WHEN Port Adelaide bursts through it banner on Sunday, it will be precisely 5468 days since its last SANFL premiership – an almost 15-year drought that has left the club’s faithful hungry for success.

If the Magpies get the job done, they will go down in history by winning the club’s 37th premiership in South Australian football since the establishment of the SAFA in 1877.

15 years is the longest period without premier silverware at Alberton in the club’s history.

The club’s true believers will say it’s been too long.

But while the team that runs out on Sunday will choc-full of young running talents from across the country, their chance to make their own history and snap that drought is one that will earn them special places in the hearts of all Port people.

Stephen Williams, one of the club’s most successful coaches in the SANFL, knows what it takes to win premierships.

He comes from a dynasty that helped build Port Adelaide into the superpower of South Australian football and the only club from outside Victoria to be granted AFL admission.

That dynasty expands throughout the whole Williams family, with a coaching triumvirate that includes the club’s patriarch the late Fos Williams, Stephen and his brother Mark, who coached the club to its first AFL flag in 2004, at its centre.

Stephen Williams played in six premierships between 1988 and 1995, and coached the Magpies to three in 1996, 1998 and 1999.

portadelaidefc.com.au spoke to Williams, now a respected commentator with ABC Grandstand in South Australia, about that famous day where the club secured its 36th flag by beating the Redlegs in a nail-biter.

“We’d lost to Norwood in 1997 pretty comfortably and we were lucky to get over the line the year after against Sturt,” Williams says.

Port Adelaide had lost its previous two grand final encounters with Norwood in 1997 and 1984.

Heading into the 1999 Grand Final, the club’s last premiership victory over the red-and-blue was back in 1980, and 1957 before that.

But while Williams was a man with a firm knowledge of the Port-Norwood rivalry – he also understood the importance of treating any grand final for what it was.

There was an opportunity to correct the balance following the Magpies’ 1997 loss to the Redlegs, but there was the simpler opportunity of winning the pennant on the line.

2014 SANFL IGA LEAGUE GRAND FINAL PREVIEW

“Norwood came from pretty far back in ‘99, and once they got through it was always going to be a big game with memories of ’84 and ’97 being the last times we’d played them, Williams says.

“It was a big opportunity and big game to play the traditional rivals and we were keen to finish the job.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing Sturt, Centrals or Norwood, whoever gets through is a worthy opponent.

“I think the fact that we’d played Norwood two years earlier and got beaten pretty comfortably by a pretty strong side, and then came up against them in 1999 with a few players who played that day [in 1997] gave us the opportunity to right that wrong.

“We would never get 97 back, but we also didn’t want to lose twice in two years.”

The game itself was a classic decider, full of tight, contested ground-level battles and forging heroes of the black-and-white for one last time in a century of dominance by the state’s most famous club.

Everyone remembers the famous Phil McGuinness torpedo from outside 50 that put the Magpies seven points ahead at the 26-minute mark of the final term – remarkable after replacing Danny Morgan off the interchange bench just eight minutes earlier.

But for Williams, like many Port people, it was the tough defensive stuff that epitomised the Magpies’ win that day.

It was Tom Carr – a dyed-in-the-wool Port man who was formally drafted from the club’s SANFL presence into its AFL operation in 1997 – who registered the act of the match when he spoiled Redlegs captain Andrew Pascoe late in the game.

Pascoe, had he taken the mark, would have gone back from just over 10 metres directly in front of goal to hammer a deep, final nail in Port Adelaide’s coffin.

Williams remembers it well.

“We started really well, they came back at us and it went down to the wire – a little bit like in 1998 – the opposition was in front late in the game, but we found something special late in the game to get over the line,” says Williams.

“It was late in the game that Tommy Carr had a few terrific efforts, got across and spoiled Andrew Pascoe and it’s just a couple of those things where I look back and think, if he didn’t commit himself and do what he did, Norwood could have won the game.

“There’s all those half chances that can go your way or not, but Tommy committed himself 100 per cent and helped win the game.

“Those little things happen throughout a match, but they always stand out when they happen late.”


Williams and the players celebrate the 1999 SANFL Premiership at Football Park.

Current Magpies coach Garry Hocking has ensured the preparation for Sunday’s grand final against Norwood is unchanged from any other week this year.

For Williams, it was much the same: play the game like any other on your terms, and across four quarters, and the chances of winning the flag will be high.

Days were different back then, but the fundamentals were the same.

“Back in the mid-to-late nineties we were in the grand final every year with a core group of players who understood what you had to do, whether you won the second semi and had the week off or lost and had to win a prelim as well,” he says.

“Once we knew it was Norwood [as the opponent], everyone switched on and prepared for a real crack at a traditional rival.”

This weekend, Port Adelaide will continue realising the dream of many of its members back in the late eighties and early nineties – finals in two competitions and a bumper weekend of action.

Williams was there throughout the tumult of the nineties, but like everyone involved with the club knows the importance of winning to the club’s faithful supporter base.

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With the club playing Hawthorn in the AFL preliminary final on Saturday night and Norwood in the SANFL Grand Final on Sunday, Port supporters will have plenty of finals football to sate their hunger this weekend.

And Williams says both the AFL and SANFL sides are capable of continuing the club's strong season this weekend.

“It’s a real great opportunity for Port in the AFL, at half time last week we were probably thinking we wouldn’t quite get there,” he says.

“But for the guys to just have that belief in themselves to continue to hit and have a crack [at Fremantle] to get the result is a credit to them.
“I don’t think facing Hawthorn at the MCG is any harder than Fremantle at Subiaco.

“History says these [prelim finals] are tight games, Hawthorn has had a few close ones against Adelaide and Geelong in recent years.

“[Port Adelaide] is in great form and will make the most of their opportunities – you never know what can happen.”

As the old saying goes, the Magpies Expect to Win, and Williams will expect the same when the black-and-white runs out on Sunday.

But he, like many, knows that Port Adelaide cannot rely on one good quarter like it has for much of the second half of the year if it wants to win the Thomas Seymour Hill Trophy.

“It’s a real great opportunity and having watched the prelim final last week, I saw what is a pretty young team with seven or nine who were 20 years or younger,” he says.

“The Maggies has so many young guys in it and the pressure will be on them [but] it’s a real great learning experience against a Norwood team that has won the last couple and will be comfortable with their surroundings.

“If they [the Magpies] can play four quarters of footy, which they really haven’t done in the last couple of games, I think they’ll be able to get over the line.”

Port Adelaide’s 1999 flag was its 36th and most recent League premiership in South Australian competition. Stephen Williams played 269 games for Port Adelaide between 1979 and 1995, including premierships in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1995 and as coach in 1996, 1998 and 1999.