JK wrote:Even the AFL bid aside, the footy landscape and culture was so different back then. Today, so many opposition players at any level of footy are mates off the field and hang out with one another, but it was pretty rare to happen back in those days. Some sides loathed others (was usually a mutual feeling).
Can't speak for other clubs, but those Port blokes back then lived in a pretty unique environment and were thick as thieves.
Hodges has just spent all of 1990 ripping the Bays a new one, including in the GF (Cornsey infamously reminding the Port boys "they had no right" to win that on ) along with the '88 defeat over the Bays.
Then within weeks of the '90 Grand final Hodges was into the Crows squad with very few other Port blokes (Abernethy, Smith, Tregenza, Brown, Hughes) and was immersed into a franchise that's back bone was black and yellow, not blue, red and yellow.
Impossible to expect him to embrace that change or feel comfortable doing so.
PAFC. Forever.
LOOK OUT, WE'RE COMING!