So how did we get to this situation, where even the homeless people of South Australia are reportedly passing the hat around to raise money for the penniless Port Adelaide Football Club?

Here are a few reasons.

1. They polarise the people of South Australia.

Port Adelaide may have boasted the largest supporter base in the SANFL, but that still amounted to only 20 per cent of a population of little more than 1.5 million. So the club didn't have a massive amount of people to draw upon when it made the leap from the local competition to the national league.

And of the 80 per cent who didn't follow Port, the vast majority despised it. A bit like Collingwood in Victoria, people were brought up firstly to love their own club and to hate Port. These were the people who supported the Crows from the time they joined the AFL and there were even a few fans of the old Port Magpies, who chose not to wait for Port Adelaide to get an AFL team of its own, but who supported Adelaide from day one. Six years later, when Port did join the AFL, even they could not be tempted to return back.

2. Demographics

In order to be a thriving AFL club, Port needed to attract a large chunk of the Port Adelaide supporter base. Now, Port has long been a working class club, but it has always cost more to follow an AFL club than a SANFL club. Memberships cost more, finals tickets cost more, as does the merchandise. For some of the Port faithful, the step up in class proved too dear.

3. AAMI Stadium

For many Port diehards, AAMI Stadium is too closely aligned to the hated Crows, so they just don't turn up. Adelaide trains there, has its administration there and now works out of a swish new facility abutting the stadium, the Westpac Centre. Port, meanwhile, uses Adelaide's old dressing rooms and its old function centre when it moves in for the day to play its home games at there. It still is based at Alberton Oval the rest of the time. Little wonder the Power can't wait for the move to the Adelaide Oval in 2014, where its fans will again start attending games once more and the club will be an equal tenant in every sense of the word.

4. Failure to grow the brand

A bit like North Melbourne in the late 1990s, Port did little to capitalise on its on-field success. Port was a regular finalist in the first part of last decade and as we know, won the premiership in 2004. Port was good, but not particularly flashy and was difficult to warm to. Warren Tredrea? No thanks. Mark Williams was a brilliant coach in his prime, but a touch flaky. Kevin Sheedy could get away with it, while 'Choco', bless him, always came across like a cheap imitation.

Domenic Cassisi is Port's captain. Good player and all that, but hardly the big name to grow your supporter base around.

5. The Williams fiasco (2010)

Port reluctantly signed Williams to a new coaching deal at the start of last season when it was plain to all that he had run his race. It was a deal entered into because nobody at the club had the balls to sack Williams, a second-generation premiership coach of the club. As sure as night follows day, the relationship between coach and club disintegrated and Port, which was already battling to pay the bills, had to pay Williams a million-dollar settlement. The AFL wasn't pleased and the club has been in the mire ever since.