BROWNLOW Medallist Dane Swan is such a jokester on social media that there always is the trap of taking quite seriously a remark made in jest.

But his theme on Friday evening - in recognising Travis Boak on playing 300 AFL games for Port Adelaide - put on the roasting coals an old chestnut that highlights just how far football's national league still has to go to shed its traditional Victorian-centric ways.

"... congrats to boak (lower-case spelling as Swan typed it) on his 300th. Would be held in much higher regard (not that he isn't held in high regard already) if he played his whole career in melbourne. Been a star for a long time," Swan wrote.

Swan, who taunted the Port Adelaide fans for being held to a behind - a winning behind as it turned out - during the first term against Collingwood at the MCG two months ago, could not have been surprised by the heated response to his Tweet.

And the former Collingwood star persisted: "You think trav (again in lower case), Ollie, Charlie aren't bigger stars in Adelaide than they are here? If they walked down the st here (in Melbourne) they would get recognised 1/10 of the time. Which is my point."

Non-Victorians have heard this for decades. 

In the pre-national era before 1987: No SANFL great was any good because he did not prove himself in the "big league" of the VFL.

Since VFL expansion: A player still has to make his mark in Melbourne, as noted when South Australian Matthew Pavlich became the first Perth-placed player to reach the 300-game milestone at Fremantle - a significant achievement to be mirrored by another South Australian in Shannon Hurn at West Coast this weekend.

Pavlich, Hurn and Boak are no less admirable for their achievements because they have shown immense loyalty to Fremantle, West Coast and Port Adelaide rather than worked within the city limits of Melbourne.

No AFL player should be judged by location rather than his achievements.

No national competition should be trapped by the city limits of its cradle in Victoria.

And being recognised by 10 out of 10 people while walking the streets of Melbourne should not be a measure of how any player is held, regard-wise.

Swan might have been poking the bear again, but he is perpetuating a theme that should have been buried when the VFL logo was replaced by the AFL national agenda 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, far too many football television panel shows - based in Melbourne - and game-day commentators still persist with the impression it must happen within their Victorian borders to be relevant to the game - a sport that needed to go beyond Melbourne's city limits to find its survival and future.

Boak's regard is enhanced - as a footballer and man - by his decision to stay at Port Adelaide rather than take the highway back to his old Torquay neighbourhood to join Geelong at the end of the 2012 AFL season when there were serious question marks on the future of the AFL licence at Alberton.

The easy decision would have been to join a premiership contender at Kardinia Park.

Instead, Boak kept faith in a battered football club that had believed in him with its first call at the 2006 AFL national draft when there was pressure to go with local talent.

The simplest move would have been to return home to his family to be the "man of the house" filling the gap left by the death of his father Roger seven years earlier. No one would have cast a stone. Instead, Boak became the man at Port Adelaide as its new captain for a new era and found a new family among the club's supporter base.

Swan should hold this in the highest regard. This merits more recognition than being recognised along Flinders Street in central Melbourne.

An AFL player's achievements are not - as the Victorians would have it during the VFL era - of greater merit because they are earned at a Melbourne-based club such as Collingwood, Carlton or Richmond.

The gold on an AFL premiership medal does not have more lustre if it is worn at Geelong rather than Brisbane.

An All-Australian jumper does not sag from the shoulders when it is hung in a wardrobe in Sydney rather than at Essendon.

Travis Boak has the highest regard for playing a significant part in the Port Adelaide revival from 2013 to ensure the club kept its AFL licence, became a highly competitive team and a "destination club" for high-profile recruits such as Charlie Dixon who became an All-Australian at Alberton last season.

A national competition does not judge a player or coach on his achievements with less regard should his club not have a post code starting with 3 (the band dedicated to Melbourne suburbs and Victorian towns).

Even Swan would have been a great player away from Collingwood (as might have been for all the picks non-Victorian clubs had before No. 58 in the 2001 AFL national draft).