Legs trigger fall of Rome

By DION HAYMAN

Port Adelaide’s then club record 112-point loss at Norwood Oval in the penultimate round of 1982 was akin to the fall of Rome.

The triple premier came and departed still on top of the premiership table. But the damage done to the Magpies’ spirit, brand and psyche suggested the ladder was lying.

Port headed east off the back of four straight wins but there were clues its empire was crumbling. Conversely, Norwood was building, brick by brick, and had won seven of its previous eight games.

Injured captains Phil Gallagher and Brian Cunningham missed the game, leaving Greg Turbill and Greg Phillips to toss the coin. Phillips was a surprise starter at centre half-forward after being shifted forward the previous week against West to great effect. But he found Jim Thiel a much tougher contract and was swung back late in the third quarter in a vain attempt to limit the damage.

Thiel, who tragically died in 1986 in a building site accident aged just 30, was best-afield and played an intrinsic role in Norwood’s premiership tilt.

“He was an unusual character. Very strong minded, still pretty quiet but you just knew if it needed to be done, he did it. He was a very, very good player,” coach Neil Balme recalled. “He had to play on blokes like Dave Granger and he stood up very strongly against those people. They realised very quickly not to annoy him. He was very powerful.”

Norwood started with Jim Michalanney in ruck, Neil Button at centre half-forward and Jeff Fehring in the goalsquare.

Michael Aish snapped a major with his left foot seemingly out of nothing and Norwood led 5.1 to 1.2 in the shadows of quarter-time. It was all but his last play in the game after a heavy clash with Ray Huppatz that earned him the wrath of the home crowd and Aish a night in hospital.

But Norwood could not be stymied so easily. Its run was relentless. Even Button turned on a dime and slotted goalward with his left foot early in the second term.

By nine minutes into the third, Norwood led 15.9 to 3.7 prompting commentator Ian Day to declare the visitors looked “positively anaemic”. “Port Adelaide is very meek and very soft at the moment,” Peter Marker added.

Neville Roberts, in his first season at The Parade, whizzed around the flanks booting six goals, including one from a mark while being utterly sandwiched by Geoff Robertson and Danny Hughes.

Rick Neagle, playing just his eighth game, drilled his fourth for the day after a breathtaking one-two to send Norwood to the last change with a 74-point lead. It was part of an astonishing run which saw the 20-year-old plunder 21 goals in the last six games of that season including an incredible half-dozen in the grand final rout of Glenelg – although he remains somewhat bemused by the fanfare he has earned for that game alone.

“It sort of defined me a fair bit as part of NFC history,” Neagle said. “Fortunately, I did play a lot of other good games.”

The monster win against the Magpies remains particularly fresh in his mind. “I remember afterwards there were that many supporters at the footy club it was quite extraordinary,” he said. “The amount of enjoyment people took from beating Port Adelaide by that much was quite incredible. It was almost like winning the grand final for a lot of them. We were on song that day.”

A long-time club board member and founding partner of Wakefield Sports Clinic, Neagle’s career was curtailed by a muscle disease that remained undiagnosed for many years and severely impacted his ability to train and play.

Turbill, who battled debilitating knee injuries throughout his career, also finished with four goals. “Turbs was always a favourite of mine because he gave you absolutely everything,” Balme said. “To make him acting captain was pretty significant on our part. It tells you how we saw him because we knew he showed the way. He was absolutely totally committed.”

After the game, Wayne Schmaal was buoyant. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “We just ran. If the ball was there, we went straight for it. If the body was there, we took the body out. If a team is aggressive at the ball and can knock the other team off, they can’t get their game going and we never gave Port Adelaide a chance.”

The win was significant because it was just Norwood’s second in 10 meetings against John Cahill’s Magpies.

Balme was measured in his comments after the game but more candid upon reflection. “We played spectacularly I thought,” he said. “Our guys played our game, probably as well as we ever played it. They (Port) don’t play like that very often and we obviously created the circumstances where they did. It’s very hard to play week after week after week and bring your absolute best and I think that’s what they were suffering, going ‘oh well, we’re already there, we’re on top (of the ladder)’. So it was a little bit of an unrealistic outcome in lots of ways but it was something we celebrated very strongly. It’s hard to do that against a good team.

“The Norwood-Port kind of relationship was always fantastic. They won’t admit it but they really enjoyed playing against each other.”

Cahill, however, found little enjoyment post-match, declaring, “Norwood’s fierceness, back-up and unselfish team play made us look pitiful. It brought home that some of our players are not as good as they think they are.”

Three weeks later, Norwood trumped the minor premier by 19 points in a much more closely-fought second semi-final, ensuring a changing of the guard. A fortnight on, the Redlegs’ reign was realised. “I was exhausted emotionally (after the grand final),” Neagle remembered. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what’s happened? We’ve won the game and I’ve kicked six goals.’”

But the most important six, he said, were the gladiators in Norwood’s backline. “I can still name them all – Stemper, Schmaal, Winter, Warhurst, Jimmy Thiel and (Jack Oatey Medallist) Danny Jenkins. Every time the ball went in there, it came out with method. I don’t reckon they made a mistake all day.

“It was a great day. I remember going back to the rooms after the game and Keith Thomas and I were sitting there by ourselves and we didn’t say anything for two or three minutes. It was just a moment of realisation. And then we went back in and enjoyed it all.”

NORWOOD  6.4  13.8  20.11  28.17 (185)

PORT  2.3  3.7  8.9  10.13 (73)

BEST – Norwood: Thiel, McIntosh, Warhurst, G. Thomas, K. Thomas, Turbill, Neagle, Schmaal, Stemper, Jenkins, Roberts. Port: Bradley, Kinnear, Belton, R. Ebert.

SCORERS – Norwood: Roberts 6.4, Turbill 4.0, Neagle 4.0, Button 3.1, Michalanney 3.0, Adler, Fehring 2.1, G. Thomas 1.3, K. Thomas 1.1, M. Aish, Fosdike 1.0, A. Aish, McIntosh, Jarvis, Stemper 0.1, rushed 0.2. Port: Evans 2.4, S. Williams 2.1, Belton 2.0, Gill 1.3, Bradley 1.1, R. Ebert, Porplycia 1.0, Huppatz 0.2, Hofner, Kinnear 0.1.

UMPIRES – John Hylton, Neville Thorp.

CROWD – 17,667 at Norwood Oval.