Port Adelaide - Club in Crisis?

birdmanptr

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What amazes me is how many kids dont support either SA club.I spent 2 years coaching 4/5 then 6/7 you had half the kids in Crow Port jumpers and not that many more Crows than Port then you had a sports store look.JUst about every club represented.

Grand final day here there will be 12-14 youngest 18 oldest 19.Their will be 3 Crows, 1-2 Port, 3 Saints,2 Essendon maybe 3, 1 Brisbane when you see that you become aware that the market Port are after is not as simple as if you aint a Crow come to us.

Would be interesting who has the biggest influance on kids parents or peers
 

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Froggy

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Yep, change the guernsey yet again and give the logo a make over and we will be back as a force to be reckoned with :rolleyes:

Anyone who honestly believes that crowds will embrace the rubbish our team has been serving up if the players were a different guernsey are better off sticking to fashion shows. :p

BTW, as soon as you add teal to the famous "prison bar" guernsey it is no longer the famous "prison bar" guernsey.
Regardless of performance it'd do far more than any marketing campaign could to get people back to the games. I don't want any teal in it but if we had to have a tiny bit.

Anyone who says we should just accept it that the guernsey is in the past has the wrong attitude, if you whinge for long enough in the AFL you generally get your way, especially as it seems if we were to whinge loudly and for a long time on this issue most of the media and opposition team supporters are behind us on having that guernsey so I think it's worth it to never give up on it.
 

Phhht

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Regardless of performance it'd do far more than any marketing campaign could to get people back to the games. I don't want any teal in it but if we had to have a tiny bit..
Completely disagree. If we were to magically announce that beginning 2010 we were to wear PBs every game, we may have an initial influx of supporters. BUT once they saw the tripe we served up they would probably leave faster than ever even more convinced that we aren't the PAFC that 'made' that guernsey the feared symbol it is.

How did Ford put, something about preferring pitbulls with teal lippy than poodles in PBs.....something like that (apologies FF).
 

S.Patrol.G

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We've probably been over this topic a few times in the not-so-distant past, so I'll recycle my thoughts from a couple of those threads.

We have to project into the future, to strategically plan, and well out from our current start point. This is a long haul plan. It's too easy for people to want to pack up something they see these days as not working right away and move onto the next shiny new thing. Obviously I have a vested interest in seeing Port survive, but I don't see thirteen years as much of a time investment yet, it's just a part generational shift.

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.
I agree, targetting migrants is definately worth it. The way things are going, a membership booth on Ashmore Reef wouldn't go astray!:D

But in all seriousness, an excellent write-up FF. Well done. I hope excellent suggestions like these and commentary on our Club are addressed to the Club as well, not just us.
 

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Regardless of performance it'd do far more than any marketing campaign could to get people back to the games. .....
You are saying that you, and in your opinion the majority of Port supporters, would be happy to watch games such as the round 22 debacle week in, week out, provided the team wore a guernsey that had a reasonable resemblance, in pattern only, to the guernsey we wore prior to our entry into the AFL. :eek:
 

Froggy

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You are saying that you, and in your opinion the majority of Port supporters, would be happy to watch games such as the round 22 debacle week in, week out, provided the team wore a guernsey that had a reasonable resemblance, in pattern only, to the guernsey we wore prior to our entry into the AFL. :eek:
No you guys are completely missing the point that we will reconnect with a lot more of the supporters yes our performances wont keep them at the games but I bet we get a membership spike if it happens and if we do perform well that year in it...
 

Portology

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I agree, targetting migrants is definately worth it. The way things are going, a membership booth on Ashmore Reef wouldn't go astray!:D

But in all seriousness, an excellent write-up FF. Well done. I hope excellent suggestions like these and commentary on our Club are addressed to the Club as well, not just us.
Ford's story is migrants *in the area* are easy to 'capture'. IMO because you default to the 'local club' and you're surrounded from school to supermarket by generations of fans. My experience bears that out *completely*.

How latent local support can be turned into attendance and membership is one key issue for the club. Out of ~40 family (inc. spouses), the majority of whom are Port fans by default, I'm one of ~4 regular attendees and the only paid up member. The others have never even thought of going to a game.

How you target other groups where you don't have a local 'web' to capture them as fans in the first place - different question, bigger, more complex effort. Building a new 'web' on top of a community which isn't geographically together (unless you count the, erm, Ashmore Reef community). NAB Cup 2010 game ? ok, well out of bounds on the full might result in a fairly soggy footy. How big is Beijing Olympic stadium ? Read somewhere it's basically unused these days. Why not ask the question ?

