Who have been the most influential people to make the Crows a success story?
WHO are the 10 most influential people in the AFL story of the Adelaide Football Club?
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IT is the era of lists (and soon someone will come up with the top-50 countdown of the best lists ever assembled).
When former mainstream Melbourne journalist Rohan Connolly delivered the 10 most-influential Bombers of all time at his beloved Essendon Football Club, Graham Cornes could not resist.
Where on the countdown, asked Cornes, was the man who left an incredible mark on the Essendon Football Club this century? The so-called “sports scientist” Stephen Dank who effectively cost the Bombers a finals berth in 2013, Jobe Watson his 2012 Brownlow Medal, coach James Hird his exalted place in the AFL, ended the administrative future of “rising star” chairman David Evans and drained millions from the club’s notable reserves.
Connolly might well respond: Kurt Tippett at Adelaide? Or even former Port Adelaide president Bruce Weber? So who are the 10 most influential people in the story of the Adelaide Football Club?
NEXT WEEK: Port Adelaide’s big-10 in the AFL era.
1. BOB HAMMOND
INAUGURAL chairman. A success story in football amid the big challenges he took on after playing 234 SANFL league games with North Adelaide, Bob Hammond might look back at his days at Norwood and Sydney as mere warm-up acts to what was come with his impeccable leadership of the Crows from start-up to 2000.
In that defining decade, Hammond put down a foundation that today (more so than at the time) deserves to be considered a template for setting up a sporting franchise from scratch and under enormous pressure to succeed. In fact, there is merit in many at West Lakes looking back at what Hammond wanted built on that strong platform — and checking if they are delivering.
2. MALCOLM BLIGHT
THE Messiah. It was a quick ride — just 74 games from 1997 to the burn-out in 1999 — but a phenomenal journey that delivered the Crows to the promised land. Two AFL premierships, “back to back” in 1997 and 1998, not only gave the Adelaide Football Club the commanding image it needed after losing the monopoly hold on the SA market, but also the answer to where was the Crows’ heart, soul ... and traditions.
Blight gave the Crows one ethos that might have contradicted his big-time image but did resonate (and still should at West Lakes): Humility (as opposed to arrogance).
3. BILL SANDERS
FROM a humble (and uncertain) start with a building hut for his office (and curtains prepared by his wife), Bill Sanders gave Adelaide a business plan that made the Crows the only expansion franchise that did not need to be financially rescued by head office. His burning of the midnight oil to thwart Collingwood claiming Andrew McLeod from Fremantle is one of many shrewd plays by Sanders, along with the tricky deal that brought Darren Jarman home.
Sanders’ undying commitment to the SANFL did lock the Crows into a major hardware play at Football Park as the West Lakes venue was on the slide. The exit pay-off from that deal might still be a major win for Adelaide.
4. NEIL CRAIG
CULTURE is the buzz word in sport. While Neil Craig believes he left a “mere brick” in the wall at the Adelaide Football Club during his long stint at West Lakes — as fitness coach, assistant coach and the club’s longest-serving senior coach — his influence is far more like a slab than a brick. And it continues with current coach Don Pyke still leaning on Craig as a mentor and continuing some of his critical methods, in particular with leadership programs.
There was no premiership — and there should have been in 2005 or 2006 — but no-one can question the elite basis of Craig’s coaching philosophy. Execution on match day could have been better, but ...
5. BRUCE WEBER
NO-ONE can dispute that without the Port Adelaide president accepting the VFL’s offer to sign up for a licence in that turbulent winter in 1990 there would not be the current-day version of the Adelaide Football Club. Weber ended the procrastination in SA football ranks.
His move for change led to the Crows with a strong SANFL influence, making former league president Max Basheer and former league chief executive Leigh Whicker powerful men in the foundation years at West Lakes.
6. GRAHAM CORNES
SUPER competitive from the start in 1991, finals in the third season (and perhaps a flag lost with that preliminary final collapse to Essendon) and a relentless attitude to push everyone to the limit to achieve greatness. And then a couple of board members panicked in 1994.
7. MARK RICCIUTO
FROM the field to the boardroom, the “Kingmaker” has been the largest influence in shaping the Adelaide list and new-age attitudes. The Brownlow Medallist is reluctant to take over the chairmanship, ensuring Rob Chapman will be without a challenger for at least the next three years.
