).
Six weeks - either in a hub on the Gold Coast or on fly-in, fly-out mode to south-east Queensland - has challenged the Port Adelaide players to adapt to succeed.
But imagine two years of exile from a club's spiritual home - with no access for training in the second season ...
"It was enough to make us as players join the fans in a protest march on a Saturday morning from under the Port Adelaide railway bridge, down Commercial Road to St Vincent Street to the council chambers," recalls Port Adelaide premiership ruckman and future politician Chris Natt.
On August 24, 1974, Natt and his Port Adelaide team-mates walked off Alberton Oval after beating Woodville by 21 points to prepare for their first SANFL final series at Football Park.
They did not return to Alberton Oval for an SANFL league match until April 2, 1977 to play the season-opener against Glenelg (and win by 27 points, 162-135) with 16,558 fans reacquainting themselves with the club's spiritual home.
In total, 952 days away from home; 31 months - and 44 league matches, including finals.
Circumstances were vastly different to those imposed on today's AFL teams with the COVID pandemic. But two seasons as the only team without a true home base did require the Port Adelaide players of the mid-70s - like those of today - to adapt to succeed.
"You did what you had to do," said Natt, who was part of the Port Adelaide teams that reached the preliminary final in 1975 and that crowd-crushed grand final with Sturt in 1976 at Football Park.
"We wanted to play football. Fact is, we would have played anywhere; we would have trained anywhere. You adapt to your surrounds ... and you get on with it."
The theme lives on today ...
Natt and his team-mates moved to Adelaide Oval, first for games in 1975 and then also for training in 1976 when the local council put the lock on the ground that had been home to the Port Adelaide Football Club since 1880.
"All because two big blokes had a big fight," recalled Natt.
"Big" Bob McLean and Roy Marten cast huge shadows across the Port Adelaide district in the late 1960s and 1970s - and not just because of their big frames.
McLean, a Port Adelaide premiership ruckman, had - with Fos Williams - built the State's biggest and most-successful sporting team. He could set an agenda well beyond Alberton, particularly with his clever use of the media (then heavily concentrated on the city's two daily newspapers, The Advertiser and the now-lost The News).
Marten, as the Port Adelaide Council mayor, was building a powerful political resume as the district's longest-serving civic leader.
When these two forces clashed in a bitter dispute on the terms to the long-contested lease at Alberton Oval, the storm left its mark - with no Port Adelaide league football in the Port Adelaide district for the first time since 1870.
In those two years, Port Adelaide played 44 league matches - 16 at Adelaide Oval, 11 plus five finals at Football Park, two at each of Glenelg, Woodville, Richmond, Unley and Elizabeth Ovals and once at each of Thebarton Oval and The Parade at Norwood.
But none at Alberton.
Natt, the club's under-19 best-and-fairest in 1971, had spent his winter Tuesday and Thursday nights at training at Alberton Oval since starting as an under-17 player in 1966. He either came across the Port River as a student from Taperoo High School or past the Cheltenham cemetery from the Holden assembly plant as an apprentice fitter at the now-lost GMH factory at Woodville.
That changed in 1976.
"It was more comfortable training at Alberton Oval ... Adelaide Oval was pretty short on amenities in those days," Natt said. "Match days, after you had been left covered in mud from the cricket pitch, you would get in those showers at Adelaide Oval ... and the hot water was gone; all used up by the reserves players three hours earlier.
"Not being at Alberton was a little hurdle. Location changed, but not your thought patterns to get ready for a game. And come match time, you were right - 100 per cent focused on what you had to do.
"It all comes down to how you approach the game. Keep in mind, all our games - home or away - were built up like grand finals. If we came up against Woodville when they were bottom of the ladder, it was their grand final - they wanted to beat Port Adelaide to claim a prize.
"If it was Norwood, the game would be built up as a grand final between the old rivals - and they wanted to beat us because they hated us."
Alberton Oval carried a perception - the graveyard for opposition teams that had to pass the Cheltenham cemetery on Port Road to play Port Adelaide.
Adelaide Oval was, until the move to Football Park at West Lakes in 1974, the SANFL's traditional headquarters. Even during the 40-year cold war between football and the cricket masters of the Oval, the city ground was the true home of South Australian football.
It also was the scene of Port Adelaide's unrivalled grand final success.
In those two seasons of exile from Alberton, Port Adelaide had a 14-2 win-loss record at Adelaide Oval. In each year, Port Adelaide lost on first appearance at Adelaide Oval - by 17 points to West Adelaide in 1975 and by 88 points to Glenelg in 1976 - before winning seven in a row.
"I loved it," said Natt of playing on Adelaide Oval. "It is a big ground - and I loved to run around a bit.
"The centre with the cricket square would test you. But we turned it into our 'advantage at home'. Brian Cunningham, Russell Ebert, Darrell Cahill and I would work the ball from ruck to the mud while other teams would not like the ball getting in that muck.
"We'd like getting our hands dirty in that black mud ... until we'd get to the showers and find no hot water."
