SOUTH ADELAIDE - Part One
Affiliated: SAFA 1877-1906; SAFL 1907-1926; SANFL 1927-present
Club Address: 1 Lovelock Drive, Noarlunga Downs, South Australia 5158
Home Ground: Alan Hickinbotham Oval (originally known as Noarlunga Oval)
Formed: 1876
Colours: Navy blue and white
Emblem: Panthers
Premierships: SENIORS - 1877+, 1885, 1892-93, 1895-96, 1898-99, 1935, 1938, 1964 (11 total) SECONDS/RESERVES (from 1919) - 1979, 1991 (2 total) THIRDS/UNDER 19S (from 1936) - 1993-4 (2 total) COLTS/UNDER 17S (from 1939) - 1990, 1995 (2 total) OTHER PREMIERSHIPS - NFL Series 1978-79 (2 total); SANFL Night/Knock-out/Pre-season Series 1984, 1986, 1991 (3 total)
Magarey Medallists: F.Barry 1915; D.Moriarty 1919, 1920 & 1921; J.Cockburn 1935; J.Deane 1953 & 1957*; M.Naley 1991; A.Osborn 1998 (6 Medallists/9 Medals)
All Australians: Peter Darley 1969; Mark Naley 1986 (2 total)
League Top Goalkickers: R.Wardrop (14) 1882; H.Hill (19) 1885; A.Bushby (25) 1887; J.Kay (25) 1896, (35) 1898 & (28) 1902; S.Scott (54) 1945; D.Del-Re (95) 1995 (8 total)
South Adelaide's Official 'Greatest Team': Click here
Highest Score: 39.16 (250) vs. Woodville 19.14 (128) at Football Park in round 14 1984
Most Games: 337 by Stuart Palmer from 1969 to 1985
Record Home Attendance: 1. Adelaide Oval - 30,618 in round 2 1965: South Adelaide 14.9 (93); Port Adelaide 9.8 (62); 2. Noarlunga Oval - 10,123 in round 8 1995: Glenelg 16.15 (111); South Adelaide 8.16 (64)
Record Finals Attendance: 56,353 for the 1964 grand final at Adelaide Oval: South Adelaide 9.15 (69); Port Adelaide 5.12 (42)
Overall Success Rate 1907-2008: 35.7%
+ indicates joint premiers along with Victorian
* indicates awarded retrospectively by the SANFL in 1998
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South Adelaide's 1879 Combination |
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The advent of the Adelaide Crows in 1991 was arguably the single most momentous event in the history of football in South Australia. While the impact of two world wars may arguably have been more damaging in the short term, ultimately their effects were transitory. The emergence of the Crows, however, would change the face of South Australian football forever.
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Alf Bushby - click to enlarge. |
For the member clubs of the SANFL the most obvious change was in terms of their profile: no longer were they the primary shaping force of football in the state. In a sense, where once the SANFL had been cast in the role of protagonist, now it was very much a member of the supporting cast. What this has tended to mean in practical terms is that, for aspiring footballers of the highest order, the SANFL is now perceived as being merely a means to an end - that end being, hopefully, participation in the AFL. Previously, until perhaps as late as the mid-1980s, each of the three major state Leagues in Australia - VFL, SANFL and WAFL - were perceived as conferring 'league status' on the footballers who played in them, albeit with the tacit acknowledgement that, in terms of all round quality and importance, the VFL tended to be superior (see footnote 1). As more and more top South Australians and West Australians joined Victorian clubs, so the standard of football being played in Adelaide and Perth declined, a development which was accelerated, particularly in the west, by the admission to the VFL in 1987 of the Perth-based club West Coast. For a time, South Australia strenuously resisted following in Western Australia's footsteps, but a series of dramatic developments in 1990 (see footnote 2) led to the formation of the Adelaide Crows and their admission the following year to what, by that stage, was referred to as the AFL. |
Virtually overnight, the clubs which comprised the SANFL were faced with a radically different ball game, one which necessitated an immediate and thorough re-evaluation of their strategies, objectives and fundamental orientation. Put simply, the 'understudy-protagonist' relationship mentioned earlier was now very firmly in place, a state of affairs rendered all the more inviolable by the AFL's increasingly aggressive marketing of itself as the only competition that really mattered, both currently and, in its alleged former guise as the VFL, historically (see footnote 3). The gross distortion of the game's heritage which such a point of view represented was more or less lost on the emerging generation of South Australian football fans, many of whom, by avidly and uncritically lapping up the AFL's misrepresentations, lent to them a spurious credence.
