WELCOME to Hollywood where every film director does not sleep until the critics have delivered their verdicts after opening night. AFL football is no different.

Indeed, Australian football is not short of reviewers to follow the ways of Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton as was noted on Saturday evening when - before, during and after - the commentary raged while the Port Adelaide players lived up to their promise of delivering a statement against the AFL premier.

Now this game between Richmond and Port Adelaide is what AFL footy is all about. Tough, uncompromising, fast pace, skillful and relentless. Just brilliant. Outstanding to watch. Love it.

Five stars from Collingwood premiership player and dual club champion Mick McGuane. He was not alone in savouring a game that would bring the fans in droves to the turnstiles ... only if the "sold out" sign was related to a venue's capacity rather than the cap imposed by the COVID-enforced restrictions.

Honestly cannot remember enjoying a half of footy like that for so long. Pressure, brilliance, drama and controversy. Who will hold their nerve and go the full distance? Cannot wait to watch.

Former Western Bulldogs and Richmond coach Terry Wallace was giving his "thumbs up" during the main interval. The show did start well - with that ridiculous left-foot checkside goal from Port Adelaide ruckman-forward Peter Ladhams on the boundary in the south-east pocket in the first minute. It did not disappoint, as Wallace noted, after such a crazy start.

This game, with 10,000 Port Adelaide fans adding to the atmosphere and the theatre (particularly with their reviews of the umpires), will do much for those who know the game of Australian football is fine when it is played with the right attitude - and a playbook built on attack.

If more AFL games were as watchable as Port Adelaide v Richmond, we wouldn't be worried about the state of the game, ugly footy or talking rule changes.

So writes Jake Niall from the football desk at the Melbourne newspaper, The Age.

It's the high watermark match of the season.

From the microphone of the AFL's most-measured commentator Gerard Whateley comes a review that declares Adelaide Oval was the setting for the game of the season, a most difficult season that is demanding more than any since the chase for a VFL-AFL flag began in 1897.

This takes care of all the groaning about the state of top-flight AFL games, particularly after round 10 ended with neither Essendon nor Greater Western Sydney capable of scoring a goal in the first quarter of their Friday night encounter on the Gold Coast.

Great news for AFL House, particularly after a week when league headquarters issued more verdicts, apologies and fines than a magistrate on night duty.

Top-ranked Port Adelaide and the defending champion Richmond have proven there is very little wrong with Australian football when it is played with an intent to win (rather than not to lose).

But what of Port Adelaide, the team that has carried so many tags in recent years - from pretenders, the team you cannot trust, downhill skiers, etc etc?

Are they the challenger? Are they a chance? You bet they are!

Carlton premiership captain Mark Maclure, who in recent seasons has thrown a few cutting barbs in Port Adelaide's direction - all with good reason, is now convinced he has seen a team worthy of carrying the league's No.1 ranking for 20 weeks.

Very well done Port Adelaide. That was a finals-like game. You were challenged before the game, then at 26 points up (in the first term), then at 21 points up (during the third quarter), then at three quarter-time (at one-point down). Answered every single challenge. Totally deserving of No. 1 ranking at this stage.

Wallace continued to be impressed at full time.

Passed a big test. Huge performance.

Port Adelaide AFL premiership captain Warren Tredrea sums up the 21-point win against Richmond on a night when his successors in black, teal and white were determined to be defined by their actions - rather than carry another dubious label across their shoulders.

Of course, every blockbuster show needs a star. Even a super star in the making for the billboards. McGuane has delivered his verdict on one of Port Adelaide's quickly emerging heroes, in just his second AFL season:

The more I see Zak Butters play, the more I'm convinced he will become an elite player of the competition. Just makes great decisions, has good skills to execute those decisions, has poise and body lines the ball when it's his turn.

An old hand, who has had an indifferent start, is finding his feet again ... and they are stepping into spots on the stage before many others realise there is opportunity.

Robbie Gray's last few weeks, he's started to get going. He is building nicely. That's nice for a coach to have up your sleeve.

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley is sitting nicely in the director's chair, more so when a 9-2 win-loss record in a 17-round season should spell a return to top-eight finals action for the first time since 2017.

And then there is this cheeky thought from Channel 10 sporting expert Stephen Quartermain:

Port Adelaide should be rewarded ... AFL must let them wear the prison bars jumper for the rest of the season. 

ROUND 11

Port Adelaide 13.15 (93) d Richmond 11.6 (72)

They are very, very good (Port Adelaide). I love the way they play. They attack the game. I look at sides I'd pay money to watch, they'd be one of those sides.

