Dear Members and supporters,

To assure you all, we know how important it is to you for our Club to be able to wear our heritage prison bars guernseys on the national stage. As our Chairman David Koch said yesterday, “it’s not going away.”

At a time when all AFL clubs are doing whatever they can to rebuild the strength of our Clubs and the competition, anything we can do that strengthens the bond between our fans and their clubs, we should be doing.

This issue isn’t just about Port Adelaide or our guernsey alone. It’s about the passion and connection that all fans have with their clubs. The advantage that all sporting clubs have is the emotional connection they have with their people. This emotional connection is the very thing that drives our great game. A guernsey is not simply what you wear, it defines who you are and where you come from – it is the symbol that connects fans to their team. To grow and progress the game, we need to be continually strengthening the connection.

For Essendon, it’s the red sash, for Richmond its yellow and black, for Carlton it’s the crest … and for Port Adelaide it’s the prison bars.

The Port Adelaide Football Club is the is the fourth oldest football club in the AFL competition, established in 1870 with only Geelong and Melbourne (1858) and Carlton (1864) older. Essendon was established in 1872 and Richmond 1885. Port Adelaide is one of Australia’s great football clubs and to be able to celebrate that heritage in two games a year, against our traditional rival in Showdowns, in Adelaide only, affects no-one and can only make our game stronger. The AFL’s own purpose is to ‘progress the game so everyone can share in its heritage and possibilities”.

Heritage makes our game stronger. Heritage adds meaning and connection. Heritage is generational and is powerful.

COVID has not only given us permission to try new things but demands it, and this mindset determines what will strengthen the game moving forward. This can only strengthen our Club and in turn strengthen the AFL and the game more broadly. We will continue to keep you updated on our discussions with the AFL.

Right now our immediate focus is returning to Adelaide Oval tomorrow for our first home game for season 2021.

How good is it to be looking forward to getting back to the footy at Adelaide Oval with our family and friends?  I’m getting goose bumps now thinking about an almost full stadium coming together singing Never Tear Us Apart for the first time in 2021. Given everything we’ve all been through over the last 12 months, I can’t wait!

I’d like to thank you for your patience as we’ve worked through the COVID protocols, electronic ticketing and especially those reserved seat members whose seats had to be left vacant to comply with the SA Health requirements for 75% capacity at Adelaide Oval. Our membership team have done an incredible job, working through every change, person by person and group by group, aiming to find solutions. However, when we’re relocating 4200 seats, it’s a challenge and the reality is we don’t have solutions to suit everyone.

Thanks for your patience and understanding, and like everyone we hope to be able to return to full capacity sooner rather than later so those people impacted most can return to their usual allocated seats.

Tomorrow we will be honouring two of our modern day greats in Brad Ebert and Justin Westhoff, with a lap of honour at 3:30pm so please make sure you get to the ground early to ensure we send them off in front of a big Port Adelaide crowd ahead of the game.

I’d also like to congratulate our captain Tom Jonas on extending his contract through until the end 2023. Tom has been outstanding as captain and he epitomises everything we expect from a Port Adelaide leader – tough, courageous, unrelenting and always team first. Our playing group walks tall with Tom Jonas as their leader and I reckon he’d be the perfect next Premiership Captain at Port Adelaide.

It was a positive start last week against North Melbourne and we’ll be looking to build on that this week against Essendon. Can’t wait to see you there!

Richo