Exit from Football Park a solemn affair, but it's memories will live forever

IN seven days AAMI Stadium will close as an AFL venue. In seven weeks it will host its 40th and last SANFL grand final.

IN seven days AAMI Stadium will close as an AFL venue. In seven weeks it will host its 40th and last SANFL grand final. From March 29, SA football will call Adelaide Oval home again.

The exit from West Lakes could be as dramatic as the political battle between the SANFL and SA Cricket Association that forced football to leave its traditional base in the city parklands to build a home on the reclaimed swamp lands in Adelaide's western suburbs.

Port Adelaide, the club that has won more SANFL premierships on Football Park than any of its local rivals, will close the stadium's AFL story against Carlton on Saturday week in a possible playoff for eighth spot.

Adelaide, the first club to play an AFL game at West Lakes when it hosted Hawthorn in 1991, today will end its long and successful story at AAMI Stadium by hosting the game's oldest club, Melbourne. It will be the Crows' 280th game on a ground where it has achieved 179 wins and 100 losses.

The Power has played 212 AFL games at AAMI Stadium for a 127-2-83 win-draw-loss record. Before any of this unfolded in the record books, Port Adelaide made its history at Football Park with nine SANFL colleagues who gambled the game's future on building SA football's first independent home at West Lakes.

Only two men from the original SANFL-Football Park steering committee - former league president Max Basheer and current SANFL chief executive Leigh Whicker - remain to see the curtain fall on West Lakes and the full journey back to Adelaide Oval completed with all the SANFL sought from the SACA at Adelaide Oval in 1969 when the two bodies fell out.

When AAMI Stadium closes as an AFL venue on Saturday week, more than 16 million fans will have filed through the gates at West Lakes to watch the Crows and Power create football history at Football Park. Almost as many did the same for the ground's SANFL events. And then there were those who came for soccer internationals and concerts that included U2 and Robbie Williams.

Once dubbed a "white elephant", Football Park has fulfilled its task to give SA football strength. In its shutdown mode it is to continue to do this by funding the SANFL clubs in a new era. And the memories will live forever.