The unsolved mystery of the McAlister Agreement

As Port don the black and white for this weekend’s Showdown, Port member and barrister Patrick McCabe delves deep into the archives to discover an inconvenient truth Collingwood has kept secret too long.

Since at least 1997, Collingwood and Port have been locked in war about Port’s right to wear black and white.

Whenever the conflict conflagrates, both sides rush to rely on a Byzantine collection of contracts, conditions on AFL licences, agreements, AFL rules, and gentlemen’s handshakes, which the other side invariably disputes.

True to form, when the present custom of Port wearing their black and white guernsey at their home Showdown was introduced in 2020, then-Collingwood president Eddie McGuire claimed Port had breached an agreement about only wearing the guernsey in 2019 and not beyond, a 2007 “heritage guernsey” accord, and the terms of their 1995 AFL licence. Port rejected all this.

Yet, in each round of the guernsey war, beneath the sound and fury, a persistent whisper may be heard about another agreement. An agreement that would not only finish the guernsey war forever, but radically reshape the contours of Australian football itself.

The whisper has been stifled, but never extinguished. It can still be heard, in hushed conversations over butcher’s glasses in certain Alberton front bars, in the comments section of certain Port Adelaide fan Facebook pages, and in the late-night scrawlings of footy tragic web forums.

It is an agreement known as the McAlister Agreement.

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