Jacobs will leave a Giant hole at Adelaide, but none moreso for the fans who loved him like no other
Every AFL season finishes with unexpected list-management decisions. Sadly, this has denied Crows fans the chance to salute Sam Jacobs before he reappears as a Giant, writes Michelangelo Rucci.
Michelangelo Rucci
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SAYING goodbye is never easy. More so when there was no chance to salute former Crows lionheart, ruckman Sam Jacobs.
Of all the nine Crows players told, pushed or allowed to leave the nest at West Lakes in this spring of grand transformation at the Adelaide Football Club, Jacobs was the most deserving of a farewell lap.
The last image of Jacobs in a Crows jumper - any Crows guernsey - is at Ballarat on August 25. Game No. 184 as an Adelaide player, No. 201 as an AFL hero. Jacobs raised his big right arm 90 times to win a game-high 56 hit-outs, but not once to say goodbye.
As the Western Bulldogs celebrated their re-entry to the AFL’s top-eight finals (and wondered why the Crows were so argumentative with each other), Jacobs stepped away from the limelight that fell on 2010 club champion Richard Douglas and Andy Otten while they were hailed and honoured in their last AFL games with Adelaide.
Jacobs did not play in the SANFL finals in September, even though he had qualified for the State league’s top-five major round after losing the No. 1 ruck role at Adelaide to his understudy, Reilly O’Brien. So honourable - and true to his team spirit - was Jacobs making his recall to the AFL more difficult by mentoring O’Brien.
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So there was no farewell at Adelaide Oval, nor the obligatory Green Day anthem (strangely titled “Good Riddance”) that the Crows fashioned in 1999 for its farewells, starting with premiership coach Malcolm Blight and premiership defender Rod Jameson as they walked off Football Park for the last time as Crows coach and player respectively.
184 games, 6275 hit-outs, one Sam Jacobs 💙â¤ï¸ðŸ’› #weflyasone pic.twitter.com/kyF0HIWmO5
— Adelaide Crows (@Adelaide_FC) September 20, 2019
Now “Sauce” is a Greater Western Sydney Giant. The next time he appears at Adelaide Oval, Jacobs will be - as former Crows coach Neil Craig always told his players - the “enemy”.
This is a tough image to make stick with Jacobs. Yep... there is always one exception to every rule.
Jeering Brownlow Medallist and Geelong hero Patrick Dangerfield - the Crows 2015 club champion and former stand-in Adelaide captain - is true to Craig’s instructions on defectors and comes naturally to Crows fans, but it could never apply to Jacobs.
And this is why it seems to wrong that Jacobs leaves Adelaide without taking the standing ovation he deserves from the Crows supporters he carried on his big shoulders for nine AFL seasons.
The big guy from Ardrossan - who made it to Adelaide from Carlton, after being turned away by Port Adelaide coach Matthew Primus in the 2010 AFL trade period - merits so much more. Has the professional game of Australian football become so brutally tied to the process and deadlines of list management that there is no room for sentiment?
There is so much to admire in the way Jacobs presented and carried himself across his time at the Adelaide Football Club. The record books will forever tell of his three Showdown Medals as best-afield in the second derbies with Port Adelaide in 2012, 2014 and 2017.
The class - and honour - of Jacobs is measured in his uplifting character. He always smiled, he always left others smiling. He built his respect on the respect he showed to all.
Jacobs could have set a house of cards tumbling with his reflections on the infamous 2018 pre-season camp at the Gold Coast, as so many other departing Crows have done in the past month. But Jacobs remains dignified to the end, proving he is owed eternal gratitude from his former AFL club - and deserved a grander farewell than offered as he took the No. 24 Crows jumper off his back for the last time at Ballarat.
Goodbye, Sauce.
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