The moments that inspired “fired up’’ Darren Jarman to become a grand final hero for the Adelaide Crows
TWENTY years after producing the most spectacular goalkicking performance in one quarter in VFL-AFL history to lead the Adelaide Crows to a historic first AFL premiership, Darren Jarman still hasn’t forgotten what inspired him to record heights.
TWENTY years after producing the most spectacular goalkicking performance in one quarter in VFL-AFL history to lead the Adelaide Crows to a historic first AFL premiership, Darren Jarman still hasn’t forgotten what inspired him to record heights.
Nor has he forgiven the man who “fired me up”.
The only player in the 1997 Adelaide-St Kilda grand final to have played in a winning VFL-AFL premiership team before the match, Jarman recalls sitting in his Melbourne hotel room the night before the Crows chased history and becoming so angry that he didn’t sleep.
“I was trying to relax before the big game so I started watching the Footy Marathon on television with the thought of hopefully nodding off,” Jarman said.
“There was a 1980s VFL grand final being replayed – I can’t even remember who it was between – but at half-time of that game the panellists started discussing our match and how it might pan out.
“Mike Sheahan (legendary AFL journalist) was a guest on the show and said ‘I’ll give you a tip, St Kilda will win’.
“Then he started talking about the players and said ‘Darren Jarman needs to play well because he struggles in big games’ and mentioned the 1991 grand final.
“I’m yelling at the TV and thinking, ‘fancy saying that, did he realise who I was standing?’
Star midfielder-forward Jarman, a North Adelaide product who had returned to his home city of Adelaide at the end of 1995 after five years at Hawthorn, had just five disposals and failed to kick a goal in the 1991 grand final when the Hawks thumped West Coast by 48 points.
It was the only VFL-AFL grand final played at VFL Park and Jarman was blanketed by Eagles dual premiership defender and Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee Guy McKenna while key forwards Jason Dunstall (six), Dermott Brereton (four) and Norm Smith Medallist Paul Dear (two) kicked 12 goals between them.
“It wasn’t my best game but it was a day when all the ball was directed to our key forwards, there were no crumbs, and me and ‘Hally’ (Croweater Tony Hall, eight disposals, one goal), were left out of the play and as a result spent a fair bit of the second half in our dressing gowns on the pine (interchange bench),” Jarman said.
“McKenna was a great player and while he destroyed me you can’t go on one bad day.
“In my previous grand final win (in the SANFL for North in an 82-point triumph against Glenelg in 1987) I’d had a terrific game (22 disposals, five marks, three goals), so I thought Sheahan’s comments were harsh.
“And they came after I’d kicked the winning goal for Adelaide in the preliminary final (against the Western Bulldogs) the week before. If I hadn’t kicked that goal from 40m with under two minutes to play we’re probably not even playing in the grand final.
“So I was fired up, angry and went to bed steaming. I was so angry that I couldn’t sleep and all night kept thinking that I’ve just got to play well.
“The next morning I was still angry, so I went for a walk to try to calm down.”
Jarman, then 30, played a modest first three quarters in the 1997 decider, having 12 disposals and kicking a goal to the last change as big underdog Adelaide – playing in just its second finals series in its seventh year in the competition – fought back from a 13-point half-time deficit to snatch a 10-point lead.
Then – on no sleep – he took over the game. As he broke out of the three-quarter time huddle, Jarman felt a tug on the back of his guernsey.
“It was ‘Blighty’ (coach Malcolm Blight),” Jarman recalled. “He said ‘can you give me something special in this last quarter, can you excite me? I need you, I need you to do something special’. I’m like ‘no worries, Malcolm, sure. I’ll try my best’.
“Bondy (teammate Troy Bond) heard the conversation and, in his typically-relaxed style, started laughing his head off. He said ‘gee, I love you, Bunda-Man’, which is an Aboriginal term for Money-Man, which he used to always call me.
“So, given the circumstances, to do what I did in that last quarter was quite amazing.”
Blight had Jarman start every centre bounce in the centre square, where he was sat on by Saints midfield tagger Andrew Thompson, with instructions to drift to full forward, where he caused a nightmare match-up for the bigger but more cumbersome full back Jamie Shanahan.
