ANNIVERSARIES abound for the Port Adelaide Football Club from years ending in “4”, each carrying a message that never fades with time. By the numbers:

1884: First premiership, seven years after Port Adelaide was a founding club to the now SANFL competition. The notable rise from constant contender to crowned king of South Australian football … with two key notes that echo even 140 years later. First, Port Adelaide recruited experienced football men from Victoria to advance “fresh juniors” – the first chapter of development at Alberton. Second, selection to the “first 20” at Alberton was determined by the “fixed rule that every (player) must train to secure (his place in the team) … (and) the value of bodily training can hardly be over-estimated” in a season when Port Adelaide revealed a “superior style of play”. It is not about just Saturday.

1914: Unbeaten champions of South Australia and Australia in a pre-war era of domination (with four national crowns) that defined the Port Adelaide Football Club forever.

1954: Start of six years of unprecedented and unrivalled triumphs established by Fos Williams and Geof Motley that ultimately made Port Adelaide the most-successful club in South Australian league football.

1994: While AFL chief executive Ross Oakley sat in the stands at Football Park for the SANFL grand final his biggest take from the day was not only captain Tim Ginever exalting the “Port Adelaide way” to win a flag. It also was the passion of the Port Adelaide fans in the terraces at West Lakes that excited Oakley as to what an established suburban club with a strong, loyal supporter base could bring to an expanding national competition.

2004: National glory with the breakthrough AFL flag that mirrored all that unfolded in the seven-year struggle from 1877-1884 to advance from pretender to champions.

2014: Independence from the SANFL holding the Port Adelaide-badged AFL licence – and finally every Port Adelaide-listed AFL player fielded in Port Adelaide teams in the AFL and SANFL … and only Port Adelaide teams, after 17 years of releasing players to SANFL rivals with contrasting objectives and playbooks.

And now 2024 might be the year that is remembered for everyone getting on the same page – not just in South Australia but across the nation – on how the game of Australian football needs not just an equal footing for the 18-team elite AFL competition but the second tier.

“It is an issue of competitive balance,” notes Port Adelaide football chief Chris Davies. “And it is not just the South Australian and West Australian clubs (that are not part of the eastern-seaboard VFL series) that think so, the Victorian clubs also think it is an issue.”

A significant “penny has dropped” in SANFL ranks where key figures in the eight non-AFL-aligned clubs accept Port Adelaide has its senior team in the AFL. And in the SANFL, the club – an AFL club – now has a very different agenda from the one Port Adelaide carried as an SANFL entity from the league’s foundation date in 1877. Promotion to the national competition in 1997 changed all this.

“I understand,” says Sturt senior coach and former Sydney development coach Martin Mattner, “where (AFL clubs in the SANFL) are coming from in terms of their development … they are not able to develop their players (under the current model).

“VFL sides (with AFL interest) worry about development, not winning (as is an expectation by traditional themes for Port Adelaide in the SANFL).

“In my time at Sydney, it was all about development in the (NEAFL that has become incorporated in the VFL today). Paul Roos and John Longmire (as Sydney senior coaches), all they wanted was the top-10 players (in the reserves) to be playing well to be ready to play in the AFL. They did not care if we won or lost (in the NEAFL). It was about preparing those players to play in the AFL.”

The development agenda applies across the national AFL competition. But there is no equal footing – be it by recruiting concessions, academies or even game-day rules that significantly vary in the SANFL. Very little unfolds in a uniform way from coast to coast.

“If,” adds Davies, “if you want to look at the top-up lists in the VFL, you will see at least five former AFL players allowed to play with current AFL-listed players. In South Australia and Western Australia, our opportunity to get that type of top-up player is virtually none.

“To surround your AFL-listed players with the experience carried by former AFL players allows you to develop your players better. I believe that.”

The objective – development at the second tier – is simple in its context. The pathway to a meaningful second-tier competition – with benefits for every part of Australian football – is complex.