It will be 20 years less 74 days since the birth of the rivalry between the Sydney Swans and Port Adelaide when the Swans open the 2017 AFL season against Port at the SCG on Saturday.

It is a rivalry that began in Adelaide in Round 11, 1997 when Port, new to the competition that year, hosted Sydney for the first time at what was then known as Football Park, later AAMI Stadium.

With second-year coach Rodney Eade and fifth-year captain Paul Kelly at the helm against Port counterparts John Cahill and Gavin Wanganeen, the Swans prevailed 10-16 (76) to 4-17 (41) on Saturday night 7 June.

It was the start of a hugely favourable rivalry for the club in which the Swans have won 20 of 27 meetings (74.1%) between the teams, including 11 of 14 at home.

Aside from competition newcomers Gold Coast and the long-defunct University, who played in the then VFL from 1908-14, Port are the opposition side against which Sydney boast the highest winning percentage.


Second-year coach Rodney Eade and fifth-year captain Paul Kelly were at the helm when we played Port Adelaide in 1997.

An unblemished 7-0 against Gold Coast, and 13-1 (92.9%) against University, Sydney have won 14 of the last 15 games against Port, and their last eight against the Power at the SCG.

Not since Round 2, 2006, when Jarrad McVeigh was two days beyond his 21^st birthday and playing his 35^th game, have Port won at the home of the Swans.

That was a Sunday afternoon on which Amon Buchanan and Lewis Robert-Thomson played their 50^th AFL game for the Swans, Jude Bolton (24), Nick Davis (21) and Ryan O’Keefe (20) were the only Sydney players to top 20 possessions, and Davis, Mick O’Loughlin, Barry Hall and Nic Fosdike each kicked two goals. 

A crowd of 35,669 predominantly South Australians, thrilled by the inclusion of the long-time South Australian powerhouse as the 16^th team in the AFL, saw the first meeting between the clubs on a Saturday evening in the SA capital.

It was a year in which Sydney would ultimately finish 6^th on the home-and-away ladder with a 12-10 record before being bundled out of the finals by the Western Bulldogs.

Kelly, in his fifth year as captain, would win his fourth and final club B&F and be named captain of an All-Australian side that included teammates Michael O’Loughlin and Paul Roos, and Tony Lockett would top the club goal-kicking for the third year in a row.

Sydney were 14^th on the 16-team ladder with a 4-6 win/loss record going into their first meeting with Port. They were coming off a three-point loss to Brisbane in Brisbane in which there were 11 lead changes before Alastair Lynch, swung from full back to full forward in the final term, kicked the winner three minutes from time.

Port, with two days’ extra rest, had beaten Carlton by 38 points in Adelaide in Round 10 to sit sixth on the ladder at 6-4. They would later finish ninth with 10 wins and a draw, missing the finals on percentages to the Brisbane Lions in their first season following the Brisbane Bears/Fitzroy merger.


Hall of Famer Jude Bolton in action against Port Adelaide in 2006 at the SCG.

The Sydney side that played Port Adelaide for the first time, in alphabetical order, was Simon Arnott, Mark Bayes, Stefan Carey, Wade Chapman, Troy Cook, Daryn Cresswell, Scott Direen, Andrew Dunkley, Shannon Grant, Paul Kelly, Dale Lewis, Troy Luff, Stuart Maxfield, Jason Mooney, Matthew Nicks, O’Loughlin, Mark Orchard, Paul Roos, Brad Seymour, Greg Stafford and John Stevens.

For Direen, a running defender drafted from Tasmania, it was the last of his 52 games for the club. He had played 19 of a possible 22 games in 1995 and 13 games in 1996, when he suffered spinal concussion in Round 4 and later missed selection in the finals.

Thirty-thee-year-old Roos, playing the 324^th game of his 356-game career and the 55^th of 87 games with the Swans, earned three Brownlow Medal votes for 27 disposals as the Swans posted an all-the-way win.

It was the 19^th time in his stellar career that Roos, later to coach Sydney to the drought-breaking 2005 premiership, was judged best afield by the umpires. And the last.

Twenty-year-old teammate Cook, playing his 8^th AFL game, had a breakout 27 disposals to collect the first two Brownlow Medal votes of a career which spanned 43 games with Sydney (1997-99) and 150 games with Fremantle (2000-07).

