Adelaide Oval remains super popular with AFL fans — and could be better if they take control of their party zones
ADELAIDE Oval will have its four-millionth AFL fan pass through the new turnstile during this week’s finals.
“BEST venue in Australia (Adelaide Oval).”
Some statement from a sporting great who made his name on the MCG in some of the biggest games of Australian football, including four VFL-AFL grand finals.
And Stephen Kernahan — who also had some big moments when they would fill out Football Park for State-of-Origin clashes — has sat in the high-altitude seats of the Oval’s Gavin Wanganeen pavilion to know more of the venue than the plush seats taken by AFL club presidents.
Adelaide Oval this week is the centrepiece of the opening weekend of AFL finals. A sold-out qualifying final with Adelaide hosting Greater Western Sydney on Thursday night. Port Adelaide on Saturday night puts on an elimination final for the second time, this time against West Coast.
Take away that Power-Melbourne game at the end of the 2011 season from the record books, Adelaide Oval will reach another significant milestone this weekend. It will have its four millionth AFL fan pass through the new turnstiles during the Power-Eagles final.
In 87 home-and-away games since the redevelopment finished at the start of the 2014 AFL season, there have been 3,840,171 watch national league matches at the Oval. In two finals, there is 98,893 on the counter for a total of 3,939,064.
The tag of “best venue in Australia” — as declared by Kernahan as he returned to Adelaide to be the guest speaker at the SANFL past players’ and 200 Club luncheon at the Oval on Friday — will be tested next year by the opening of the 60,000-seat new Perth Stadium that replaces Subiaco Oval as WA’s AFL home.
Not to be tested by the Perth venue is the management agreement that works for all sport — and the two SA-based AFL clubs — at Adelaide Oval. While the WA Football Commission is still trying to work out how it will fund WA football when the big show moves from Subiaco, there is no question on how the Crows and Port Adelaide will benefit from scoring finals at the Oval.
The last stadium model review — sealed in February, 2015 after months of negotiation — ensures the Adelaide and Port Adelaide football clubs each score a $300,000 cheque from each final at the Oval.
Surely no-one can question the move from Football Park to Adelaide Oval any more? Everyone is doing far better at the Oval than at West Lakes, one of the key points SA football wanted to secure in leaving the independent (but rundown) home in Adelaide’s western suburbs.
Or are they? Clearly, the Port Adelaide fans are miffed that — by whatever power it was — that the ultra-successful Game Day Village at Memorial Drive disappeared this season. The Power has sought to reclaim this lost ground at the Convention Centre.
And there are still many Crows fans wanting to know where their “Shed” that was so popular at West Lakes is replicated at the Oval? Perhaps they need to take the lead rather than wait on the Crows hierarchy to deliver. It should not be beyond the supporters’ groups from both clubs to use their own initiative to make the Oval experience even better. This is at the heart of that “authentic football club” theme the late Phil Walsh wanted to build in Adelaide.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au