HERE in Adelaide's old north-western suburbs, the streamers, banners, balloons and flags in Port Adelaide colours have begun to appear in shopfronts, on flagpoles, twined around car aerials and draped over shrubs and trees like a black, silver, white and teal variation on Christmas decorations. Between the last of the jasmine and the first of the roses, people's gardens are sporting the strange blossoms of the Power colours in grand final week.

You go into the local service station to buy a paper and the big, tough-looking bloke behind the counter calls out "Go the Power!" in his unintelligibly thick Lancashire accent by way of farewell and pumps his clenched fist in the air. The supermarket is full of Power balloons. I live one suburb inland from the Port proper, and I know that by Saturday morning half my neighbours will be sporting the team's rather fetching colour combination — the teal blue apparently signifies the Port Adelaide River, which is, it must be said, a bit of wishful thinking — in their front gardens and on their cars.

The old suburb of Port Adelaide is about 15 kilometres north-west of the Adelaide CBD, and was, in its early days, almost a separate village. It's the place where most of the settlers first got off the boat, in the sheltered waters of the Port Adelaide River. There are working pubs here that date back as far as 1849, one or two of them sporting a National Trust plaque and most of them reputedly haunted by an assortment of prisoners, prostitutes, smugglers and murder victims.

This is the heart of a wedge of Power territory that spreads out from the corner of Adelaide's West and North Terraces, bordering the CBD. It encompasses the entire north-western quadrant of the city all the way out to Outer Harbour, beyond the river's mouth, where the dolphins frolic around the ocean-going ships. There are Power barrackers in other places as well, of course, but this is the heartland. The phrase "western suburbs" means more or less the same thing here as it means across the country. As a friend used to say: "Bloody western suburbs — you've got the sun in your eyes on your way to work and you've got it in your eyes again on the way home."

But here in Adelaide, to head into the wilds of the western suburbs is not to be headed into a drought-stricken wilderness; it is, rather, to be on your way to the sea. While this side of town is still regarded as rough and grungy by the denizens of the genteel and leafy east — Crows supporters, every one — they still have to go through here on their way to the beach.

These days the Port is a mixed demographic in the middle of a boom. Adelaide is shaped like a piece of string, and the city is steadily expanding north and south, constricted to the east and west by the Mount Lofty Ranges and the sea. Much of the heavy industry and working-class population traditionally associated with Port has moved to the new outer northern and southern suburbs and the gentrification of Port goes on apace.

It can make for strange neighbours; out here, if you know where to look, you can find a rubbish dump, a Buddhist monastery, an empty paddock and the headquarters of the Animal Welfare League all within sight of each other.

Century-old workman's cottages are transformed daily by wrought iron and new roofs and 21st century bathrooms, while a multimillion-dollar development is springing up like a bunch of cubist mushrooms where there used to be warehouses, factories and railway yards as recently as last year. This has always been a place where old run-down working-class suburbs lie side by side with genteel and gracious beachside ones, and these days the yuppie element has joined the mix.

But over in the eastern suburbs, the chardonnay side of town persists in its image of the Power as a bunch of rough lower-class brutes. With its industrial waterside history and working-class traditions, the Power's image somewhat resembles Geelong's own, but the main comparison that's traditionally made is with Collingwood.

Like Melbourne's Magpies, the Adelaide equivalent is one of the city's oldest clubs, with strong working-class associations and a ferocious fighting spirit that the fans of the more genteel clubs habitually deride as rough and unsportsmanlike. Port Adelaide is hated by most non-Power supporters here with the same wrath that Collingwood has always attracted. Football is tribal and its loyalties unthinking: with its heroes, its archetypes and its projections, the footy culture is a psychoanalyst's paradise.

Port Adelaide has a long, proud history in the annals of Australian rules football. The original state league team, the Port Adelaide Magpies, have dominated the South Australian competition since the club was established in 1870. As a separate entity, they still do, and many of the Power players come up through their ranks or use the team as a recovery path after injury or illness. Before being lured across the border in 1991 by Kevin Sheedy for his team of Baby Bombers, the Power's first captain, Gavin Wanganeen, got his start in the Port Adelaide Magpies, kicking a couple of beautiful goals to help the Magpies to victory in the 1990 SANFL grand final when he was only 17.

The history of the two Adelaide teams' entry into the AFL competition in the 1990s is controversial, with Port's maverick independent bid temporarily gazumping the SANFL's negotiations. This intensified the anti-Port hostility, causing splits and bitterness that people still splutter about today. On Saturday, some of the most enthusiastic barrackers for Geelong will be Crows supporters.

The Power entered the AFL competition in 1997 and the first team they beat, in round 3 that year, was Geelong. Out in this part of town, everyone's hoping they can repeat themselves come Saturday.

Kerryn Goldsworthy is an Adelaide writer and critic and Port fan.