Shanahan, a standout defender all year, was 11cm taller (194cm to 183cm) and 10kg heavier (102kg to 92kg) than Jarman but he wasn’t in the Croweater’s league when it came to class and footy-smarts.
“Blighty said he’d seen Nunan (North coach Michael Nunan) use the tactic with me in the SANFL and that he wanted me to be one-out with my opponent,” Jarman said.
Four minutes into the final term, Jarman got the ball rolling for Adelaide. He forced Shanahan into giving away a free kick and goaled from 15m to give the Crows a 15-point cushion. Then came a second goal for the quarter (and third for the match), and a third, a fourth and a fifth.
While electrifying midfielder Andrew McLeod won the Norm Smith Medal as best-afield, Jarman was the game-breaker.
His final goal for the game (a VFL-AFL grand final record fifth for the quarter), which came courtesy of a sensational pick-up and snap shot, sealed Adelaide’s first flag and saw it become just the first club to win four finals in a year.
It won a maiden grand final by 31 points with its two All-Australians of that season, star full forward Tony Modra (knee) and hard-as-nails onballer Mark Ricciuto (groin), sitting in the MCG grandstands injured. Goalsneak Peter Vardy, who had played every game that year before breaking a collarbone in the second semi-final, also was sidelined.
“The last quarter was like a dream,” Jarman, now 50, told SAWeekend. “Everyone dreams of kicking four or five in the last quarter of a grand final and, given the circumstances of the lead-in to that game, for me it was pretty special and very satisfying.
“Bondy just had this big smile on his face with every goal that I kicked, knowing what Blighty had said and that I’d delivered.
“As exciting as it was – and it was extra special to be a part of Adelaide’s first premiership in just our seventh year in the competition – there also was a fair degree of relief for me.
“If I hadn’t got a kick and we’d lost, Sheahan would have been proven right and I didn’t want to live with that.
“The last quarter was the best of my life, so to tick that box of playing well in such a big AFL game, it was nice.
“And the thing that I always say to St Kilda supporters now is that they can thank Mike Sheahan for the loss because he was the one who fired me up.”
Jarman said Sheahan felt the full brunt of his mates from his junior club, Gaza, when he jumped on a tram outside the MCG after the game.
“A lot of my Gaza mates had come over for the grand final and they'd heard what Sheahan had said the night before and knew that I was upset about it,” he said.
“So when he got on the same tram they just gave it to him and said ‘thanks for firing Darren up, you just won the Crows the flag’.”
Jarman said Sheahan had been trying for “years” to get him and his brother, dual Magarey Medallist and inaugural Crow Andrew, on his Open Mike television show.
But he has refused because of what he claims was “totally unfair criticism”.
“He’s been dying to get me on his show, he has been for 20 years, but his comments still don’t sit well with me,” the usually-relaxed and unflappable Jarman said.
“Just a few weeks ago Andrew rang me and said ‘Mike still wants us on his show, should we go on?’
“I said ‘no, I’m not doing it’.”
Remarkably, Jarman repeated his grand final heroics a year after his record-breaking 1997 performance.
He kicked five goals in the 35-point grand final win against North Melbourne, which was a massive upset, after the Crows trailed by 24 points at half-time and had been completely outplayed.
The Wayne Carey-captained Kangaroos led 6.15 (51) to 4.3 (27) at the long break but failed to capitalise on their first half dominance and were overrun in the second half.
Jarman kicked four of his five goals in the second half as the Crows won consecutive premierships.
“That grand final was one I was just going to enjoy,” he said. “We’d already won one, had broken the (premiership) drought, had finished fifth at the end of the minor round and no-one gave us a chance to beat the Kangaroos, who were the best side all year.
“It should have been game over at half-time – they should have been 10 goals up – but they missed some sitters in front of goal, had failed to put us away and left that little door open.
“Blighty put one message on the (white) board at half-time — ‘attack’.
“I kicked the first goal in the third quarter and when Kane Johnson got another to put us within 11 points we were away. The rest is history.”
Jarman gained some quiet personal satisfaction out of eclipsing his opponent, John Blakey, who had been a long-time nemesis.
