From Andrew McLeod to Scott Thompson, the best trade deals in the Adelaide Crows’ history
As the start of the 2019 AFL Trade Period nears, we look back at the top-five best trades — and the players, draft picks and people involved — in the Crows’ history. HAVE YOUR SAY
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The Adelaide Football Club have pulled off some extraordinary deals at the trade table over the years and there has been premiership success as a result. Here’s the top five.
SUNDAY NIGHT: PORT ADELAIDE’S TOP-FIVE TRADE DEALS
1. Andrew McLeod from Fremantle for Chris Groom — 1994
“If I’d seen Andrew McLeod play for one minute he’d have been playing for me.”
That’s what Fremantle’s inaugural coach Gerard Neesham told Mike Sheahan on Fox Footy’s Open Mike in 2015.
But with little knowledge of McLeod or “anything about his football”, Neesham and the Dockers traded the Port Adelaide Magpies wingman, who was pre-listed by the club in the build-up to its first season in the competition, to Adelaide for Chris Groom.
At that time, Groom was an up-and-coming key-forward, who had played 12 games for the Crows.
“There are always a few players who stand out and impress the coach with their personality, their team spirit, or their willingness to listen, learn and act. Groom was one of those guys,” Adelaide’s inaugural coach Graham Cornes wrote in 2008.
Cornes was in charge when Groom made his debut in 1993 and, despite injury, believed Groom had a future as a centre half-forward.
“I never liked trading players who I thought could come back and hurt you, and Groom had that potential,” Cornes said in his Advertiser column.
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But Cornes was replaced by Robert Shaw at the end of 1994 and Tim Johnson, Adelaide’s recruiting manager at the time, orchestrated the best trade in the club’s history with 18-year-old McLeod arriving at West Lakes after an impressive finals series in the SANFL.
He retired 16 years later as an AFL Hall Of Fame member with 340 games, two premierships medals, two Norm Smith medals, five All-Australian jumpers and three Club Champion awards to his name.
“I was lucky I was handed an opportunity to come to Adelaide … and to play here for 16 years. I look back on that and think, things do happen for a reason. I was meant to come to Adelaide. And I am thankful Gerard Neesham, for whatever reason, didn’t think I was a right fit for Fremantle,” McLeod said in 2014.
McLeod went on to become one of Adelaide’s greatest ever players while Groom played just 12 more AFL games — seven for the Dockers and five for North Melbourne, a club he joined two years after arriving in Perth.
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2. Darren Jarman from Hawthorn as part of three-way trade with Essendon — 1995
It cost Adelaide Sean Wellman, who went on to become a 178-game premiership defender at Essendon, but what it received in return became even more valuable.
Jarman returned home to South Australia, after five seasons at Hawthorn, and booted six goals — five in the final quarter — in the grand final win in 1997 before bagging another five majors as the Crows came from 24 points down at half-time to go back-to-back against North Melbourne a year later.
“If you rank him in the top six players of AFL footy and you rank him as an All-Australian and where he sits in the AFL competition, we’ve had to make a sacrifice,” coach Robert Shaw said of the club’s decision to give up Wellman to get Jarman to the Crows.
But as recruiting manager James Fantasia, who was in his first year in the role, recalled in 2016, the deal took time.
“When we first sat down with the Hawks, you could have cut the air with a knife — it was hostile,” Fantasia said.
In the end, Adelaide game up pick No. 25 and Wellman to get Jarman and pick No. 45 in the draft, which was used on Scott Hodges, in return.
Hawthorn traded Jarman and Paul Barnard for Paul Salmon, who would go on to play 100 games for the Hawks, and pick No. 25, which was used to secure Daniel Chick.
Essendon received Wellman and Barnard, both premiership players in 2000, for Salmon and pick No. 45.
Fantasia said the complex trade, which was also intertwined with the Peter Caven deal with Sydney, “ended up being one of the most-complicated trades ever”.
“But good clubs keep working to find a way to make it a win-win.”
And what a big win it was for Adelaide.
