SANFL not the spot for the Adelaide Crows

IT is nonsense to think a Crows reserves team should compete in the SANFL.

Brenton Sanderson

IT is nonsense to think a Crows reserves team should compete in the SANFL.

Outside of the AFL, the SANFL is the best football competition in Australia, rivalling even the national competitions of other high- profile sports.

To include a team whose main reason for being is not to win matches or premierships would seriously damage the integrity of the competition, and generate a tension and resentment that would destroy that competition.

Of course the Crows deserve to have a reserves team, as most of the Victoria-based AFL teams do, but there is only one place to have it and that is in the Victorian Football League.

Sure, it might be a little more expensive and the administration a little more difficult, but why settle for the cheaper, temporary option?

For temporary it will be, because there is no way the presence of a Crows reserve team in the SANFL would be sustained past an original trial period.

The Port Adelaide scenario is a little different because the Port Magpies have always been an integral, if not dominant, part of the competition.

Even when jealousy and vindictiveness saw them banished to Ethelton in the early years when Port Adelaide was Port Power, Port Adelaide continued to shape the SANFL.

The Magpies should not and cannot die, which is why the one-club philosophy blending both AFL and SANFL Port Adelaide entities can work.

Besides, despite opinions to the contrary, the Magpies always intended to have a team in the SANFL when its Power version went off seeking greater glories.

In fact back before there was a Power, the club had retained a powerful legal team to resist any moves by other vindictive clubs in the SANFL to have them leave the competition completely when they moved into the AFL.

Love them or hate them, the Magpies are a powerful SANFL entity.

However, there is no similar model that could work for the Crows. The suggestion that the Adelaide Football Club could "adopt" the Sturt Football Club, thus acquiring a surrogate reserve team, had merit.

But the obituary for the Double Blues was a little premature - the club is fighting back, regaining both its viability and its credibility.

There is no doubt that for the first year or so, a Crows reserve team would have some novelty value, but where would its players come from?

Not that long ago there were weeks when the Crows had only 25 fit players to chose from. Crows fans are not going to flock to Noarlunga to see a team of under-18 players play the Panthers.

It's ridiculous.

Informed opinion has it that the Crows have the numbers around the SANFL directors' table to approve its request to field a reserve team in the SANFL league competition.

If that is the case, they must rethink the issue.

Surely common sense will prevail. The SANFL directors will see that the Port Magpies, with all their junior infrastructure intact are, and should always be, a part of the competition. It is no disruption to have all of the Port Power players eligible to play for them.

On the other hand, a Crows reserves team will only be a temporary distraction that will cause irreparable, permanent damage to the integrity of a great competition.

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