There was a time when wearing the Port Adelaide jumper carried an unspoken, unbreakable contract. You won premierships, or you died trying. If you couldn’t handle the heat, you were shown the door.
Today? We seem to be watching the dismantling of the most successful football team in Australia, and the silence from Alberton is deafening.
As we sit here watching the SANFL “Magpies” hurtle toward what looks destined to be their second wooden spoon in recent memory, you have to ask yourself: does anyone at the executive level actually care?
Prior to the disaster of 2024, Port Adelaide had not finished at the bottom of the ladder since 1900. One hundred and twenty-four years of pride, excellence, and a total refusal to submit, wiped out. Now, we are staring down the barrel of another spoon, and the reaction from the club’s hierarchy is a collective shrug. As we have noted in previous blogs, the modern Port Adelaide Football Club seems to think it owes its members absolutely nothing in the way of answers or accountability.
If you want definitive proof of where the state league team sits on the club’s priority list, look at the coaching box. We all understand the reality: the club has moved beyond being just a SANFL entity, and the AFL program is, and always will be, the top priority. But that shouldn’t excuse a total lack of accountability toward the SANFL program’s preparation.
The official narrative was that Hamish Hartlett was locked in to lead the Magpies until the club allowed Tyson Goldsack to be poached late by Collingwood, triggering a domino effect. Darren Reeves was moved sideways to the AFL forwards, and Hartlett was pulled from the Magpies in late October to cover the AFL vacancy.
But if you read between the lines, the timeline has fueled persistent rumors that the hierarchy was already weighing up a change in the SANFL program anyway. In that light, the Goldsack defection may have simply provided a convenient, face-saving way to shift coaches sideways without the bad optics of moving on a club stalwart. Either way, Jacob Surjan was scrambled in at the eleventh hour as the SANFL senior coach. Using the historic Port Adelaide Magpies hot seat as a reactionary chess piece to solve AFL logistical issues and manage internal optics doesn’t seem like a recipe for success.
The lack of transparency has officially crossed into the bizarre. Take a look at the team sheets and the injury lists on any given week. Players don’t just get dropped or managed anymore; they simply vanish into the ether.
Look at the captaincy situation. Nick Moore, a heart-and-soul player who embodies traditional Port Adelaide grit, was suddenly stripped of the captaincy ahead of this 2026 season in favor of Jez McLennan, with barely a word of real explanation to the faithful.
But the script got even weirder on the weekend. Moore was missing from the Magpies’ lineup, with the club citing an injury. Yet, if you check the local footy lineups you would have seen his name on the playing list for amateur club Kilburn.
How does a contracted Port Adelaide player get ruled out with an “injury” for the Magpies, only to be named in the amateur leagues? Now, he might not have actually taken the field, but surely a word to the members about what was going on wouldn’t have hurt?
Then there is the recruitment and retention strategy, which is shrouded in just as much mystery. Why was fan favourite and tough nut Jake Weideman allowed to just walk out of Alberton mid-season and sign elsewhere, without a single coherent explanation to the fans about what our SANFL list strategy actually is? What about a few words about the other players who have been added to the list at the half way mark?
It all points to a wider, much more depressing truth: the SANFL team is being treated as a training ground and a corporate nuisance rather than the soul of the club.
We saw the writing on the wall years ago with the logo. Remember when the historic Magpies logo was stripped from the front of the SANFL tops? We were told it was a temporary move, a club-wide unification strategy just for the 150th anniversary celebrations. We were promised it would return. Instead, it vanished entirely.
Was it a move to appease Eddie McGuire and the Collingwood hierarchy, trading away our actual day-to-day heritage just so the AFL side could beg for permission to wear the Prison Bars once or twice a year in a Showdown?
The current administration has forgotten that you cannot build a successful future by cutting off your own roots. You cannot create a winning culture whilst ignoring the results. The members are tired of being ignored, tired of the lack of explanations, and tired of watching a once-mighty institution become a punchline.
It’s time for answers at the Magpies. Who is taking responsibility for this mess?
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