Club History "It's not the SANFL any more"

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Between Gerard "pseudo intellectual" Whatley and now club mouthpiece Michaelangelo "not even the Advertiser wants me" Rucci both parroting this quote about it "not being the SANFL any more", it's clear to me that this is a club sanctioned statement, meant to dispell the idea that this sort base deserves constant success, and we're crazy for thinking we should get it. It's unreasonable, the suggestion is, to demand anything from this club now that it's in the big bad world of a national competition.

Now, firstly, it's a absolute load of utter s**t - why shouldn't we want to be the most successful club in the competition, no other club is shot down for wanting success? But let's just play devils advocate and just roll with it, and agree it's not possible to hit that level of success in the AFL. What level of success are we supposed to be happy with?

I started supporting Port Adelaide back in 1997, at 7 years old, based entirely on my friend's recommendation I should do it. While I know now about the rich history of the Magpies, all of my first hand supporting experience comes from watching the Power.

I got to see a premiership at 15, 8 years after I first chucked on a Power scarf and wandered into Footy Park. It was just a few months after my 18th birthday that Port stepped out onto the MCG for the 2007 grand final, their second grand final appearance in 11 years. In fact, in my first 11 years of supporting Port Adelaide, I witnessed:

1 Premiership
2 Grand Finals (1 every 5.5 years on average)
4 years of Preliminary Finals
7 years of Finals appearances
17 Finals games
8 Finals wins

Now, since the year I turned 18 (16 years ago), I've seen:

0 Premierships
0 Grand Finals
3 years of Preliminary Finals
6 years of Finals appearances
12 Finals games
5 Finals wins

At this point, I'm not chasing some mythical Port-Adelaide-of-old level of success, I'm after a level of success that matches a period of time when we were moderately successful. A period of time where, frankly, everyone agrees we underachieved. A period of time where we copped the biggest grand final losing margin of all time. How is that bar of success something that I'm dubbed "the lunatic fringe" for wanting? Something that is worth drowning out my complaints as "white noise"?

To put things in perspective, since the year I turned 18, if I had chosen any other football team I would've had an 8/17 chance - just under 50% - of witnessing a premiership as an adult by now. Any other team and I would've had a 13/17 chance - over 75% - of witnessing my team at least make a grand final. At this point, I'm literally asking for a level of success that 3 quarters of the competition has had. What a lunatic I am.

Koch, Richardson, Davies, Hinkley - get the * out of my club. It's not your club and it never was.

Signed yet another White Noise Lunatic Fringe member
 
Between Gerard "pseudo intellectual" Whatley and now club mouthpiece Michaelangelo "not even the Advertiser wants me" Rucci both parroting this quote about it "not being the SANFL any more", it's clear to me that this is a club sanctioned statement, meant to dispell the idea that this sort base deserves constant success, and we're crazy for thinking we should get it. It's unreasonable, the suggestion is, to demand anything from this club now that it's in the big bad world of a national competition.

Now, firstly, it's a absolute load of utter s**t - why shouldn't we want to be the most successful club in the competition, no other club is shot down for wanting success? But let's just play devils advocate and just roll with it, and agree it's not possible to hit that level of success in the AFL. What level of success are we supposed to be happy with?

I started supporting Port Adelaide back in 1997, at 7 years old, based entirely on my friend's recommendation I should do it. While I know now about the rich history of the Magpies, all of my first hand supporting experience comes from watching the Power.

I got to see a premiership at 15, 8 years after I first chucked on a Power scarf and wandered into Footy Park. It was just a few months after my 18th birthday that Port stepped out onto the MCG for the 2007 grand final, their second grand final appearance in 11 years. In fact, in my first 11 years of supporting Port Adelaide, I witnessed:

1 Premiership
2 Grand Finals (1 every 5.5 years on average)
4 years of Preliminary Finals
7 years of Finals appearances
17 Finals games
8 Finals wins

Now, since the year I turned 18 (16 years ago), I've seen:

0 Premierships
0 Grand Finals
3 years of Preliminary Finals
6 years of Finals appearances
12 Finals games
5 Finals wins

At this point, I'm not chasing some mythical Port-Adelaide-of-old level of success, I'm after a level of success that matches a period of time when we were moderately successful. A period of time where, frankly, everyone agrees we underachieved. A period of time where we copped the biggest grand final losing margin of all time. How is that bar of success something that I'm dubbed "the lunatic fringe" for wanting? Something that is worth drowning out my complaints as "white noise"?

