As the home of SA football is cleared away for a new development at West Lakes, how will we remember Football Park’s part in our lives?

FOOTBALL Park - the home of SA football from 1974-2013 - is being cleared away with the bulldozers almost finished in clearing away the concrete. The memories from the West Lakes live on ...

HAVE you taken a trip to Football Park at West Lakes lately?

Considering fewer football fans were doing so by 2013 - the last AFL season for Port Adelaide and the Crows at the “home of SA football” - than in the heady days of the 1990s, it is most unlikely you have been enticed back to look over one of Adelaide’s busiest building sites and more fascinating demolition sites.

Where you once parked on Max Basheer Reserve, condominiums have popped “like mushrooms” from the ground where Crows players once tested their sprigs.

Where you once sat in the concrete bays at Football Park, the white sand dunes that was piled on the old swamp in 1969 are visible again.

Where the television cameras were perched at the top of the members’ stand, a crane is poised to bring down the last piece of the original build from 1974.

Football Park stand demolition. Picture: Michael Burton/AAP

And then ... there will be an oval, the Crows administration and training facility on the east side and the SANFL’s dining facility on the western flank ... and the memories of a sporting field that probably should have never come to be. If only Sir Donald Bradman had not commanded Adelaide Oval with a stronger grip in the 1960s than he had on a cricket bat in the 1930s. And what was it that Aurelio Vidmar said of Adelaide ...

On filing a photoessay of the destruction at Football Park last week, Advertiser columnist Graham Cornes replied on social media: “A forlorn sight. We never realised we loved it till it was gone.”

Cornes played league football for Glenelg, South Adelaide and South Australia on Football Park. He coached Glenelg, South Adelaide, South Adelaide and the Crows at Football Park. He spent 20 consecutive seasons of his long and grand football life on the West Lakes basin.

But did we all “love” Football Park? Is that the emotion that comes with any reflection on football’s first independent home that created controversy and headlines - and even a Royal Commission for the floodlights?

The lights shining bright at Football Park for a Port Adelaide -Sydney Swans game.

Every football fan has a memory from West Lakes.

Some of us, particularly those who grew up in the western suburbs, have seen it from being a swamp that was drained for a new suburban development to its reconfiguration today.

There were those Sunday morning drives in the early 1970s to watch the sand dunes being graded to an oval basin by the bulldozers commanded by former Norwood Football Club president Joe Tripodi.

There was that glossy brochure sent out by the SANFL in 1973 showing the design for a modern three-tier colosseum at West Lakes - the concrete and steeel bowl that, in an era of space travel, made it seem a flying saucer had landed in the swamp. And there were the promises of facilities - including a swimming pool - that made Football Park the entry to a modern era while SA football was used to being played at open-air venues with tin sheds serving Coke and pies.

Then there was the crisis of rising concrete prices - and the need to open Football Park as soon as possible to deliver cash to the SANFL that never was able to fulfil the master plan for an 80,000-seat stadium with a grandstand that completed a level roof line.

There were the doubts, the “white elephant” tag that was strongly promoted by Bradman as cricket came to realise the financial pain of not having football played at Adelaide Oval.

The crowd spilled over the boundary fence to watch the grand final between Sturt and Port Adelaide in 1976.

There was the confirmation of Football Park with the 1976 SANFL grand final between the hotly fancied Port Adelaide and the eventual premiers Sturt with the police closing gates at one end while future league chief executive Leigh Whicker opened them at the other end to have almost 80,000 people spilling over the fence to the boundary line.

There was World Series cricket soon after - and Kerry Packer’s wish for light towers that created a fiasco from 1979.

There was the night the lights came on in 1984 for the first SA-Victoria State game under lights - and a young Stephen Kernahan kicked 10 goals.

South Australian great Stephen Kernahan marking in front of Bruce Doull (5), John Kennedy (17) and Wayne Johnston in the State of Origin game against Victoria in 1984.

Those lights made Football Park be more than just Australian football in the 1980s. There were the world-class concerts, the world football matches with the Socceroos and great clubs such as Italian giants Juventus and Sheffied Shield cricket and impromptu cricket games from SANFL footballers who jumped the locked gates on Sunday afternoons in the summer.

There was the start of the Adelaide Football Club in 1991. The follow-up with Port Adelaide in 1997 to ensure AFL games were played at Football Park every weekend. There were classic AFL finals that stay still create heated discussion - the mark not paid to Geelong player Leigh Colbert in the 1997 semi-final against Adelaide; the remarkable 2004 preliminary final when St Kilda’s forward Fraser Gehrig’s 100th goal for the season held up the game to also stop the Saints’ momentum and give Port Adelaide the “time out” needed to save its season.

There were phenomenal Showdowns between the Crows and Power, including one whitewash final won by Adelaide in 2005. And that incredible final Showdown in 2013 with Port Adelaide goalsneak Angus Monfries’ bouncing goal that gave the Power the chance to steal a derby Adelaide should have won.

There are so many memories.

But did we, as Cornes suggest, love Football Park ... or find love as we reminsce?

The bulldozers will soon take away the last remnants of the concrete. The memories will never go ... and in many cases they will become grander than the real events were. But did we “love” Football Park?

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