“Every time I played against North Melbourne their coach (Denis) Pagan would put Blakey, who was incredibly fit and disciplined, on me with instructions to not worry about getting the ball as long as he stopped me from getting it,” Jarman said.
“I remember one game at Football Park when he was on me that I had three touches and he got two and he was named second-best in the paper.
“He went to shake my hand after the game and I said ‘no’ and he asked why not.
“I said because there’s no way you can enjoy a game, think it’s good, when you only get two touches.
“He was happy that he’d done his job for Pagan and the team but I hated that type of football because I liked entertainers.
“I wanted to entertain, kick goals and get the crowd involved, so there was no way I was going to shake his hand when his sole purpose was to stop me doing it.
“I kicked four of my five grand final goals on him, so when the (Kangaroos) runner came out to move him off me and put (Glenn) Archer on me I said, ‘I’ve got you Johnny’, gave him a little smile and said ‘seeya later mate’.”
Eleven goals in consecutive grand finals was a fair response from a player who’d had his big-game capabilities questioned.
“The man who framed my football memorabilia calls me Mr Six and Five, in reference to my grand final goals, which is a nice reminder,” Jarman quipped.
“I just feel blessed because I was able to play 100 games and win a premiership for all teams I played for — North Adelaide, Hawthorn and the Crows. That’s probably the thing that I am most proud of.
“But after the first Crows flag it was so big back in Adelaide that I felt like a member of The Beatles.
“I felt invincible, it was the most amazing feeling ever.”
Not bad for a boy who started playing at amateur league club Gaza before moving to North and likely staying there for a decade without the “kick up the arse I needed” from Nunan, who became a father figure to him.
“Mick invited me to North for pre-season league training at age 17 and I didn’t turn up because I was lazy,” said boy wonder Jarman, who refined his elite kicking skills as a child in the backyard with Andrew.
The boys’ father, Dennis, was a talented footballer at Gaza but split from the family and moved to Naracoorte when Darren was 12.
“I was brickpaving the footpaths down at Grange during summer. It was hard work and the last thing I wanted to do was go to pre-season training,” Jarman recalled.
“Then one day I felt this kick up the arse and I’ve gone flying through the front door of a deli, turned around and saw it was Nunan.
“He’d found me down there, told me to get to training that night or not to ever play for North Adelaide again.
“He scared me, so I was first to training that night and the rest is history. I never missed a training session after that.
“It was a life-changing moment.”
Not that it has changed Jarman the person.
“I am the same person today as I’ve always been,” he said, albeit at 115kg he is a bit heavier than his playing days.
“I’ve still got all my mates at Gaza, I go and have a beer and a bet with them, so nothing has changed with me.
“Sure, there is the Hall of Fame recognition, the premierships and all that, which is great, but I haven’t changed at all from the way I was brought up.
“I’ve seen fame go to other people’s heads, my kids (Emma, 22, Kate, 21, and Ben, 19) have seen it, too, when we’ve been out, and it’s not pretty.
“They often say to me ‘we’re lucky we’ve got you dad because you don’t act like that’.
“I’d rather stay home with (wife) Sue and the kids than go out partying and to different shows because I can’t get enough of them.”
Ben, a promising forward-midfielder, is the Crows’ first father-son selection, having been picked in last year’s rookie draft.
Lightly-built, he is yet to play an AFL game but is developing nicely in the SANFL.
Emma works at the Glenelg Football Club and Kate is studying teaching.
Jarman, who is a brother-in-law of dual Adelaide premiership teammate Tyson Edwards, has worked as a groundsman at Mount Carmel College, Rosewater, for the past six years and hosts a corporate event for the Crows on match days at Adelaide Oval.
“Sue says I’m in semi-retirement but I’m just chilling out,” he said.
“I’m just happy to be alive and looking forward to seeing (age) 51.
“My philosophy is that you’ve got to enjoy life because you’re not sure how long you are going to be here.
“I spend my money because life is full of people who are loaded (financially) but are unhappy. You can’t take it with you, so you’ve got to make the most of it while you can.
“I’m so happy just to wake up every day and I don’t hold a grudge against anyone in the world – other than Mike Sheahan.
“But, you know, if he was to walk past me now I’d say hello.”