To put things in perspective, since the year I turned 18, if I had chosen any other football team I would've had an 8/17 chance - just under 50% - of witnessing a premiership as an adult by now. Any other team and I would've had a 13/17 chance - over 75% - of witnessing my team at least make a grand final. At this point, I'm literally asking for a level of success that 3 quarters of the competition has had. What a lunatic I am.

Koch, Richardson, Davies, Hinkley - get the * out of my club. It's not your club and it never was.

Signed yet another White Noise Lunatic Fringe member
So your saying since you was 18 ( 2008) you would have had almost a 50% chance of a flag and a 75% chance of making a GF if you have chosen any other football team?
 
So your saying since you was 18 ( 2008) you would have had almost a 50% chance of a flag and a 75% chance of making a GF if you have chosen any other football team?
Yep. And if anyone other than Collingwood wins the Premiership this year it becomes over 50% odds of me picking a team that gets one.

We're not talking unprecedented levels of success here. We're talking the status quo.
 

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I started following Port in 1987 when I was 5. By the time I was 18, I'd seen us win 9 premierships. I'm now almost 42 and i've seen one since.

Yes, its not the SANFL anymore. No, we should not expect to win 2 flags every 3 years. But what should be a non negotiable is always striving for the best, always moving towards our next premiership.

Right now, we do not do that. The amount of excuse making come out of the club, coming from club mouthpieces is quite simply disgusting.

It's not right.
 
These *sticks act as if we are a Luton tier championship side promoted to the EPL 3 seasons ago, and can't believe our fans are complaining that we arent as successful as your traditional big 4.

It's been 27 years in a competition with equalisation measures in place ffs
 
We need to be careful what we wish for. If we don't stop with all this white noise we'll create a split in the space/time continuum and the club will be transported back to 2011 where it will exist for perpetuity. All of our souls will be turned into one giant tarp and we'll have 119 geelong shaped PEDs injected into our anuses.
Again - bE cArEfUl WhAt YoU wIsH fOr!!!
 
I started following Port in 1987 when I was 5. By the time I was 18, I'd seen us win 9 premierships. I'm now almost 42 and i've seen one since.

Yes, its not the SANFL anymore. No, we should not expect to win 2 flags every 3 years. But what should be a non negotiable is always striving for the best, always moving towards our next premiership.

Right now, we do not do that. The amount of excuse making come out of the club, coming from club mouthpieces is quite simply disgusting.

It's not right.


Imagine they told us what they think themselves rather than paying the mouthpiece that is Rucci….
 
"Contrary to popular (and lazy) claims, Port supporters don’t expect the club to emulate the unparalleled success in the SANFL. What they do expect, is for the club to match its own stated ambitions in the AFL. To match the benchmark clubs in this league like Geelong, Hawthorn, Richmond and Brisbane all of whom have all been able to win 3 or more premierships this millennium and who have all since moved on their coaches in search of future glories."




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All I know is that this attitude of it's a tough competition, we're just a little battler club, you have to wait your turn, you need a bit of luck, etc, is the absolute antithesis of what is required to be successful in a highly competitive 18 team competition. The current club culture and mentality will NEVER get the job done.
 
All I know is that this attitude of it's a tough competition, we're just a little battler club, you have to wait your turn, you need a bit of luck, etc, is the absolute antithesis of what is required to be successful in a highly competitive 18 team competition. The current club culture and mentality will NEVER get the job done.
I suspect kokhead's comment made not long after he got the president's gig, `we're a little old blue collar club from Alberton,' may not have been the stupid throwaway line many of us probably thought it was at the time. :think:
 

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Every year, the club’s “leaders” excel at telling us that the only acceptable metric is premiership success until we inevitably fall short, by the length of Flemington straight. Then they shamelessly flip the script and chastise and ridicule us (including through their propaganda peddling mouthpieces) for having any expectations.

And on another matter, it’s about time that Pucci started every written and spoken rant with a full disclosure about his employment status at the club. It is shameful the s**t that is allowed to sprout out of his mouth when he is so heavily conflicted.
 
Be interesting to know what the odds of a non vic team winning the premiership is.
Brisbane, Sydney and West Coast have been the successful ones but the first two had years of extra salary cap and West Coast have more money than the Saudi Royal Family.
 
To put things in perspective, since the year I turned 18, if I had chosen any other football team I would've had an 8/17 chance - just under 50% - of witnessing a premiership as an adult by now. Any other team and I would've had a 13/17 chance - over 75% - of witnessing my team at least make a grand final.
If you add Ken Hinkley to the mix those odds drastic go down.
 
I started following Port in 1987 when I was 5. By the time I was 18, I'd seen us win 9 premierships. I'm now almost 42 and i've seen one since.

