NEIL Diamond's Hot August Nights would be the appropriate musical backdrop to the events of August 1990 when Port Adelaide Football Club president Bruce Weber turned up the heat in the most dramatic winter in South Australian football.

Thirty years ago, Weber boldly put Port Adelaide on the path to playing in Australia's major football competition - a trail first challenged by begrudging SANFL rivals and then blocked in the Supreme Court. Ultimately, destiny was fulfilled with the club's rise to the AFL in 1997.

Weber and his board and executive team from August 1990 fought a challenging battle to stop Port Adelaide's grand ambitions off the field - and those seeking to punish the club with banishment from the league that counted Port Adelaide as a foundation club in 1877.

The 1990 SANFL premiership triumph - against Glenelg on the field at Football Park and every other league club in spirit - was Weber's sweetest hour in a bitter saga that carried a heavy personal price.

Those among Port Adelaide's adversaries in the SANFL's halls of power referred to Weber - with a mocking tone - as the "Birkenhead boiler maker". Almost a century earlier, the "Birkenhead mill manager" put South Australian football in crisis by standing on principle.

And, in stark contrast to 1990, John Sweeney quickly forfeited a premiership, the 1902 crown - the first Port Adelaide could have won in black and white - to make a strong and brave stand for his club.

From Sweeney at the start of the 20th century to Bob McLean with the "Golden Era" in the 1950s-1960s to Weber in setting up the Port Adelaide Football Club for the 21st century and beyond, there have been administrative leaders at Alberton who have played as tough off the field as the players have done on the park.

Weber took on everyone to end the longest-running impasse in Australian football - South Australia's presence in a national club competition.

McLean's record tenure in administration - after being a premiership ruckman in the 1930s - is filled with epic battles: denying player transfers, outwitting rivals for future Hall of Famers such as John Abley and that imbroglio with the local council that locked the team off Alberton Oval in 1975-76. "Big Bob" is the only South Australian to be honoured in the Australian Football Hall of Fame primarily for his administrative work at a club.

Sweeney was the first man to gain SANFL life membership (when the league was still the SA Football Association and he was serving a remarkable 25-year term as Port Adelaide's delegate). For all the significant moments in SA football's foundation years, none touches the drama of late August 1902 when Sweeney declared Port Adelaide, as minor premier, would not start its finals campaign - with a semi-final against South Adelaide at Adelaide Oval on the Monday public holiday for Eight Hour Day - if Phil Kneebone was the umpire.

For the first and only time in SA league football history, a club has abandoned a premiership after qualifying for the finals.

Sweeney was of true Port Adelaide heritage. Born on Todd Street, Port Adelaide in 1852 when - as he recalled - the district was known as "Mudholia, for its dusty roads and badly kept footways". He watched Port Adelaide raised two metres with the silt from the digging of the portside channel.

At 19, Sweeney was in the milling trade in which he spent 53 years - and was unrivalled for his knowledge on grain. He was a leader, in business, civic issues and sport.

Sweeney matched local politics with football administration (and interest in other sports, in particular rowing).

Sweeney entered football administration first. He was Port Adelaide Football Club secretary in 1888 again from 1892-1895 and from 1898-1905, during the transition from magenta to black and white. 

In a twist that still has relevance today, Sweeney in 1894 challenged the SA Cricket Association on crowd figures at Adelaide Oval after noting not everyone was counted at the turnstiles. 

Asked to detail the importance of the game to the Port Adelaide district, Sweeney remarked: "Football has done a lot for Port Adelaide; without it, I would scarcely know what half the men of Port Adelaide would do during Saturday afternoons of the winter."

As a football administrator and local politician, Sweeney was known as a "sturdy fighter with an independent side".

In civic duty, Sweeney entered local politics in 1894, represented the Birkenhead ward for 18 years and served as Port Adelaide mayor twice, 1905-1907 and 1915-1917.

Both passions of football and politics combined in the most heart-wrenching way in early February 1916 at Semaphore where Sweeney, as Port Adelaide mayor, made presentations at the club function that farewelled John Robertson, William Boon, William Drummond and Thomas Sard before they left for war - after the club had already saluted Arnold Channon, Noel Tobin and Joseph Watson in the previous six months.

Ultimately, Sweeney was remembered for making "material changes" to the Port Adelaide Football Club while seeing "the club with plenty of money and without any; with a team and without one (during the economic depressions)."

It was not until 1903 that the "energetic, excitable but much-liked 'stormy petrel' (who) has been running the saltwater team off and on for 15 years" gained the premiership that defined ultimate success after total defiance.

In 1902, the club's first season in the black-and-white bars, Port Adelaide won the minor premiership with a 10-2 win-loss record in a seven-team competition. The two losses had been in round 9 (by four points at Adelaide Oval to North Adelaide that finished the home-and-away series in second spot) and round 3 (by 20 points at Adelaide Oval to semi-final rival South Adelaide that ranked third).