3. Scott Thompson and pick No. 28 for Tyson Stenglein in three-way deal with Melbourne and West Coast — 2004
After four injury-interrupted seasons and 39 senior games at Melbourne, the former Port Adelaide Magpies junior, who was selected at pick No. 16 in 2000 draft, decided to pursue a fresh start back in his home state.
So Adelaide cashed-in on important midfielder Tyson Stenglein’s desire to return to Perth after 106 games at the Crows.
In a three-way trade, Adelaide took West Coast’s pick No. 12, which it received in exchange for Stenglein, and sent it to Melbourne for Thompson.
While the Crows failed to make use of West Coast’s second-round selection, picking Norwood’s Chad Gibson, who was delisted in 2006 after failing to play a game for the club, they got more than they would’ve expected from Thompson.
At 34, after 308 AFL games, 269 for the Crows — the eighth-most in the club’s history — Thompson, who tallied 30 disposals or more on 73 occasions as a Crow, retired in 2017 with an All-Australian jumper (2012), two Club Champion Awards and a third-place finish in the Brownlow Medal (2012) to his name.
While Stenglein, despite being part of West Coast’s 2006 premiership side, retired in 2009 after six seasons and 102 games at the Eagles.
And the 12th selection ended up in the hands of the Tigers, who selected Danny Meyer, who go on to play 26 AFL games.
Between Adelaide’s failed No. 8 pick of John Messen and Gibson at No. 28, only one player went on to reach the 200-game milestone.
That was player was Nathan van Berlo, who Adelaide selected at No. 24.
4. Peter Caven for Paul Rouvray from Sydney — 1995
There’s no Norm Smith Medal, All-Australian jumper, Crows gold jacket or grand final five-goal haul.
But the move — which was connected to the Jarman deal — to bring Caven to Adelaide from Sydney in 1995 would prove pivotal in the Crows’ back-to-back flags.
At the end of 1995, after playing 18 games for Sydney, Caven, who also played 39 matches for Fitzroy between 1991 and 1993, was told he was no longer required at the Swans.
Fantasia pounced and Caven joined Shaw, his old coach at Fitzroy, at the Crows.
And it didn’t cost them anything.
In exchange, Fantasia sent 21-game Paul Rouvray to Sydney and he failed to play another AFL game.
But Caven, a tough, no-fuss defender, played 82 games for Adelaide, finishing his career as a two-time premiership player.
North Melbourne superstar Wayne Carey was in his prime and had towelled up Caven and the Crows during the regular season.
But coach Malcolm Blight backed his man in for the decider, this time insisting Caven play from behind, spoil and then run off him.
And it worked. Carey finished with just one goal from 18 disposals and five marks, while Caven had 20 touches and nine marks of his own as Adelaide secured its second consecutive flag.
5. Bernie Vince for Pick No. 23 (Matt Crouch) — 2013
In 2009, as the Crows bowed out in the second week of the finals, Vince averaged 27 disposals per game and was crowned Adelaide’s club champion.
But four years later, after 129 games at West Lakes, Vince was traded to Melbourne for pick No. 23, 12 months before he was set to become a free agent.
Vince wanted to stay but he had currency on the open market and Adelaide was desperate to get back into the early rounds of the 2013 national draft after it was stripped of its first two selections as part of the Kurt Tippett salary cap sanctions.
“It wasn’t them saying they wanted me to go, it was them not saying they wanted me to stay,” Vince said on Adelaide radio in the wake of the trade.
“At 28, Bernie still has some great football ahead of him but it was a football decision that was made,” he said.
Recruiting manager Hamish Ogilvie, who was set to make his first pick at No. 46 before the Vince deal was made, knew it would be worth it, telling the club’s website “we knew we would get a really good player if we did the deal, or we wouldn’t have done it”.
And they did, taking North Ballarat ball-magnet Matt Crouch and reuniting him with older brother Brad — it was party time at Sando’s.
While Vince went on to play 100 games at the Demons, averaging 25 disposals per game match in 2016, Crouch was All-Australian and Club Champion, after winning more possession than any other player in the competition, in his fourth season in 2017.