North Adelaide enters the SA football record books with many reasons to be proud of its 14th league premiership
NORTH Adelaide’s 14th SANFL league premiership will draw much debate for how the Roosters reached the grand final. But there should be admiration for how Josh Carr’s team won the flag.
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NORTH Adelaide’s 14th SANFL league premiership does indeed have an asterisk - for reasons that bring fame rather than shame.
The Roosters are the first SANFL team to rise from 10th to the flag.
When South Adelaide traded in a wooden spoon to win the 1964 under Neil Kerley’s watch the Panthers came from eighth. Same in 1935 with Vic Johnson in charge at South Adelaide.
North Adelaide is the second team - after Norwood in 1984 - to survive the long journey from fifth spot and four knock-out finals to claim the Thomas Seymour Hill premiership trophy.
And Josh Carr’s Roosters knocked off the minor premier Redlegs - in a repeat of Norwood’s remarkable ambush of top-ranked Port Adelaide at Football Park in 1984 - with some exhilirating football.
They were fast. They were ambitious. They were determined. And they are now champions.
For all the debate on how North Adelaide reached the grand final, there should be nothing but admiration for how the Roosters won the flag.
Like Norwood in 1984, that crossed the line of sportsmanship with its pre-meditated strike of Port Adelaide full forward Tim Evans by Redlegs full back Craig Balme during the national anthem before the first bounce, North Adelaide does have a controversial title in its collection.
Amazing how the footy gods would have the Roosters win the grand final by 19 points after scoring 19 goals - after the 19th man controversy from the preliminary final against Woodville-West Torrens.
Adelaide Oval on Sunday was still a point of so many opinions on how the SANFL should have judged North Adelaide for its preliminary final win. Those who argued the Roosters should have been stripped of the 1.2 they scored while having 19 men on the field for the first three minutes and 38 seconds of the last term have to contend with those who wonder how much North Adelaide “leaked” in the last three minutes of the quarter while “playing safe” to its handy lead.
It is all so subjective. And in many ways it is a pity the SA Football Commission was not creative to allow the players to have sorted it out with their own play-off - 18 against 18 - in a match lasting 3:38 last Tuesday night at Adelaide Oval.
Those who want to put an asterisk on North Adelaide’s 14th premiership might want to keep working through the record books to deal with those flags won in the 2000 decade with salary cap breaches - or to be more precise, salary cap cheating.
Who was it at Central District who said a decade ago that the fine for salary cap breaches was the best money ever spent to win a flag?
Not carrying an asterisk is the relevance of the SANFL competition when the grand final can draw 40,355 through the turnstiles, even in an era of the league supposedly being compromised with two AFL reserves teams.
North Adelaide was brilliant on Sunday. It beat Norwood in the way Australian football should be played. And the Roosters enter the record books with reason to be proud.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au