Port Adelaide Australian Football League club fans at least finished the 2025 season with a dual premiership: their anthem “Never Tear Us Apart” being voted No.1 all-time best Australian song in Triple J’s Hottest 100 and the passion in excess they again brought to the song. With scarves raised at the start of every Adelaide Oval game, Port supporters gave raw emotion to the song’s title when the backing track cut out and they gave full vent to their feelings. It was a spectacle and sound unmatched by any other AFL club.
But Pear Passion took wear and tear during the 13 years of coach Ken Hinkey with its highs dented with some shocking lows. Hinkley’s strength was appreciating the club’s culture but he was blighted most notably for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the dying stages of the finals matches that denied him any premiership glory. Those defeats reflected the overall impression of a lack of innate poise, cleverness and strategy that could be ascribed to Port Adelaide teams during his era; teams too often relying in the individual brilliance of a Robbie “Walk on Water” Gray to get them over the line.
But through all the ups and downs, the Port Adelaide faithful were sustained by a deep history. In 2025, Port District Football Club was Division 1 premiers in the Adelaide Football League in 2025, carrying on a football legacy in the Port Adelaide area back to 1873.
Port district football history back to 1883
Port District Club was originally Lefevre Peninsula Football Club playing with teams including Port Adelaide at the Buck’s Flat part of the Glanville Hall Estate in Semaphore. Port Adelaide was one of the clubs that moved to Alberton Oval that became a frequent venue for Lefevre Peninsula club. When LeFevre Peninsula and Glanville councils amalgamated as Semaphore Corporation in 1883, the club changed its name to Semaphore and, by 1898, to Semaphore Central. Semaphore Central also had a strong rivalry with another LeFevre Peninsula club, Exeter.
In 1979, Semaphore Central merged with Exeter Football Club to form Port District Football Club. Semaphore Central players, including S. C. Stidston, P. O’Grady and J. Middleton in 1910 were elevated to the senior Port Adelaide team. One year later, Semaphore joined the new South Australian Amateur Football League and developed a long-time rivalry with (Adelaide) University club. In 1914, Semaphore Central won its first premiership in the amateur league, after defeating University at the grand final on Norwood Oval.
More than half that premiership team were called to fight in World War I. By war’s end in 1919, six – Percy Channon, Arthur Wilcox, Perrin Blackham, Stewart Donnell, Roy Moore and Harry Birt – were dead.
The 1914 team also featured Arthur Motley, father of future South Australian National Football League and Port Adelaide legend Geof. Port Adelaide star and twice Magarey Medallist Bob Quinn, followed his father in playing for Semaphore Central. Another Semaphore Central player Richard Cochrane started generations of noted footballers (with Central District and Port Adelaide) from his son Richard to Stuart.
And so the Port Adelaide area’s football history flows Powerfully with Tom Cochrane now on the Port Adelaide AFL list and Dougie Cochrane a hope for the future.
That’s the history that gives full voice to the Port Adelaide club song.