In contrast to this, the previous generation of South Australian football aficionados, nurtured on the rich milk of a vibrantly intoxicating local competition that enjoyed near saturation media coverage, could perhaps be excused for sometimes feeling both bewildered and alienated. Even some of the players were perplexed. As South Adelaide veteran David Stoeckel explained when refuting a journalist's suggestion that, despite having enjoyed a prolific SANFL career with the Panthers, he must surely harbour some regrets over not having played football at 'the highest level': "My ambition had always been to play in the SANFL because as a kid that was the only competition you really cared about" (see footnote 4).
| It should not be inferred
from this that the formation of the Adelaide Crows was in every way
inimical to the well being of clubs in the local competition; in certain
ways, quite the opposite was true. During 1991 the Crows developed into a
much hyped and highly profitable organisation, and a substantial
proportion of the profits made were siphoned back to the SANFL clubs,
which, in a sense, 'owned' the Crows. Less tangibly, the Crows raised
awareness of and support for the sport of Australian football, even if at
times it appeared that the average Crows supporter was more interested in
side issues - like evaluating and comparing various players' physical
attributes, or 'putting one over the Vics' - than the attractions of
football per se. While it could be argued that football could not afford
to turn up its nose at any supporters, however inexpert, there was also an
opportunity here, which the SANFL very quickly grasped and began to
exploit, to appeal to the hard core, old fashioned type of football
supporter for whom the game was closer to a way of life than a recreation.
A call for a return to 'grass roots football' was, in essence, an appeal
to the purist, and the SANFL lost no time in adopting such a call as a
major feature of its marketing strategy as it endeavoured to minimise the
inevitable erosion of its local support base.
Essentially, the SANFL - and its constituent clubs - appealed to two things: first, people's senses of nostalgia - evoking that halcyon if slightly indeterminate era when a trip to the footy was a thing of rugs and thermoses and kicks with Dad on the oval at half time; and secondly people's egos, by means of the implicit notion that grassroots football supporters were the holders of the 'true faith', in marked contrast, for example, to the johnny-come-latelies who had indiscriminately flung themselves onto the Crows bandwagon. |
Jack Kay, who had two separate stints with South during the 1890s and early 1900s, and who is known to have topped the club's goal kicking list on at least three occasions. (Such records were not assiduously maintained until after the First World War.) |
As far as the individual SANFL clubs were concerned, such a change of emphasis almost necessitated a kind of re-invention process, and no club has been more proactive in re-inventing itself in recent years than South Adelaide. Most obviously of all, in 1995, after many years of indecision, the club finally re-located to Noarlunga, which since the 1970s had been the heart of its metropolitan zone. The aim here was simple: to become a readily identifiable and integral component of the local community - a standard bearer if you like - something to which its years of playing home matches at the Adelaide Oval in central Adelaide had been signally and singularly inimical. There is still much work to be done, but it is at least arguable that the club is in as potentially strong a position as for over a half a century; the challenge now, needless to say, is to transform 'potential' into achievement.
The distinction between traditional, 'grassroots', suburban football and its modern, Americanised, 'chardonnay set' alternative became slightly blurred with the admission to the AFL of a second South Australian team, Port Adelaide, in 1997. However, although the Power tended to attract a more 'traditional' following than the Crows, they could not realistically be regarded as a suburban or community oriented club per se; in the Adelaide metropolitan area, quintessential 'community football' was now the undisputed province of the SANFL, and in particular its nine local manifestations, the clubs.
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Charles Cameron Kingston |
From South Adelaide's perspective,
the fact that it was now being more or less compelled to seek salvation
through community involvement and interaction was ironic in the extreme,
as we shall see.