8. ANDREW McLEOD
SUPERB player — with two best-afield Norm Smith Medals in the grand final victories — and great statesman in an era when Australian football needed an indigenous player to educate rather than agitate for change in attitudes on racism.
9. CHRIS McDERMOTT
ALWAYS sneered by Crows fans at for his forthright comments in his current role in the media, Adelaide always will need to be grateful for how McDermott as inaugural captain brought together SANFL players with contrasting backgrounds to become a meaningful team from the start.
10. ANTHONY MODRA
FANS need heroes — and superstars ensure the turnstiles keep ticking to underwrite the club’s budgets. No-one in Adelaide’s 28-year history has done that more than “Mods” with his high-leaping, big-scoring performances from the goalsquare until the banishment to Fremantle in 1999.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
DO you accept that another option you (Robbie Gray) had was to veer to your left rather than continue in a straight line? In other words, away from player (Jeremy) McGovern?
AFL counsel ANDREW WOODS at the Robbie Gray tribunal hearing
REALITY BITES
VERY AWKWARD RESULT
A WISE soul noted, computers do not make mistakes. But the people who input data to the machines often do. And so do the mere humans who interpret the results delivered by technology.
Cricket gets some fascinating moments, particularly with reviews of leg before wicket appeals. The projection of where a ball was to go had it not been blocked by a pad is not always convincing. It also has delivered an era in which more umpires are losing confidence in their judgments to seek the safety of the third umpire sitting before a television monitor.
Is the interpretation from a two-dimensional screen 100 metres away always better than that of the man on the spot behind the stumps?
Tennis seems to have little to grizzle about with the rather simple review of whether a ball did or did not touch a line.
Soccer is grappling with VAR (video-assisted referee) to the point there is a fair debate unfolding on its readiness for the World Cup finals in Russia this year. The technology is effective for clearing up off-side questions — and that eternal 1966 World Cup final question of whether a ball has fully crossed the goal-line. It is practical to clearing up whether the on-field referee has picked the right card — yellow or red — from his pocket.
But VAR is not definitive on incidents that could lead to penalties because there is still the need for a human verdict on a video replay. At Manchester United, the “Special One” Jose Mourinho — never short of a word on referees — argues VAR is still a mixed bag of good and bad decisions. This would seem inevitable considering fallible humans are still dealing with what they see from uncompromising technology.
“They have to get rid of the bad and make it perfect,” says Mourinho.
The same words have been uttered again and again in the AFL with video score review, which — as in cricket — has left a few goal umpires keen to look for the safety of technology rather than to back in their eyes.
Like VAR, the AFL’s VSR is not perfect — and is heavily reliant on the conclusion of an official sitting in the grandstand. Is the AFL game better for technology? This makes for an interesting debate ... and there is bound to be many of them this season.
As for Russia, FIFA’s decision this weekend on VAR will be fascinating. There is a reassuring note from FIFA boss GIANNI INFANTINO: “If we, or I, can do something to make sure that the World Cup is not decided by a referee’s mistakes, then I think it’s our duty to do it.”
HIT OF THE WEEK
SIMON HILL is much loved as the “voice of Australian soccer”. But his beef that the Australian media treats unsavoury events at soccer matches differently than those in Australian football is a sideshow that serves no purpose. It is a distraction to energy that should be devoted to dealing with the fools who ruin soccer matches and the racists who remain on the terraces at AFL games.
TIP OF THE WEEK
PORT Adelaide is closing a sponsorship deal to replace Renault that has one industry analyst hearing that the Power could bank three times the deal presented by the French carmaker five years ago. That would ease the $10,000 sent to the AFL to make a point about the Robbie Gray suspension for bumping West Coast defender Jeremy McGovern.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
AUSTRALIAN football legend MALCOLM BLIGHT — now back in the media — has made a declaration. Every AFL player eventually will be compelled to wear a helmet as the league bosses deal with the real threat of being exposed to billions of dollars of claims as the concussion issue moves towards the courts.
Finding the helmet that averts concussion — rather than echoes the blow to the brain — is still the major hurdle to Blight’s vision becoming a reality.
TWEET OF THE WEEK
JUST met Ian Chappell for first time. ‘Hi, Mr Chappell, I’m Piers Morgan,’ I said. ‘Nah mate, you’re a dickhead,’ he replied. Meeting over!
ENGLISH media monolith PIERS MORGAN torturing himself again.
Originally published as Who have been the most influential people to make the Crows a success story?
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