Hawthorn and Port Adelaide go back aways. "You should change those brown and gold stripes to black and white," Port coach Mark Williams says when he comes across any of the half-dozen Hawks who were once with him at Alberton. "We made you blokes. We put 10 years on your careers."

There is kernel enough of truth in Williams' characteristic jibe for an intrigue to remain, nearly four years after Alastair Clarkson left the Power - in the first week of a finals campaign that would lead to its maiden premiership - to coach Hawthorn.

Soon, he had been joined by recruiting manager Chris Pelchen, development manager Geoff Morris, fitness coach Andrew Russell, assistant coach and retired Port premiership player Damien Hardwick and two other players, Stephen Gilham and Brent Guerra. This year, Stuart Dew added to the complement. "They're Hawthorn Power," said a mischievous Port stalwart. They're certainly powerful Hawthorn.

It is a subject neither club was much inclined to explore this week, for fear of the other exploiting it. But much is a matter of record anyway.

It was not as if Hawthorn calculatedly raided the premier in 2004, nor was there a mutiny. Clarkson's coaching ambitions were well understood and readily accommodated, Pelchen's contract had not been renewed. He was originally from Hawthorn anyway, Morris was looking for a change, Hardwick wanted to come home, Guerra had lost favour with Williams and Gilham never had it. Only Russell, the fitness guru, can be considered to have been poached.

Nonetheless, they all came inculcated in Port's ways, for as one remarked, though they could not bring their files with them, they did bring all they had accumulated in their heads.

Pelchen had been at Port since day one, Russell and Morris were also from the early years; they had helped to build the club from scratch. Clarkson, off-field, and Hardwick, on-, had helped to consummate their work. Thrust together, they became professionally close.

The Port way was particular. Off-field, recruiter Pelchen and fitness adviser Russell set out to obviate variables and chance, to make list-building and maintenance a science rather than an art. Pelchen studied the physical and mental characteristics of premiership-winning teams to create a model. He also remembered, from when he was first at Hawthorn, the stress coach Allan Jeans put on what is now called personality profiling and his verity that the best available footballer was not always best for the team.

On-field, Port was innovative, too. While most teams put their best kicks in the forward line, expecting goals, Port put its most efficient kicks in the back line, minimising turnovers and cheap opposition goals. Premierships still are won by the meanest defence.

Eight years after entering the competition, Port won the flag. St Kilda waited nearly 70 years, North Melbourne 50 and Fremantle is waiting still. Immediately, Port began to strip down its premiership machine.

Prima facie, it was an odd time for a clean-out. Realistically, all knew that after three years as minor premier for one flag, Port's window was closing fast. Drastic changes to playing list and staff, including chief executive and football manager, were afoot.

For Pelchen, Morris, Russell, et al, Hawthorn - with the youngest list in the league - was a ready-made club at which to start the Port project again.

Hawthorn's new management concluded that the Hawks overpaid ill-suited footballers and identified 12 necessary changes to the list; most have been made. With board approval, the football department was split, leaving day-to-day matters to Mark Evans, planning and strategy to Pelchen. Extraordinarily, Pelchen was allowed veto over all players, on and off the list, able even to countermand the coach. This was Power-plus.

Williams would not have accepted this, nor for that matter Kevin Sheedy or Denis Pagan. But Clarkson was new, his power base small and his mind open.

The thinking was that the coach-player relationship necessarily was intense and emotional, and it was important that someone be able to stand back.

Reportedly, it makes sometimes for robust debate - for instance, over redrafting the retired and overweight Dew - but the results speak for themselves, loudly.

In his first year at Hawthorn, Clarkson often talked about Port, which was understandable. Port hallmarks appeared. The back line, Trent Croad aside, is replete with precision kickers. But it would be a simplification, and wrong, to portray Hawthorn 2008 as a replica of Port 2004. Clarkson is his own coach, the Hawks their own, formidable team.

The links have weakened, but the memories have not. In the week they are to meet, they were always bound to occupy one another's mind. Port ruckman Brendon Lade, when told of Clarkson's new, three-year deal with the Hawks, said: "Shame he couldn't get a bit of height with that!" It was the sort of wisecrack a man bestows only on a friend. Hawthorn and Port know plenty about one other. Today, each will learn more about itself, from the other, for this match is prospectively one of last year's grand finalists against one of this year's, assuming Geelong is a given.

But nothing in football is forever. Apart from redesigning Hawthorn's guernsey, Williams has said to his old confreres, perhaps only half in jest: "We'll have to get you blokes back."