First though, we need to travel back more than a hundred years, to a time when football in Adelaide was still struggling to decide on an identity for itself. In 1875, the Adelaide Football Club, the oldest in South Australia, had become so disorganised that a group of its members decided to secede and establish a new club, bearing the name South Adelaide. The situation rapidly became confused when, in April the following year, another group of disaffected Adelaide Football Club members held a meeting at the Draper Memorial Schoolroom and decided to form a second breakaway club - also called South Adelaide. Within a few days, common sense prevailed and, following a meeting of its members at the Havelock, the 1875 club voted unanimously to merge with its recently established namesake. Proudly espousing the motto 'unity is strength', South Australia's second oldest surviving football club, after Port Adelaide, had been born, and over the course of the next twelve months or so it would play a highly significant, but surprisingly little feted, role in helping create an enduring identity for football both in Adelaide, and in the colony as a whole. |
Arguably the key figure in shaping that identity was a certain Charles Cameron Kingston, a colourful personality who would go on to become one of the leading public figures in South Australia of the nineteenth century. In 1876, however, he was the inaugural secretary, and some time player, of the newly formed South Adelaide Football Club, and his mission - if that is not too strong a term - was to see to it that South Australia adopted the Victorian version of football, in which throwing the ball was prohibited, a player running with the ball had to bounce it "every ten yards or so", and marking was allowed irrespective of whether or not the marking player's feet were rooted to the ground at the moment he caught the ball. When the South Australian Football Association - the oldest organising body in Australian football - was established in 1877, Kingston's persuasiveness (and, one can not help but imagine, his eloquence) ultimately ensured that the rules of play adopted were more or less identical to those in operation at the time in Melbourne. Had Kingston not been around it is just conceivable that generations of South Australians would have grown up culturally and athletically diminished, forced to endure scrums, mauls and line-outs rather than - as the divine will surely intended - boundary throw-ins, ball ups and the perpetually fluctuating enigma of the holding the ball/holding the man rule.
Given Kingston's seminal role in shaping the Association it was perhaps only fitting that his club should carry off the inaugural premiership. Indeed, for the remainder of the century South would vie for SAFA pre-eminence with Norwood and, to a lesser extent, Port Adelaide, as the following chart shows:
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Leading SAFA Clubs 1877 to 1900 |
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Number of times finishing: |
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| Club | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | 6th | 7th |
| Norwood | 11 | 7 | 4 | 1 | - | - | - |
| South Adelaide | 8 | 7 | 5 | 4 | - | - | - |
| Port Adelaide | 3 | 8 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 2 | - |
| Adelaide | 1 | - | 4 | 1 | 6 | - | 1 |
Mind you, as early as 1879 the club's entire future had been placed in jeopardy amidst allegations that certain of its players were persistently and deliberately overstepping the mark in terms of on-field aggression. During a match between South and Norwood a major conflagration arose in which the principal protagonists were Osborn, the Redlegs' skipper, and South's Curtis. Afterwards, most of the blame was directed at Curtis, and there were even calls to disqualify not just the player, but his entire club, from the Association. Fortunately for South, the Association seemed a little non-plussed over how best to handle the situation, and the matter eventually petered out. However, later in the season after South had featured in another extraordinarily acrimonious match, this time against South Park, the SAFA stamped its authority by decreeing that, for the remainder of the year, any team scheduled to meet South Adelaide could, if it wished, decline to participate without forfeiting the match, which would effectively be declared drawn. No fewer than five of South's last six opponents for the 1879 season availed themselves of this dispensation and, as a result, effectively gift-wrapped the premiership and handed it to Norwood.
Although the 1880s yielded only one premiership - in 1885 - the 'city club', as it was known, was recognised as being at the forefront of the game in Adelaide, a status it reinforced when, in 1884, it became one of the first South Australian sides to beat a visiting VFA club. South downed the powerful Melbourne team 4.11 to 3.9 on the Adelaide Oval, with behinds, although recorded, not actually counting towards a team's score. That same year, the club also ventured onto 'foreign fields' itself when two matches were played against a New South Wales representative side in Sydney. South won one of the games easily by 8 goals, but was fortunate to escape with a draw in the other.
