Port Adelaide

The AFL is like one big classroom.  Andrew Dimetriou is the teacher, Adrian Anderson is his assistant and the clubs are the students.  Melbourne is the toffy kid who always comes back from summer holidays with stories of Disneyland, Collingwood is the kid who steals everybody’s lunch while you’re at PE and Gold Coast is the new kid who smells funny and everyone suspects may be a bit slow.  Carlton is the kid who keeps trying to look at your answers during a test and St Kilda is the kid who starts every year telling anyone who’ll listen that THIS year is definitely their year for getting top of the class. 

But just like every pack of cards, every class has a joker.  And the AFL has a beauty – Port Adelaide.  Remember the kid who came to class with a tuxedo printed on his t-shirt?  He’s got nothing on Port – they got dressed up in teal and put a huge lightning bolt on their guernsey!!!  You should have seen Mr Dimetriou’s face! Classic.

Or remember the kid who always knew exactly the right thing to say at the exact right time?  Like when someone farted he’d yell out in a funny voice “Oh, sir, that’s disgusting.  What did you have for dinner?”  Well Port would make that kid look about as funny as Sam Newman in black face paint.  After winning the Grand Final in 2004, Port cracked the greatest one liner in AFL history, telling Allan Scott “you were wrong”.  What a crack up!! I reckon Allan Scott still laughs about it today.

Port’s first coach, Graham Cornes is known for two things: selling cars and cracking awesome gags.  And he played a beauty on the AFL.  When he had two sons who he would send to play with Port he decided to give them the funniest names he could think of:  Chad and Kane! I'm not making this stuff up!!! Graham’s wife loves a gag too (unless of course the gag is about her and is told by Mick Molloy, in which case she’ll see you in court).

But there is always a sad side to the class clown.  Some kids are funny at school to make up for the fact that their home life isn’t the best.  Others crack gags to disguise a learning difficulty or the fact they are struggling in class.  For Port, not only can they not win a game, they’re flat broke.  Which would almost make you sad, until you picture Mark Chocco Williams running around the ‘G on grand final day, choking himself with his tie and you just start crackin’ up.  Classic.