And Carey, also 20 and in his 12^th game, had 15 disposals and a goal to collect one Brownlow vote in the middle of arguably the best patch of his brief career.

Later to play three games at Brisbane in 2000 after 45 games with Sydney (1996-99), Carey had collected three Brownlow votes two weeks earlier against Collingwood and would get one more five weeks later against West Coast.  Never again did he feature in the umpires’ votes.

Jason Mooney, who played 92 games for Sydney (1992-98) before 32 games at Geelong (1999-2001), kicked an equal Swans best three goals, while Scott Cummings kicked three of four goals for Port on a day than still holds a dubious place in Port history.

The Power score of 4-17 represents the club’s most inaccurate kicking display in what is now 462 AFL games. And it is their eighth lowest score all-time.

Oddly, though, it is not Port’s lowest score against Sydney. That was 4-9 (33) at the SCG in Round 16 last year – their fifth lowest score all-time.

Sydney’s highest score against Port is 22-14 (146) in a 68-point win at the SCG in Round 2, 2008, when Hall kicked five goals and O’Loughlin four.

Fittingly, in a year in which Lockett has joined the Swans coaching staff, the legendary full forward still holds the record for most goals in a game for Sydney against Port.

That came in round 16 1998, when ‘Plugger’ booted 12-1 to collect three Brownlow votes for the 23^rd and third last time in his 281-game career.

On the day when the Sydney-Port rivalry began there was only one real link between the clubs … Adam Heuskes.

The then 21-year-old running defender, taken by the Swans with the fifth pick in the 1993 National Draft and a 49-game player from 1994-96, played against the Swans for the first time after being claimed by Port with an expansion club uncontracted player priority concession.

The ever-colorful Heuskes would play 37 games with Port (1997-98) and earn All-Australian selection in 1997 before a 39-game stint with Brisbane (1999-2000) which ended when he walked out on the club shortly before the finals.

Also in the Port side that day were 157-game Fitzroy and Port ruckman Matthew Primus, who would later coach the club and is now on the coaching staff at the Gold Coast, and Brendon Lade, a 234-game Port ruckman who has joined the Port coaching staff this season after a stint at Richmond.

The man with a foot in both camps in Round 1 of the 2017 season will be former Swans defender Matthew Nicks, who played 175 games in an injury-disrupted stint in the red and white from 1996-2005.

Nicks joined the Port coaching staff in 2011 and is considered by many to be a senior AFL coach in the making.

Luke Parker, set to begin his seventh AFL season, holds the record for most possessions in a game for Sydney against Port. That was his phenomenal 39 touches, which earned him three Brownlow Medal votes in a 67-point Sydney win at the SCG in Round 20 last year.

Port’s biggest possession-winner in game against Sydney, Brad Ebert, will also be in action at the SCG on Saturday. He had a career-high 40 touches at the SCG in Round 13, 2014.

Coincidentally, Brett Ebert, a cousin of Brad Ebert, holds the Port record for most goals in a game against Sydney. That was his six goals at Football Park in Adelaide in 2008.

As the teams prepare for the eagerly-awaited start to the 2017 premiership the statistics show that the Swans have won the last five meetings between the clubs over the last four years by 67 points, 10 points, 48 points, 32 points and four points.

In that time Lance Franklin has been the leading goal-kicker for either side with 12. The now retired Jay Schulz kicked six for Port, while Justin Westhoff’s kicked five for Port and Dan Hanneberry five for Sydney.

New Sydney captain Josh Kennedy has been the leading possession-winner overall in the last five games between the clubs with 153, followed by Port’s Robbie Gray (143), Parker (139), Port vice-captain Ollie Wines (136), Kieren Jack (126), Hanneberry (124), Ebert (121() and Port captain Travis Boak (120).

Sydney players have received 26 of the 30 Brownlow Medal votes in the last five games between the clubs, with Kennedy polling three times for seven votes.

Parker and Hanneberry have polled twice each for five and four votes respectively, while Franklin (3), the retired Ben McGlynn (3), Isaac Heeney (2), Harry Cunningham (1), Jack (1), and the retired Rhyce Shaw (1) have polled once.

Boak collected the last Port Brownlow votes against Sydney with two votes in Round 14, 2014 after teammate Ebert had polled two votes seven weeks earlier.