5 Years on we still here

[ozph1870]

They had 20 years to get their house in order knowing full well that their primary product - regional football and all its related revenue streams - was obsolescent. There were already signs that the model was dying long before we put up our bid.

Many of the VFL clubs were destitute, fuelled by a player-transfer arms race and the absence of TV/multimedia rights worth more than a packet of stale crisps. South Melbourne had relocated, Fitzroy sought new markets and junior merger partners for a decade before ultimately shipping north. Peter Gordon led a last minute charge to prevent a Footscray merger with the Lions. Richmond rattled the tins with Save Our Skins. Hawthorn, despite a decade of Grand Final appearances and a cavalcade of premierships, almost merged as the junior partner of Melbourne. The Kangaroad Show has sold games to Sydney, Canberra and Hobart and by gum it put them on the map. Collingwood faced the new millennium nearly broke. Collingwood.

Here in SA the situation wasn't much better. West Torrens hastily arranged a marriage with Woodville, Sturt were about to embark on a run of 7 or 8 consecutive wooden spoons, South Adelaide missed their chance to win hearts and minds of the Onkaparinga Massive as a sort of 'Noarlunga Centrals' and Port Adelaide rolled on unabated, trapped in a geographical cage that saw it consistently losing superstars for a pittance in an ominous portent for the great Ajax Amsterdam of Holland.

Clubs like Glenelg with their naked arrogance and delusion rooted in the steadfast belief that they were going to be able to suck handsome AFL revenues from Port and the Crows for eternity, fell asleep at the wheel. Sure, some planned wisely, albeit with questionable ethical consequences, such as Centrals expanding their rivers of pokies gold which continued to flow from one of the most vulnerable socioeconomic communities in the coastal country. Glenelg made the mindboggling decision to go into heavy debt expanding its facilities and building its bistro, in a locality saturated with superior alternatives.

But never mind. Ultimately the attitude was f**k you pal, you're our whores, we've got the bill of sale that proves ownership and you're gonna get out there on your hands and knees and work. An out-of-the-way, tired Football Park - unserved by rail - will stand the test of time, expanded Saturday/Sunday trading won't happen, Pay TV will never exist, free-to-air will always protect live gates by hours and increasing disposible income will never be spent elsewhere on competing entertainment.

And when the wheel finally turned they sunk further into delusion. One of your sublicences is effectively bankrupt and the other - the bulletproof golden goose with its headstart and all associated advantages - is starting to take on water.

"Well", Leigh Whicker mused. "We have to grow the pie". Tweaking the existing revenue sharing model to retain the same high breakeven, but with agreed cost-cutting measures to make the stadium experience even worse. Closed gates. Closed bars. Closed food outlets. Reduced staffing. But there'd be the dangling miragecarrot of added profit incentives if Port (and Adelaide) could attract bumper crowds like the halcyon days in the late 90's/early 00's.

Shockingly, this didn't work.

Port continued to bleed out and the Crows made some poor strategic decisions, such as pouring $20,000,000 into building a new facility at Football Park despite their own crowds falling and the entire precinct serving as a malignant tumour for both clubs.

Was it time for a complete overhaul of the revenue model? Did we need to seriously consider abandoning West Lakes and strike a deal with the SACA to lobby the state and federal governments to redevelop Adelaide Oval into the centralised space-age stadium the whole of South Australia needed to finally take a step forward into the future?

Nah. We'll keep the current revenue model, lobby Mike Rann for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lipstick to slap on the Footy Park pig and if push comes to shove we'll liquidate the Power and try again with a second composite franchise. Outside of Port Adelaide nation, this belief was almost universal.

"You signed the deal when joining the AFL. You knew the conditions. You agreed to them. You haven't been able to fulfil them. Eat shit and die, preferably."

Go back through the scores of old threads from 2008-2010. Poster after poster repeating a variant of this refrain, ignoring the unforeseen circumstances that meant football at the end of the 2000's was light years away from what it was in the early-to-mid 1990's. A city stadium? Impossible. And even if it did exist, anyone who thinks Port could regularly pull crowds of 30,000 is delusional. Living in fairyland. Port is just a bad brand. And in hindsight, it was silly thinking one SANFL club could provide a catchment capable of sustaining a national licence. Now? These same dickblisters are cockahoop when we 'only' get 33,000 at Adelaide Oval to see us take on Brisbane in drizzling Sunday twilight. And so it goes.

Remember when Port sought all measures to rescue a prostrate Magpies, finally settling upon a merger that would structure the SANFL concern in such a way as to slash costs and maximise existing revenue streams, let alone forge new ones? Bugger them. How will a marriage between two failed entities result in a viable one? Indeed, Glenelg were particularly dismissive:

View attachment 371503

Ouch. I wonder if Steve has shared this view with his successor, Nick Chigwidden? It truly is the circle of strife.