Richmond premiership coach Damien Hardwick on Port Adelaide.

IT is not just the game Port Adelaide plays. It is the enthusiasm the Port Adelaide players have for their game.

They play for each other. You see that in great teams. 

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley.

Nothing stands out more than beating a champion at its own game. In the 10th minute of this duel of the contender and the defender of the AFL crown, Port Adelaide did to Richmond as the 2017 and 2019 premier has done to so many in the past four seasons.

In the defensive 50, Port Adelaide midfielder Sam Powell-Pepper started a rebound with a tackle that earned him a holding-the-ball free kick. In the attacking 50, ruckman-forward Peter Ladhams did the same. And from the advantage play-on call, Robbie Gray finished the Richmond-like theme of punishing an opponent for its mistakes. 

During the last quarter, when Port Adelaide overwhelmed Richmond with 19-2 inside-50s while not allowing either of the two Richmond forward sorties to reach the goalsquare, there were two critical plays that summed up how determined the Port Adelaide forwards were to keep the ball in their half. Each stripped young Richmond defender Noah Balta of possession.

"The last quarter, the pressure, was the highlight for me," said Hinkley. "Not the opportunities (to score), it was the pressure which was the highlight."

While Hinkley was making a last-quarter note in the box to his assistant coaches of their players' unrelenting determination to put the Richmond opponents under full-blown pressure, a former AFL coach was declaring the same observation from his comfortable front-row seat at home.

Port Adelaide are comfortably out pressuring what has been the best pressure team for the last few years. What we do know is you have to bring it for four quarters.

Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee Terry Wallace

When top-flight Australian football returned in 2014 to the redeveloped and reconfigured Adelaide Oval - with its "narrow" width but without its deep and square pockets - the question was: How do you play the ground?

Port Adelaide on Saturday evening answered the question - and underlined the keys to the perfect game for Adelaide Oval.

Win centre clearances - quarter by quarter, Port Adelaide won this key indicator: 7-0 in the first term, then 5-2; 5-2 again in the third and 3-1 in the final term for a telling 20-5 advantage.

"Centre bounce is so important here," Hardwick notes of Adelaide Oval. "It is an easy ground to defend if you get the ball in your front half; it is pretty easy to get numbers behind (the ball). And it took its toll in the end ..." 

A total count of 55-24 inside-50s - 19 in the last term in which Richmond did not score while Port Adelaide added 3.4 (with lead ruckman Scott Lycett putting the ninth scoring attempt out-of-bounds on the full. Port Adelaide dominated with 13 shots to six and 3.9 to 4.2 in the last 40 minutes of the match).

When Port Adelaide plays with this dominance of the centre clearances and - as back lines coach Brett Montgomery always says - with defence starting whenever and wherever the ball is lost, there is no question mark on the height on the Port Adelaide key defenders.

There also are fewer questions about the make-up of the Port Adelaide midfield. Vice-captain Ollie Wines, in his 150th AFL game, produced the extraordinary count of no clanger among his first 20 touches. He finished with 28 (22 contested) with an 89 per cent disposal efficiency. He intercepted four Richmond plays. These are elite figures.

Former captain Travis Boak started the match alongside Brownlow Medallist Dustin Martin at the centre square - and won the first clearance. He finished with a game-high 31 disposals in his third match in nine days (in which he also celebrated his 32nd birthday on August 1 ... and has never appeared as a player in need of being "managed").

Port Adelaide restored the two-ruck model in this match that marked Scott Lycett's 100th during a decade in the big league - and Peter Ladhams' 10th in his two seasons since his debut. The partnership is more promising for Ladhams' growing strengths as a forward and growing presence as a field player.

Everyone was destined to measure Port Adelaide in this match against the defending premier. For the fourth consecutive year, Port Adelaide has beaten the defending AFL champion in their first match-up of the season.

The labels on Port Adelaide today will ease the pain a club, its players and its fans - in particular the true believers who have endured the barbs - has carried when falling short of its own lofty ambitions and standards.

This is a competition that is noted for demanding teams prove they are the "real deal" for a long time. So for now, Hinkley will have his team known as "very resilient".

"We've been able to play four quarters more often than not," Hinkley said.

"We've been consistent ... we haven't always been able to say that. But I can sit here now and say we've got a consistent team who play for each other.

"And we've got to keep going ...," Hinkley adds.

QUOTE OF THE GAME

"Does anyone else watching at home feel like one of the Port players are going to tackle you too?"

