Former Suns star sinks Demons >> P60 CHARLIE FINALLY ROARS FOR POWER PORT LOVE ALICE
PORT Adelaide chief executive Keith Thomas wants his club’s close association with Alice Springs to continue and that includes playing more premiership matches in the Red Centre.
The Power won their third consecutive premiership match on a pristine playing surface at Traeger Park yesterday when they completed a hat-trick of wins over Melbourne in Alice Springs.
But for Thomas, staging AFL games in the middle of Australia has more to do with his club’s community involvement and providing educational programs that stretch from Adelaide to Tennant Creek.
“For the AFL to continue to support the Northern Territory and the game in this region, matches of this calibre are vitally important,’’ Thomas said. “We’re going to have academies and hopefully kids who will go on to play in the AFL, but you have to have a focal point to do that and Alice Springs for us is ideal.’’
Such is Port Adelaide’s con- nection with Alice Springs, there were moves by the club to establish a permanent presence in the town as early as 2005.
“We were trying to establish a central corridor as a really strong commercial opportunity for us,’’ Thomas said.
“It was while we were playing in Darwin on a regular basis against the Western Bull- dogs and while the commercial angle didn’t really take off, what has been really valuable to us is the community work we’re doing.
“We’ve been working in the Barkly (Tennant Creek) region and running a lot of programs through the APY lands and while I don’t know if we could have ever got ourselves in a situation where we were play- ing multiple games up here, the link between our club and the bush has become very strong.
“Even when we were at AAMI Stadium it would have been far too difficult to play home games up here and even more so now with contractual arrangements for 11 home games at Adelaide Oval.’’