Port Adelaide are leading a renewed push to leave the SANFL and join a national AFL reserves competition as soon as 2025.
The likely end of the Magpies, who have won 36 state-league premierships in their 153-year history, has edged closer to becoming a reality in recent weeks.
Port have told the SANFL they are keen to get out of the league, according to 7NEWS Adelaide’s Theo Doropoulos, and they could be joined in an exodus by Adelaide, West Coast and Fremantle.
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The AFL’s remaining 14 clubs already operate in a pseudo reserves competition after the NEAFL was disbanded and Sydney, GWS, Brisbane and Gold Coast joined an expanded VFL from 2021.
That has left the SA and WA clubs feeling left behind, with Port president David Koch sounding a warning last month.
“The two AFL clubs (including Adelaide) play under different rules to the other SANFL clubs, which makes success difficult and frankly, has a detrimental impact on the development of our AFL players,” he said.
“No other AFL clubs have this imposition on their player development. It is an issue we are working to solve in the near future one way or another, and we will solve it.
“We need to be in the best second-tier competition which allows us to develop our players.”
The Power and Crows are in the 11th year of a 15-year agreement to play in the SANFL.
Doropoulos said it is “growing increasingly likely” that 2024 will be the final season that the teams feature in the state league.
Port’s decision to wrap up the Magpies’ historic involvement in the SANFL will be a watershed moment for one of the most successful clubs in the top-level history of the sport.
The Magpies won their first premiership in 1884 and last triumphed in 1999, after the club had also entered the AFL as the Power.
Speaking on SEN radio, South Australian football journalist Michelangelo Rucci described Port’s split with the SANFL as “a no-blame divorce”.
“The SANFL has got to look after its competition and the eight traditional clubs,” he said.
“Port Adelaide has got to look after its development program and its needs in the AFL. They don’t match any more.”
West Coast’s desire for the same outcome was made public two weeks ago in the wake of the Eagles’ third WAFL wooden spoon in a row.
Rucci said any progress rests with the AFL formalising its plans for a national reserves competition.
“It’s only a matter of time now,” Rucci said.
“Port will be in straight away and Adelaide will be close behind them. This is real now, very real.”
Co-host Kym Dillon added: “It’s sad for the SANFL. It drops down another level when it eventually happens. But if you’re serious, and we’ve said it for a long time, the AFL has to have its own reserves competition.”
The transition from the VFL, SANFL and WAFL to a national reserves competition looms as one of the AFL’s biggest projects under new chief executive Andrew Dillon.
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