The premiership that delivered the Adelaide Football Club - and Malcolm Blight - their greatest triumph
NO match defined the Crows more than the 1997 grand final. Underdog Adelaide’s young team - missing key players - captured the club’s first flag. Michelangelo Rucci talks with Malcolm Blight and Mark Bickley about that match.
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CLUBS are defined by their success. The ultimate - the only real prize in AFL football - is the premiership, the title from a six-month marathon battle for supremacy.
The Adelaide Football Club started its seventh season in the national league with a new coach, local hero Malcolm Blight. He was dubbed “The Messiah” - and he certainly delivered the Crows to the promised land of premiership glory with one of the most extraordinary campaigns in the club’s 25-season history.
The Advertiser’s celebrating of the 25 defining moments in the Adelaide Football Club’s story ends today remembering the season in which the Crows rose to premiership glory - and, as Blight puts it, made the nation salute SA football.
Michelangelo Rucci returns to the season that defined the Crows with Blight and his premiership captain Mark Bickley.
Rucci: Malcolm, you arrived with a big fanfare as the man who would finally take the Adelaide Football Club to glory. How was the entrance?
Blight: I wasn’t sure - absolutely not sure of the list. But talking to (chairman) Bob Hammond, (chief executive) Bill Sanders and (football chief) John Reid, I felt there was a State team there - or State team-ish group. I really warmed to the idea of taking South Australia onto the national stage.
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THE LIST SO FAR
No. 3: First game against Hawthorn
No. 4: Ricciuto’s Brownlow medal
No. 5: Modra’s 129-goal season
No. 7: The greatest Showdown of all
No. 8: The first finals victory
No. 9: A shoot at finals footy
No. 11: The Andrew McLeod legend in born
No. 12: Tyson’s comeback and farewell
No. 14: The great Jarman double act
No. 16: Blighty’s mighty spray
No. 17: The 148-point turnaround
No. 18: First and only minor premiership
No. 19: First Showdown win — The Comeback. 1997.
No. 20: 2002 epic semi-final win against Melbourne
No. 21: Modra wins the Coleman
No. 22: Carey chooses Adelaide
No. 23: The Demolition of Fremantle
No. 24: Independence from the SANFL
No. 25: 1993 preliminary final loss to Essendon
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Rucci: It was an extraordinary season with so many ups and downs. When did you feel the year was building to something special?
Blight: It is a good question. There’s a couple of things to that. First, when you see the sheer talent - there were good players at Adelaide. I’ve always believed 80 per cent of the story is made up by the players. Everyone else at a club contributes, but it is the players who decide 80 per cent of the campaign.
We had some super fit players in their first, second or third years - Simon Goodwin, Tyson Edwards, Andrew McLeod. Mark Ricciuto had changed his ways. By the end of the year, about a third of the team was aged 22 or younger. It was amazing how with players retiring or moving on, we opened up the team for this new talent that was waiting to be unearthed. It was a new team
Rucci: Adelaide finished the home-and-away series in fifth spot with 12 wins from 20 games. It had not played finals since the 1993 series. Did you feel ready for one of the greatest September runs in football history?
Blight: We were tested, weren’t we? We lost Ricciuto (groin) in the last game against Essendon. Peter Vardy was injured. Tony Modra did his knee in the preliminary final. And we started the final series against West Coast ... Given my history from Geelong against West Coast in finals - and it was terrible - it made for an interesting week. The players were nervous, but I was far more nervous than them. Getting that final at home - and there is an advantage in that - was that little bit of fortune we needed. It all snowballed from there.
Bickley: It wasn’t the perfect year. We had a new coach and it was going to take time to learn about him and ourselves. But once we reached the finals we had confidence. We were certain we could have an impact. Starting the finals at home was always going to help. The final was delayed with Lady Di’s funeral so by the time we got out there, we just wanted to play.
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ADELAIDE 3.8 5.10 11.11 19.11 (125)
ST KILDA 3.6 7.11 9.13 13.16 (94)
BEST - Adelaide: McLeod, Jarman, Ellen, Rehn, Johnson, Pittman, Bond,
Hart. St Kilda: Jones, Burke, Harvey, Keogh, D. Wakelin, Sziller.
SCORERS - Adelaide: Jarman 6.2, Ellen 5.1, Bond 4.0, Rintoul 1.1,
Caven, Goodwin, Smart 1.0, Bickley, Edwards, Koster 0.1, rushed 0.4.
St Kilda: Heatley 3.3, Hall 3.1, Loewe 2.2, Burke, Jones, Winmar 1.1,
Harvey, Peckett 1.0, Cook, Thompson 0.2, Keogh, Lappin 0.1, rushed
0.1.
NORM SMITH MEDAL: Andrew McLeod (Adelaide).
INJURIES - Adelaide: Jameson (hamstring), Sampson (thigh).
UMPIRES: Hayden Kennedy, Mark Nash, Bryan Sheehan.
CROWD: 99,645 at the MCG.
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Rucci: How was the lead-up to the grand final against St Kilda?
Blight: The night before, I was pretty ordinary. It was pretty scary to be in a grand final for the fourth time in six years as a coach - and if we didn’t get a result, it was not going to look great. From the club’s point of view, this moment was enormous - freakish and surreal. We went into the grand final after having been seen during the season as irrelevant.
Bickley: Nervy. It was new for us - and for St Kilda as their group had not been there either. Blight was good on Monday morning in explaining to us what would happen. He demanded we have extra attention to what we did. And he made it clear if he heard or saw anyone thinking or talking of premierships, he would kick them up the backside. All we thought about was making a good start.
Rucci: How was the emotion at the final siren?
Blight: I was pretty happy. Most people say it is a relief as a coach. I was bloody ecstatic. Every coach tells me they feel relief on that siren. Pigs. I was excited for everyone in SA. We’d showed everyone that we can play football pretty much okay in Adelaide.
Bickley: There was more euphoria on the siren in the preliminary final against the Western Bulldogs at the end of that struggle. In the grand final we had about five or six minutes to wait for the siren, even if you keep thinking will St Kilda come back. So it was relief when the siren went - and that shocked me. Relief. I knew then I would retire having achieved the ultimate. And then you get around your team-mates knowing everyone had a different story to celebrate.
Rucci: Can you look at one premiership - 1997 or 1998 - more fondly than the other?
Blight: It’s like being asked which child do you like best? The first one was great. To do it again in 1998 was equally as good.
Bickley: No, but if I am selfish about it, 1997 means more because it was the first for the club. As Blighty said reflecting on his first at North Melbourne, no matter how many flags your club wins there will be only one group of players who are remembered for winning the first.
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