Yes, its not the SANFL anymore. No, we should not expect to win 2 flags every 3 years. But what should be a non negotiable is always striving for the best, always moving towards our next premiership.

Right now, we do not do that. The amount of excuse making come out of the club, coming from club mouthpieces is quite simply disgusting.

It's not right.
I'm in exactly the same boat as you (except Mum threw my first Port jumper on me in 1984). We are the last generation that remembers success and we are drifting into our mid-40s. There is now a generation of people who have no lived memory of the club being successful. If you had told me that when I was in the Great Southern Stand on the last Saturday in September 2004, I would have had you committed. It simply wouldn't register that here we would be, 20 years later, with nothing else to show in the trophy cabinet.

The one phrase I hate more than anything is "it's not the SANFL anymore". What the idiots that say that don't understand is that we are in the AFL because of the standards we set in the SANFL. The ethos of the club generated the success that propelled us into the national competition. I also don't expect to win the flag every other year, but we should be absolutely uncompromising in our attempts to do just that. We were never afraid to take hard decisions, or upset people along the way, in order to achieve Premiership success, because winning was all that matters. That has been lost at the club. It is now a shell of what it was, and it is no wonder that success has disappeared as a result.
 
Everyone realises that it's much more difficult to dominate the AFL than the SANFL. Literally nobody is expecting premierships every other year. What we do expect is for our club to aggressively pursue the goal of being a strong club who wins more than its fair share of premierships. We are not a strong club who wins more than its fair share of premierships. We are not even a solid club who wins its fair share of premierships. We are a weak club who wins less than its fair share of premierships. This isn't about being a powerhouse who wins flag after flag. It's about not being a St Kilda like loser club who could easily go a century without winning anything, which is exactly what we've become under this administration.
 
"Contrary to popular (and lazy) claims, Port supporters don’t expect the club to emulate the unparalleled success in the SANFL. What they do expect, is for the club to match its own stated ambitions in the AFL. To match the benchmark clubs in this league like Geelong, Hawthorn, Richmond and Brisbane all of whom have all been able to win 3 or more premierships this millennium and who have all since moved on their coaches in search of future glories."




On SM-G975F using BigFooty.com mobile app
Even matching the benchmark clubs is another realm from where we are.

I want to just at the very least be able to match Gold Coast and Essendon - sides that make decisions and can change when needed to bring in a new coach.
To match GWS - who have already made a grand final in Ken's tenure and have a chance of another.
To match Fremantle and the Western Bulldogs - who have also made it to the big dance while we've twiddled our thumbs growing with a young list that needs to work harderer.

For a starting point I just want to match the ambitions and actions of any of the other 17 clubs. There are none that have sat so pathetically idle as us, nor are there any clubs that have accepted this length of coaching mediocrity in the history of the competition. We are the most irrelevant, worst administered club in the history of the AFL.
 
We aren't even asking for what you promised. 3 flags in 5 years.
Actually it's a good point this one.

We may demand success, or even just demand that we are trying everything we can to achieve it, but it was the club itself that said they wanted 3 flags in 5 years. They set the bar that high, not us the fans. I never would've thought 3 was achievable, 1 alone was more than a reasonable objective.

Richo can't come out sending emails about us having unrealistic expectations when he set them.
 
Even matching the benchmark clubs is another realm from where we are.

I want to just at the very least be able to match Gold Coast and Essendon - sides that make decisions and can change when needed to bring in a new coach.
To match GWS - who have already made a grand final in Ken's tenure and have a chance of another.
To match Fremantle and the Western Bulldogs - who have also made it to the big dance while we've twiddled our thumbs growing with a young list that needs to work harderer.

For a starting point I just want to match the ambitions and actions of any of the other 17 clubs. There are none that have sat so pathetically idle as us, nor are there any clubs that have accepted this length of coaching mediocrity in the history of the competition. We are the most irrelevant, worst administered club in the history of the AFL.
On FB I got smashed for my opinions and told, "well Essendon haven't won a final in 20 years, so calm down"

Yes. That's exactly the bar some fans set. If we don't descend to not winning a final in 20 years, they will be happy.

We exist to not be as bad as some of the most unsuccessful clubs ever.
 
On FB I got smashed for my opinions and told, "well Essendon haven't won a final in 20 years, so calm down"

Yes. That's exactly the bar some fans set. If we don't descend to not winning a final in 20 years, they will be happy.

We exist to not be as bad as some of the most unsuccessful clubs ever.

It’s even happened here. Had a week or two of shirty exchanges with one prominent poster around mid-season who asked how I’d go if I supported St Kilda.

What the f#%k is that rationale?

Destitute logic.
 

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