SA Football of Fame inductions to honour men who were part of the game’s grand era
SOUTH Australian league football’s golden era from the 1960s to the AFL start in 1991 is remembered with the SA Football Hall of Fame inductions on Wednesday night.
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SOUTH Australian league football had its greatest era from the 1960s until the advent of the Crows in that turbulent winter of 1990.
On Wednesday night at Adelaide Oval, the SANFL will both add to the league’s history with the oldest medal in Australian football, the Magarey Medal; and remember when the suburban battle for SA football superiority expanded from eight to 10 teams.
The 17th induction ceremony to the SA Football Hall of Fame will bring forward three great achievers in local league football to stand with Malcolm Blight, Barrie Robran and Russell Ebert (all Magarey Medallists) as famous football achievers from that golden era that started in the 1960s.
Each of the three new inductees played significant roles at their SANFL clubs. The Hall of Fame records acknowledge their personal achievements in league football. But, just as the Hall’s selection charter demands, all three made significant contributions to their clubs, the game and the game of Australian football.
In a football season — the first since 2011 — that is not defined in September by either the Crows or Port Adelaide in AFL finals, the SANFL once again commands local football fans’ loyalties and interest as it did when the three new Hall of Fame inductees were giving SA football pride against the shadow of the Victorian neighbours and independence with a new home, Football Park at West Lakes.
The weekend sadly took one of the household names of this grand era when SA football not only moved from Adelaide Oval to the reclaimed swamp at West Lakes but from black-and-white to colour television and from Saturday night replays to live national telecasts of the grand final.
The death of Port Adelaide key forward Randall Gerlach — one of the Magpie premiership heroes who ended the club’s 12-year premiership drought in the league’s centenary season in 1977 — brings admiration of Gerlach’s strength for 40 years to fight kidney disease that brought an early end to his football career at just 24.
It also brings flooding back the wonderful era of SA league football in the early 1970s (Gerlach’s first league game was in 1971) when the corporate world still had not put its business logos on the lace-up jumpers and the goal umpires were still in white coats between behind posts that the SANFL painted red to make our league stand out from the rest. And the SANFL further contrasted itself from the rest by naming line-ups from full forward rather than full back — and works a different formula for percentage.
The memories will keep rising as each of the three new inductees to the SA Football Hall of Fame on Wednesday night. In 17 years the Hall has thanked and saluted great contributors to SA football for giving so much to the game they love.
It will be a timely stroll down memory lane for SA league football. And each of the three new inductees to the SA Football Hall of Fame should feel proud of their contribution to the game to give it that golden era from the 1960s to the AFL generation.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au