Back down to earth, my head is wired to believe in SA it's harder to turn 'attendance' into 'membership' if 'capture' hasn't come first. In Vic OTOH if you're a migrant you aren't 'born' to a club, given relatively few now live in the old heartlands, most have a chance to go to games of various clubs and you 'choose'. You go with mates so the chance is the bigger clubs and the more recently successful clubs are more likely to benefit.

capture -> attend -> member -> default choice for next generation

One idea for *attendance*: 3 & 5 game packages, for games likely to be less well attended or include 1 'banner' game in it eg Brisbane or Essendon, to drive attendance without cannibalizing season tickets/memberships. Early season games if possible - better shot of decent weather, plus some people will choose to come to later games *in the same season*.

One barrier to *capture*: I've got a Platinum seat, right now I think I can't take people in occasionally (young relatives I'd be looking after, neutrals I'd be looking to 'capture') as they can't sit with me, have to be in the general admission areas. Am I right or barking up the wrong tree here ??
 

morell

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I was thinking about Port Adelaide and its history and whether or not we had faced similar situations previously. I decided to read, for about the 20th time, the wonderful Port Adelaide article on Full Points Footy.

I noticed it has been updated, with the following paragraph being added;

Link
A century ago, the Port Adelaide Football Club was in a rather similar position to that in which it finds itself today, struggling at times to come to terms with a changed environment, but doing so with energy, imagination and great persistence. Ultimately, the club prevailed, fielding some of the most extraordinarily successful teams in South Australian football history. A hundred years on, the stage may have changed and the stakes may have risen, but one would need to be very brave or very foolish indeed - notwithstanding the events of Saturday 29th September 2007 and their somewhat disappointing immediate aftermath - to bet against a similar train of events panning out in the foreseeable future.
Link

Never, ever, underestimate the Port Adelaide Football club.
 
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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
 

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As much as I love the prison bars, some of you need to move on. It's a part of our heritage and our history and should be worn every heritage round, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm not that fussed with it being wore every match in the AFL.

What I don't like is Vlad and Eddie telling everyone else what to do.
I agree. Also, the club has said a few times over the years that there is no plan to go back to the PBs. Clearly a number of supporters who have followed Port back from SANFL days would like to see it, but seriously, it's highly doubtful it will ever happen because it's not on the radar as far as the club is concerned.

The stupid thing is if it were about the black and white colours why doesn't Eddie hate Lucy's top? It's all black and white! It's probably got more white on it then the PB's would ffs
The 'back in black' jumper is not vertical stripes - Eddie's point has always been about black and white stripes

Never, ever, underestimate the Port Adelaide Football club.
:thumbsu:
 

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No you guys are completely missing the point that we will reconnect with a lot more of the supporters .....
Supporters who disconnected with the PAFC when we joined the AFL because we were no longer wearing the "prison bars" or called the "Magpies" are so fickle that they are not worth reconnecting with. The Crows are welcome to them. ;)
 

Froggy

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Supporters who disconnected with the PAFC when we joined the AFL because we were no longer wearing the "prison bars" or called the "Magpies" are so fickle that they are not worth reconnecting with. The Crows are welcome to them. ;)
Nah he was on about not being black and white as well it's just bullshit our club gave up the fight.

I mean people who have still come but have waned off now as we've stopped resembling port with our shit soft football, it is a godo first step in reconnecting.
 

Steve Dore

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.... I mean people who have still come but have waned off now as we've stopped resembling port with our shit soft football .....
Which is what I am saying. Supporters want to see Port teams that play like Port teams regardless of what guernsey they are wearing.
 

tribey

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Yeah, I'm sick of hearing it. It's an anecdotal assumption based on a fundamental flaw.

The Creed, the 126 years of asskicking SAFA/SAFL/SANFL history, the prisonbar.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with it if you're truly neutral and intending to become a financial supporter/member of the Port Adelaide Football Club. It is heritage, tradition, success, prestige, a proud past which is the basis of a confident future.

If you aren't going to support the club because of this, you have an inherent bias anyway and would be just as turned off by the name 'Port Adelaide' or the fact the club resides in the very same place it has since 1880.

If you're truly neutral it is a clear option. The old club with 139 years of tradition that is the only non-Victorian club to graduate to the highest level in the land based on its glittering CV or the hastily enacted conglomerate that spent the first four years of its life playing out of Max Basheer's desk drawer.

Collingwood should be our model, not f#cking Fremantle.
Bump.

I bring good tidings from the future.
 
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