Four years later, South Adelaide was one of twenty-five Australian football clubs to be given the honour of competing, under Australian rules, against the visiting British rugby team. The tourists were not entirely inept at the 'foreign' code, winning 5 of the 18 matches contested, and indeed some of them were highly enthusiastic about the game, professing to prefer it to rugby. The game against South Adelaide was hotly contested, with South winning 8.9 to 5.9 (once again with behinds not counting).
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Another noteworthy encounter during the club's early years came in 1892 when it held the mighty Carlton to a draw on the MCG. Indeed, had behinds been counted in the score at this time South would have won. The 1890s was South's halcyon decade. Captained by Jack 'Dinnie' Reedman, one of the club's, and South Australia's, all time great players, as well as "a fine tactician" (see footnote 5), the Blue and Whites adopted a system that repeatedly left its rivals foundering. (For example, Reedman allegedly came up with a method for creating and then exploiting the loose man, an idea which, in some ways, could be regarded as the cornerstone of the modern game.) South also boasted some of the era's most accomplished players, notably the extraordinarily versatile Alf Bushby who, allegedly, was "recognised as the finest player in South Australia of this period, and second only to A.J.Thurgood of Essendon, Victoria, as the champion footballer of Australia" (see footnote 6). Other greats included the prolific goalsneak, Jack Kay; Ernie Jones and Clem Hill, both of whom achieved even greater fame as Test cricketers; and not forgetting Reedman himself, a formidable ruckman to rank with the best who enjoyed a record eleven seasons (1888-98) as club skipper. |
'Dinny' Reedman - click to enlarge. |
After finishing 3rd in 1890 and 1891, the Blue and Whites were either premiers (6 times) or runners up (3 times) in each of the ensuing 9 seasons. In fact, they might be considered somewhat unlucky not to have procured seven premierships during this time: in 1897, the last season in South Australia in which behinds were not included in the score, they lost by a goal against Port Adelaide in what was effectively a premiership play off. And the scores? Port Adelaide 3.1; South Adelaide 2.14. Overall, however, there could be no doubt whatsoever that, for most of the 1890s, South Adelaide was South Australia's strongest team.
Despite this, compared to opponents like Norwood and Port Adelaide the club was not particularly well supported, and revenue was limited. While South enjoyed on field success, the potential seriousness of this state of affairs tended to be ignored or glossed over, but the time was coming when, as a result of forces outside its control, all the hard work that the committee had undertaken to assemble, and Reedman to nurture, a top quality team of perennially successful footballers would be undone.
Where now?
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Footnotes
1. The widely maintained assumption that the VFL (and, prior to that, the VFA) was always and inevitably superior is, of course, impossible to substantiate or refute. However, there have almost certainly been times when, irrespective of the overall strength of the competitions in which they participated, the strongest club(s) in the country have not been based in Victoria. Examples might include the Norwood team of the late 1880s, West Perth, Fremantle and Imperials in the mid to late 1890s when substantial numbers of the finest footballers in the land gravitated west, Port Adelaide's great pre-World War One combination, the Phil Matson-coached East Perth teams of the immediate post-First World War period, and South Fremantle's 1947-54 sides. Return to Main Text
2. For a more detailed account of these developments see the entry on Adelaide. Return to Main Text
3. The word 'alleged' is carefully chosen. The retrospective superimposing of 'AFL' over 'VFL' when delineating the game's records since 1897, quite aside from being fundamentally inaccurate, is also self-defeating in that it significantly diminishes the scope, richness and diversity of a sport which, for more than a century, has been an integral feature of the social, economic and cultural infrastructure of Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and parts of New South Wales and Queensland, not merely the Melbourne-Geelong axis. Return to Main Text
4. 'SANFL Football Budget', 6/7/96, page 6. Return to Main Text
5. South Australian Football: The Past And The Present 1860-1965 edited by C.K.Knuckey, page 90. Bear in mind that, during this period in the game's evolution, the captain undertook many of the duties later associated with the role of team coach. In particular, the captain was responsible for supervising team training. Return to Main Text
6. Ibid., page 89. Return to Main Text