#schadenfreude
#weareportadelaide
#andalwayswillbe

Please write a book...

 

[tribey]

Please write a book...

The last one of us to do that went to prison so

 

[Dylan8]

Please write a book...

I'd seriously get around a tribey's greatest hits album thread

 

[ozph1870]

The last one of us to do that went to prison so

Oh... I have no idea who that is....

 

[raman]

The last one of us to do that went to prison so

Tribey Hitler?

 

[Contested Marx]

Haha. I just realised I've met ex-gernerg ceo

Someone in my family is married into the family he is married into.

 

[Duck Farmer]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The boundary line's about 20m in from the fence.

 

[Magpiespower]

A carpark?

No need really. Not when they unveiled the next stage of the redevelopment. A one-way O-Bahn...

 

[Forzaport]

The last one of us to do that went to prison so

I want mine personally signed, like Heritage was.

 

[Grave Danger]

Oh... I have no idea who that is....

Alexander Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago was said to be a thinly veiled swipe at the atrocities committed by the SANFL regime.

 

[manureid]

The last one of us to do that went to prison so

He gave me a free copy as well.

 

[70sDinosaur]

True.

I could never work out how they became the 'darlings' of the SNAFL.

They had such a huge attitude of entitlement but without having done much. Rightly or wrongly, I equate much of the Crows 'brand' in the early days to Glenelg. Crows supporters exhibited the same level of *******tery as your typical Bay supporter.

Surely no coincidence they found some success after Blight arrived there and removed much of that Glenelg cancer.

 

[70sDinosaur]

Ah the Logical Solution as the SANFL dubbed. Thank **** for the GFC and the state government pulling the $100m it had committed to the project.

Obviously wasn't Vulcan logic - more like an attempt to Klingon to the past.

 

[Greasyrhys]

Glad we've been able to prove the doubters wrong in the time since those dark days.

 

[PAFC66]

The boundary line's about 20m in from the fence.

I always thought Adelaide was stuck in the 80s and that porno music settled it.

 

[Power One]

Glad we've been able to prove the doubters wrong in the time since those dark days.

Yeah. Now that all the dust has settled, its patently obvious that we won the bitter battle. Port in the AFL, and all the other SANFL clubs bundled together just like it should be. Its no wonder they hate us.
It took time , and the crow pigs had the time of their lives in the early years. Not anymore though, or ever again . PORTS... AFL.. AFL.. AFL.
From South Australia there's the merged SANFL side in the AFL, and then there's Port Adelaide. A HUGE VICTORY, and its forever. WE WON

 

[StuMan]

A mate posted this on Facebook today. An Oak Plus ad on a bus in Melbourne.

 

[TeeKray]

A mate posted this on Facebook today. An Oak Plus ad on a bus in Melbourne.

I saw this exact ad on a bus in Perth tonight and had to do a double take

 

[Grandaddy J]

View attachment 371565


Also, WTF is that thing supposed to be behind the abominable Northern Stand?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that's the airship from the cover of Led Zeppelin I

 

[VineValerian]

A mate posted this on Facebook today. An Oak Plus ad on a bus in Melbourne.

Son and I were in Melbourne for 3 days and saw Robbie Gray ad on side of a tram in Bourke Street.

 

[Magus]

A mate posted this on Facebook today. An Oak Plus ad on a bus in Melbourne.

Dat captain, dat guerns.

We are just so damn marketable.

 

[CharlieKelly]

and just a reminder of what a pissant state we live in

"1979 - Royal Commission into the floodlighting of Football Park at West Lakes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Australian_Royal_Commissions

 

[Steve Dore]

and just a reminder of what a pissant state we live in

"1979 - Royal Commission into the floodlighting of Football Park at West Lakes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_Australian_Royal_Commissions

Don't forget the Adelaide Oval retractable light towers which were put in to appease a few North Adelaide residents.

Link
"After deciding full-time light towers were just too ugly to be erected in North Adelaide, the compromise was they would only be put up when games were played, then hidden away like an ugly child the rest of the time. There was only one problem with this plan - it was rubbish.

It didn't work. Not even close. Originally scheduled for completion in October 1995, the retractable lights were turned on in December 1997, $4 million over budget.

Three months later the scheme was abandoned when a tower collapsed, injuring two workers."
Link

 

[DaTBird187]

Surely no coincidence they found some success after Blight arrived there and removed much of that Glenelg cancer.

Perhaps from the playing group, but the supporters were still a melanoma.

 

[Alberton Proud]

Also, WTF is that thing supposed to be behind the abominable Northern Stand?

Lleyton's practice court