Port Adelaide’s battle with Collingwood and the AFL to wear their historical prison bar jumper in the Showdown was one of the biggest stories last week, with the league ultimately denying the request.
Power president David Koch was a vocal critic of the stance on multiple radio and TV platforms, but there was one particular comment he made that caught Dermott Brereton’s attention.
In an interview discussing the AFL’s threat of stripping premiership points off the club if they decided to wear the jumper without authorisation, Koch referred to Port Adelaide as ‘my club’.
Brereton labelled Koch’s “extraordinary” comments as “autocratic”, saying he was puzzled why one of the club’s most public figures wouldn’t refer to the club and their on-field fortunes in more holistic sense.
“I thought it was extraordinary,” the Hawthorn great said on SEN’s Bob and Andy about the comment.
“Subconsciously we say things and we back over them, but when they come so freely sometimes you think ‘is that really what they’re thinking?’
“I have never heard a president say ‘they will take my points off me’ and then back over it again and say ‘mine and my club’.
“It’s always ‘we’ and I’ve only ever heard presidents say ‘we’, subconsciously saying that ‘they’ll take my four points off me’ when he was talking about what would happen if Port Adelaide would run out in the prison bar jumper (in the Showdown without permission).
“I just thought it was extraordinary that a president could talk about the four points for the team and the club as his, I thought it was a faux pas and he backed over it again and eventually he come out and said ‘I meant to say ours’ and it said to me that there’s an autocratic nature to him and (how he approaches) Port Adelaide.”
Port Adelaide will take on Adelaide in the Showdown on Saturday night, with Adelaide Oval allowed to be at 100 per cent capacity for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
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