Port Adelaide Football Club bids farewell to Alfie Trebilcock after 58 years

He's outlasted big names and seen many more games without the limelight but after nearly six decades looking after boots for Port Adelaide Football Club, Alfie Trebilcock is hanging up his own. A young butcher from Broken Hill who came to the club during 1968, the boot-studder enjoyed 11 SANFL premierships, one AFL premiership, and watched footwear evolve from ankle-high boots with wooden knock-in sprigs, to light-weight multi-coloured fashion statements.

"I came down here [to Adelaide] in 1961. My grandparents followed Port Adelaide so I started following them and used to go to their games and all that type of thing," Trebilcock told 891 ABC Adelaide. "I got friendly with the runner, Harry Vincent, got talking one day and said I'd like to get into the club and he said, 'I'll keep an eye out for you'."

A position opened up in the boot department and Trebilcock was told to have a "talk to the sprigger" who was also a bootmaker. "He said, 'Are you prepared to learn?', and I said, 'Oh yeah', so I did a seven-year apprenticeship with him," Trebilcock said. "After those seven years he got leukaemia and said, 'You're going to have to take over', and I said, 'Gee whiz, I'm a butcher'. But from the day Trebilcock started looking after the players' footwear in 1968 and up to 1976, the Port Adelaide Magpies played without winning a SANFL premiership.

"I was beginning to think I was jinx," Trebilcock said. But the club won a flag in 1977 and another 10 during Trebilcock's time, as well as a 2004 AFL premiership with its AFL side, The Power. "I always pictured standing on the MCG on Grand Final day, celebrating a flag. That dream came true in 2004. I'll never, ever forget that day."

Bobby to say farewell as well

Also retiring is fellow volunteer Bob "Bobby" O'Malley after 18 years at the club mixing water barrels and player rehydration bottles, and helping set up for training sessions. "I just loved being involved in this football club," he said. "Port Adelaide was always a family club, and all my family barracked for Port Adelaide."

He will have his final home game with Port Adelaide against Melbourne on Saturday night. Trebilcock will be saying goodbye after 58 years with the club. He said he became "real friends" during this time with the late and great Russel Ebert OAM, who started with the Magpies the same year as him. An Australian Football Hall of Fame member since 1996, Ebert played 392 games for the Magpies and remains the only SANFL player to win four Magarey Medals.

"He was a people's person," Trebilcock said. "Every now and then you'd have to re-sprig his boots. "As he got older his sprigging would change … then he got his Achilles problems and we made a [raised] heel for him."

Ebert once said of Trebilcock that he loved the players and the club, and the players loved him. "He can talk to any player at any time and would have the complete respect of the entire playing and coaching group … we couldn't have had the success we had without him," Ebert said.

The AFL awarded Trebilcock the Jack Titus Award for conspicuous service to the game in 2013. He was awarded Life Membership at PAFC in 2013 and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2025. PAFC chairman David Koch said the club was what it was today because of people like O'Malley and Trebilcock.

"Nearly 60 years of turning up, asking for nothing and giving everything to the club he loves," he said. "On behalf of every player, coach and supporter we say thank you, Alfie, and thank you, Bobby. We are the club we are today because of people like you."