Great post Ford. I'm always staggered at how many people think that the end is just around the corner. I will cut and paste something I wrote from the main board late last year in the How Bad is the Port Situation thread. Lets look back to see how we grew our numbers rapidly, when we weren't the no.1 supported team in SA. The point Ford makes about immigration, and population growth is important because historically we took advantage of those great changes of post war migration and the baby boom. SA is projected to go thru another wave of great migration increase and increased birth rate based on the latest ABS population projection series.
I don't know that Port have much chance to make any great inroads in any immediate timeframe into the existing football supporting public. As a single club entity we are an easy target for the non-Port supporters in this state. And it's hard to win them over. There's a certain parochialism in South Australia and it has a long memory. But that's not to say we can't build, even allowing for SA's ageing population.
On the above premise, probably our best chance for growth is in targeting and attracting migrants, a group with no pre-conceptions about football support. It's certainly worked for us in the past, although we had a greater geographic hook among the cultural communities settling in Queenstown, Royal Park, Seaton etc. It may not be the first generation of migrants, it may be the kids of those migrants. That's how it worked for me, and even today I see it with other second gen's as well. And there are the kids of parents who may have had limited interest in football who for whatever reason take an interest. Again, it's a time based strategy and finding the markets to tap into.
The SA government in South Australia's Strategic Plan has set a target of a 2 million population for South Australia by 2050. The Economic Development Board in a recently-released paper recommended this target be brought forward to 2027. How realistic this is terms of supporting infrastructure and services (not to mention water) remains to be seen. But this will only be achieved through a significant migrant intake, and this is the group we have to home in on, while continuing to work away at those South Australians without a strong football commitment from their past, and their children.
We have to hit that critical mass to get them, but in an ever growing population that can be achieved. It seems a reasonable assumption that one of the reasons for Freo's growth was the unavailability of West Coast tickets, especially once the mining/wealth/population boom kicked in. The Perth housing boom is reported to have driven up prices by 146 percent between 2002 and December 2007.
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showpost.php?p=13045650&postcount=344
.......Woodville was brought in to the comp to partly break Port's dominance. We played in 10 of 14 GF between 1950 and 1963 winning 9 of them.
Woodville is next to Port so it took away from Port's player recruiting zone but not a lot of spectators. Plus the western suburbs was where most 1950's post war migrants initially settled in Adelaide. This post war migration and the fact that most of them moved into the western and north western suburbs helped Port's growth in supporters. People came to the city and state in record numbers, moved into Port's hearland, Port were successful, they were close to the club in a physical sense and this helped to sweep them up in record numbers in that period. Our success between 1977 and 1990 also locked in new fans but the rate of take up was nowhere as rapid as during that post war migration boom.
Before WWII and the first decade after the war, Port would not have been the most popular club in the SANFL. It was probably Norwood by a reasonable margin.The premiership success of the 50's and early 60's as well as making lots of GFs in the 1960's and the charisma of Fos Williams changed all that............
Also in September last year the ABS in its long term population projections for the first time ever, has forecasts that SA's population would be rising by both approx 2020/25 and 2050/55 years, not decling as it has project in it's past Population Projection series.
They have 3 projections based on three different fertility rates ie 2.0/1.8/1.6 children per woman and three different immigration rates.
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3222.0
3222.0 - Population Projections, Australia, 2006 to 2101
Latest ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 04/09/2008
POPULATION SIZE, Observed and projected
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AT 30 JUNE 2006(a)
AT 30 JUNE 2007(b) AT 30 JUNE 2026
AT 30 JUNE 2056
Capital city/ Observed Observed Series A Series B Series C
Series A Series B Series C
balance of state
Adelaide___________ 1 145.8
1 158.0 1 410.8 1 384.5 1 391.8
1 848.5 1 651.8 1 623.7
Bal of South Australia __422.1
_426.2 __531.5 _499.8 __451.0
_691.4 __552.7 _406.7
Total South Australia 1 567.9
1 584.2 1 942.3 1 884.4 1 842.9
2 539.9 2 204.5 2 030.4
If you look back at the Past Releases link you will see that projections you will see how big a change has occured in 5 years.
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@...0720D7DF5C318DD0CA2570C700729134?opendocument
3222.0 - Population Projections, Australia, 2002 to 2101
Previous ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 02/09/2003
POPULATION SIZE, Observed and projected ('000)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______
30 June 2002 As at 30 June 2021
As at 30 June 2051
Capital city/ Observed Series A Series B Series C
Series A Series B Series C
state or territory
Adelaide__________
1,114.3 1,190.7 1,181.2 1,173.3
1,241.7 1,134.6 1,098.3
Total South Australia
1,520.2 1,602.8 1,592.0 1,583.7
1,615.5 1,475.6 1,432.2