The Advertiser reported the events of the Saturday afternoon of August 30, 1902 - while North Adelaide played and beat West Torrens in the semi-final at Adelaide Oval - with a sketch that told of another Hot August Night for SA football.

Alderman John Sweeney (the secretary of the Port club) filed through the gate leading into the members' reserve, apparently excited over something, and approaching the secretary of the Football Association, exclaimed - "We'll not play that match on Monday."

At first the observation was treated jocularly, but the flash of Mr Sweeney's dark eyes portended trouble, and when he said, "That's my dictum, and the dictum of my club and its players," the gathering of lovers of the game almost simultaneously ejaculated, "You don't mean that."

"I do," said Mr Sweeney, with emphasis. 

... he told (the association secretary) that the Ports would not go on the field unless they had some other umpire than Mr (Phil) Kneebone, who, in the alderman's opinion, was not a duly appointed umpire of the association ...

(After being challenged) Mr Sweeney was adamant. "That's the absolute decision of the Port club committee, and you can take it as final."

On Monday morning, while the Yorke Peninsula representative team played an association combined 18 on Adelaide Oval, Sweeney met with South Adelaide officials and declared: "We'll forfeit the match, and I'll give it in writing."

Sweeney later issued a lengthy statement that took issue with the SAFA failing to live up to a "resolution to secure a first-class umpire from Melbourne for the finals".

Sweeney noted Kneebone, who was umpiring in the Hills Association, had been classed as "incompetent" two years earlier by the association and "it is too serious a matter to foist a man upon us at the eleventh hour, especially when we do not know whether he is qualified to act".

"My club would have been quite willing to have accepted any other umpire but Mr Kneebone, and we point blank refuse to go on the field with him," Sweeney declared. "Our team has been reduced practically to 19 players, and if through the incompetence of the umpire two or three or more of them were 'knocked out,' we would be unable to finish the season.

"We lost the premiership before through an incompetent umpire, and we will not take the same chances again."

Port Adelaide lost the 1901 decider for the flag by four points to Norwood with critics describing umpire Bilsborrow's work as "satisfactory" ....

Sweeney added: "Our only desire is to see a match of this importance played on fair and equal conditions, and we consider this is not the time for experiments in umpiring."

The league made it known its hands were tied in appointing an umpire off its list after umpire Bilsborrow declared he would not officiate any final involving Port Adelaide (clearly noting the fall-out from Alberton after the 1901 finale); umpire King was sidelined by a knee injury and other umpires were not up to the task of controlling a final.

North Adelaide won the grand final five days later beating South Adelaide by 37 points. Kneebone was in charge and The Advertiser made the point, "Mr Kneebone's umpiring was excellent."

Port Adelaide responded with the minor premiership in 1903 (10-1-1 record), won its semi-final against Norwood, lost the play-off with South Adelaide by eight points and - as minor premiers - challenged to win the premiership by seven points in the replay final against South Adelaide. The umpiring was to the whistle of a Victorian - as Port Adelaide wanted in 1902 - with the appointment of VFL official Charles Cariss.

Kneebone became a senior league umpire before World War I, but was not short of controversy after being rejected by Port Adelaide at the start of the 1902 final series. He was the subject of a "cowardly assault" at the end of the West Torrens-Sturt game at Hindmarsh in mid-June 1908 when he hit by a young fan and had his shirt ripped from his body.

But the breaking point in his support from league headquarters came in May 1909 when he reported Norwood premiership player - and respected doctor - Harold "Dick" Stoddart.

Kneebone accused Stoddart of reacting to a free kick against him by "turning around and with much emphasis told me to 'get off the ground' ... (and) instead of remaining silent or expressing regret, which is usual with players when cautioned, he became openly defiant, and persisted in telling me to get off the ground, putting as much emphasis into the expression as possible."

Stoddart described the incident as "trivial" and not worthy of a suspension nor an apology, a view taken by the league.

Kneebone quit in protest; his fellow umpires threatened to strike if Kneebone was not supported by the league; and "peace" was restored when the league banned Stoddart for a month (despite Norwood claiming the penalty was in breach of the league's rules).

As destiny or design would have it, Kneebone was in charge on Stoddart's return to football. The critics noted Stoddart was "not the player he was in 1908".

Kneebone died in 1940, aged 58 and known as "one of the leading South Australian Football League officials for years when he umpired many interstate games."

Sweeney died on January 8, 1934 at West Croydon at the home of one of his six daughters; he also had four sons. He was buried at the Cheltenham cemetery. He was aged 82.

A man who described himself as a "puppet to no man", Sweeney drew a line in the sand in 1902 - and put a principle before a near-certain premiership triumph. Such strength off the field has been repeatedly honoured and carried by Sweeney's successors at Alberton. Bruce Weber certainly had this spirit in 1990.

Port Adelaide's off-field leaders are honoured in the Archives Collection, the limited-edition tribute to the club's 150 years of unrivalled success in Australian football. The collection can be ordered here.