Former Port Adelaide - and Richmond - midfielder Matt White during the second term admiring the Port Adelaide pressure game that to half-time amounted to 42 tackles, six inside the forward-50 arc. The best goal from this intense pressure was the finish by Robbie Gray in the 16th minute of the second term, after first-year forward Mitch Georgiades had won a holding-the-ball free kick for on his gripping tackle of Derek Eggmolesse-Smith at the top of the arc.

TAKE IT TO THE BANK

(five things we learned on the quick turnaround)

1) BAR NONE. Some would be flattered by the imitation. But the Fox Footy Channel promo identifying the Collingwood black-and-white stripes as a "famous prison bar jumper" goes well beyond flattery. It is a taunt ... one that has not gone down well with many Port Adelaide fans while the fight continues to secure from the AFL Commission the right to wear the bars in all Showdowns from next season. Although, if Port Adelaide captain Tom Jonas was in charge at AFL House: "I'd let us wear the prison bars every week." Might be a good time to sign the petition ... (and send a copy to Fox Footy too).

2) SIR DOUG NICHOLLS. There is to be a theme round this year, honouring Australia's Indigenous culture with the name of former Fitzroy and Victoria representative and former SA Governor Sir Doug Nicholls. Port Adelaide will host Hawthorn in a Saturday twilight clash. For those with a collectors' edition original 2020 fixture, this match-up - also in the Sir Doug Nicholls round - was to have been at Launceston on Saturday, May 23 at 1.45pm.

3) BOOTS UP. Long gone are the days of games starting with teams lining up, waiting for the umpires to run their eyes and hands over the boots of players to make sure the studs/stops were not dangerous. But the Collingwood-Sydney match on Thursday delivered a blood-stained reminder of the risk of injury with the deep cut to the shin of Collingwood novice Isaac Quaynor after running against the new boots of Sydney debutant Sam Wicks. It might pay for the umpires to be asked to be looking closely at boots again.

4) SOCIAL JUSTICE. In the wake of the abuse directed on social media towards Greater Western Sydney midfielder Callan Ward after kicking the winning goal from a free kick against Essendon on Friday night comes this note from Sydney premiership hero Jude Bolton: "We need the big social platforms to start enforcing proper authentication. Real profiles. It's obvious, but behind the veil of anonymity, the comments can be vile and extreme without fear and retribution or any concern for the individual on the receiving end." Erin Phillps, the first to seek verified social media accounts, would agree.

5) LIGHTS, CAMERAS ... And lots of cameras! Surely now, this reality will sink in to everyone after the cameras captured the rogue moments in the Richmond changerooms recently.  And - cameras or not - there is a matter of maintaining respect to and with a team-mate.

NEXT

Geelong v Port Adelaide

Metricon Stadium

Friday, August 14, 7.20pm (SA time)

PORT Adelaide closes its four-game run in the 20-day "Festival of Football" with another major showing - against a big-time opponent - on the national stage. And there is a conventional six-day break before returning to south-east Queensland to play top-eight rival Geelong in Friday Night Football.

Port Adelaide was told by the critics that winning two of the four "festival" games against Melbourne, the Western Bulldogs, Richmond and Geelong would be a pass mark. It is 3-0 and Ken Hinkley's crew will be considered a strong chance for the perfect four that would give Port Adelaide its 10th win of the shortened 17-round season.

No injury was reported after the win against Richmond (although young dynamo Connor Rozee has been ruled out after being withheld from the Richmond clash due to a heel niggle) and there is the prospect of midfielder-forward Steven Motlop being clear of an ankle injury to face his former Geelong team-mates.

ANNIVERSARY NOTE

IN 1870, when it all began for the Port Adelaide Football Club, South Australian football was still without a league, a universally accepted set of rules ... and two newly formed teams turned up for their three-match series in the grounds just east of the current site of Adelaide Oval and at Glanville Hall wearing the same colours, blue and white.

But who were Port Adelaide's first opponents, Young Australian?

The Young Australian Football Club was formed in the same week in early May when Port Adelaide established its first leadership team and office bearers.

At the Royal Oak Hotel at North Adelaide, a dozen people gathered to form the Young Australian Football Club on Wednesday, May 11, 1870. The first order of business was to ask to practise on the playing field held by the South Australian Cricket Club - and to issue a challenge to the "Port Suburban Club" (that soon after changed its name to become Woodville).

In 1870, Young Australian played seven games - three against Port Adelaide.

In August 1871, at the Prince Alfred Hotel, to avoid a clash of names with the Young Australian Cricket Club, the city team became the Union Cricket and Football Club. Months later, in 1872, the link to Port Adelaide's first year of football was gone.