But home is home.
"I am not saying I would find myself jumping three or four inches higher when there was a ruck contest in front of the grandstands at Alberton Oval," Natt said. "But every time you played at Alberton, you knew the Port Adelaide crowd was behind you.
"Alberton Oval also had its idiosyncrasies ...
"In 1972, when I made it up to the league side, 'Big Bob' would every fortnight place an ad in the papers - an inch by an inch - with the names of the players in the league squad.
"If you had your name fall off that list, you would have to go through the embarrassment of emptying your locker from the league changeroom and carry your bag back to the other end of the grandstand to the reserves lockers. It was a tough walk.
"That made you more determined to play at your best to stay in the league squad. Once you crossed that line into the league changeroom, you knew you deserved to be there. But you also had to live up to the expectation of a league player to stay there."
On the return to Alberton for the 1977 SANFL centenary season - that ended Port Adelaide's 12-year premiership drought - there was a perfect home season with eight wins from eight matches. The tightest margin was two points against Norwood; the biggest win was by 134 points against Woodville.
CHRIS NATT played 216 games and kicked 85 goals for Port Adelaide from 1972 to 1983. He is a member of Port Adelaide's 1980 and 1981 premiership teams.
After his football playing career, Natt took to administration with five years at the Northern Territory Football League. "One of the untold stories," said Natt, "was how (SANFL chief executive) Leigh Whicker asked me to look at whether the NT could muster a team for the SANFL (to restore a 10-team competition)."
That ambitious concept collapsed under the weight on debt carried by the NTFL before Natt's appointment as chief executive. He was compelled to have a rescue package endorsed by AFL boss Wayne Jackson, creating the AFLNT.
Natt ultimately moved from football politics to the real thing with an extraordinary rise to the NT ministry with the mines and energy portfolio. In 2005, as an ALP candidate, Natt faced a 15.7 per cent margin to overcome in the seat of Drysdale. He won the seat with a 17.5 per cent swing.
ALBERTON OVAL
Alberton Oval is the Port Adelaide Football Club's social, training and administrative base - and spiritual home. The club moved from its original base at Glanville to Alberton Oval in 1880, playing its first premiership match on May 15 with a 1-0 win against Kensington.
While Port Adelaide transferred its AFL playing home to Adelaide Oval in 2014, the Alberton base remains home for SANFL matches and is to play a pivotal part in the club's future direction - and to the council's objectives for the community. Both parties are aligned to develop a high-performance and community sports precinct at Alberton Oval.
The Port Adelaide-Enfield council immediately embraced Port Adelaide's rise to the AFL in 1997 by converting Alberton Oval to a football-only venue with the relocation of the Port Adelaide District Cricket Club and the removal of the cricket square.
The past 25 years certainly contrast the long-running duels between sporting clubs and local authorities across Adelaide from the 1800s.
The lock-out enforced by the Port Adelaide council in 1975-1976 added to the long chapter of disputes on the lease for the ground, first with the SANFL in the 1920s and ultimately with the Port Adelaide Football Club.
In 1931, Port Adelaide arranged an annual lease of L35 a season with the council picking up the cost for gas and electricity. This immediately changed in 1932 to become L10 with the club taking up the utilities bill after alderman J. Anderson noted the original lease was a "losing proposition" for the council.
Beyond football, Alberton Oval has been a community venue for -
In the 1920s, "picture seasons" that ended in early April. The 1923 season included film titles, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, The Guilty Hand and Spooky Romance followed by the International News Gazette.
In the 1940s, trotting races on the Labour Day holiday weekend in October.
In 1953, the picket fence was moved in 10 feet to increase capacity for spectators. Reports noted "this has not materially altered the size of the oval as there was a big area between the boundary lines and the picket."
The record crowd at Alberton Oval was rewritten in the return after the lockout with the Port Adelaide-Norwood game on June 11: 22,738 watched Port Adelaide win by two points (71-69).
Football's Fourth Estate came to see Alberton Oval in a different light in May 1923 with the opening of the press box to the southern side of the 1903 grandstand, later moved to the gap between this pavilion and the RB Quinn MM Stand.
On the eve of its opening, The Newsreported: "For a long time (press representatives) had been carrying out their duties under depressing and uncomfortable conditions, culminating in strong protest two seasons ago, when reporters, sitting in the open through a whole afternoon's heavy downpour of rain, had their copy soaked and were drenched to the skin, making necessary the cutting off of the reports of a football match.
"(Council) made the best arrangements possible after that by setting apart the Governor's box as a press box, but spectators were apt to crowd into it and shut out the view of the game. Last year, the football league made the offer of a substantial portion of the cost of erecting a press box, which meets all requirements, and is quite equal to, if not better than any similar accommodation on other ovals."
The stories of Port Adelaide's home grounds - Glanville Estate, Alberton Oval, Football Park, Adelaide Oval and Jiangwan Stadium in Shanghai, China - are told in the Port Adelaide Archives Collection.
