Heritage matters. And not just in the cloth in which football clubs drape themselves. It also has to come from their spirit, their actions - and the way they respect the past.
No sporting club has learned this in any harder way than Port Adelaide. In the pre-NTUA (Never Tear Us Apart) era, 2008-2012, those who thought Port Adelaide's future was in distancing itself from the club's past ultimately found they had no present-day agenda let alone a future.
The theme is echoing around other AFL clubs today.
Adelaide Football Club chairman John Olsen recently noted: "If you forget the past, you have no future."
Too often, AFL clubs become daunted by the challenge of living to their hard-earned traditions. Essendon brought an outsider - Richmond premiership hero Kevin Sheedy - to Windy Hill in 1981 to re-establish power at a club that had drifted into mediocrity. In much the same way Fos Williams, as an outsider revived and advanced Port Adelaide from 1951, Sheedy built his impressive empire with three grand eras at Essendon.
Sheedy respected Essendon's past and used its traditions to build one of Australia's biggest sporting clubs that stretched well beyond a Windy Hill in suburban Melbourne.
On the field, Essendon was revived and thrived.
First, Sheedy locked horns with the powerhouse at Hawthorn and won two VFL premierships (1984 and 1985). Then he surprised with the "Baby Bombers" who won the 1993 AFL premiership. And on the third tilt at greatness, Sheedy created the near-invincible Bombers of 2000.
Since his exit from Essendon in 2007, the Bombers have struggled to live up to expectation. Just one final in each of the 2009, 2011, 2014, 2017 and 2019 top-eight series with no win and the running gag about how Essendon no longer wins in September.
Blake Caracella was one of Sheedy's third-generation Bombers playing 126 AFL games from 1997-2002, savouring the epic 2000 premiership run in which Essendon lost only one match (to the Western Bulldogs).
Caracella has returned to Essendon - after playing and working at Brisbane, Colingwood, Geelong and Richmond - to be an assistant coach in Ben Rutten's staff during the past 23 months. Like the recently appointed Olsen at Adelaide, Caracella is seeking to find a new, promising future for Essendon by respecting and learning from the past.
He paid tribute to the legacy left by the Sheedy era saying: "I spent 20 years away from the footy club; a long time. And they have not had that success since (Sheedy left).
"(But) we have made a real effort this year to make sure we - all the players and staff - understand the past and know what the Essendon Football Club stands for.
"Sheeds was around for a long time and helped grow that.
"That history has been recognised by the players. They have been really interested in where the club generated (those traditions) and what it stands for. They are trying to connect with the history of the footy club, the past - the great players.
"We are getting back there slowly."
At the weekend, Sydney respected its South Melbourne past - the story of the Bloods before they were forced to find a future in Australia's biggest city as the VFL's first relocated team in 1982.
Sydney at the weekend reverted - in an away game at its old base of Melbourne against the Western Bulldogs - to the white jumper with red V line adopted by South Melbourne in 1932 and kept even for the club's initial years in New South Wales. The Opera House silhouette was designed for Season 1987 when the VFL started expansion in Perth and Brisbane.
Heritage rounds are gone but - as the Port Adelaide Football Club has made its mantra - heritage matters.
It matters so much to Sydney that the Swans have decided they will not wait for the AFL to restore heritage rounds (last played in 2008). They have created "Swans Heritage Week".
The Sydney-based AFL club declared last week: "Swans Heritage Week will be marked every season at a game in Melbourne and will feature the Swans heritage guernsey."
"We have," says Sydney chief executive Tom Harley, "enormous respect for our heritage and what has come before us."
If you ignore your past, you have no future.
Heritage matters. For everyone.
