From Barrie Robran to John Halbert, South Australia is a hotbed of footy talent that went largely unnoticed in the east. As the AFL heads to Adelaide for Gather Round, we look back at the best of the bunch.
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Legendary sports broadcaster Bruce McAvaney has fond memories of South Australian football and the champion footballers that came out of the state. A brilliant debut in 1967 set the tone for North Adelaide's Barrie Robran, later named a Legend in the Australian Football Hall of Fame. Almost 66 years to the day from Robran's senior debut, when the opening bounce happens tonight at the Adelaide Oval for Adelaide and Carlton, it will signal the start of a one-round takeover of footy in South Australia by the AFL.
Football at Adelaide Oval dates back more than a century — this 1921 SAFL grand final saw Port Adelaide facing Norwood. "I had the unenviable job for Torrens to be told Monday night that on Saturday you've got Barrie Robran," Graham says. Port Adelaide won four of the 11 editions, with West Adelaide and Norwood winning twice each, before the competition ended. When it resumed in 1968, it was just the SANFL against the VFL to start with, with Sturt losing three times and North Adelaide once.
The Roosters all but blew it in the third term, kicking 3.6 to trail, leaving Carlton five points to the good with a five-goal wind to come. But two goals to the home side, including the winner from Darryl Webb, saw them home. He continued until 1980, playing 201 games for North Adelaide before retiring. He may have signed a form for Carlton in the VFL, but there was never a question of him playing for anyone other than the Roosters.The great Port Adelaide side of the 1950s and early 1960s, largely coached by Fos Williams, won eight flags in 13 years , including a record six-straight between 1954 and 1959.
He would go on to coach Glenelg and Sturt in the SANFL in the late 1970s and 1980s, and was an inaugural inductee to the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996. "It was very difficult for fans to see the footy [because of the numbers]; they had to try and find a spot in the temporary grandstand … or stand with the crowd and hope they could see over people," Halbert says.
"In the end … I wasn't interested in going. I was happy with my job teaching in high school … I really had a strong professional life [in South Australia] and football," he says."There was no TV when I started in 1955," Halbert says."I had a broadcaster from radio 5AD waiting outside my house — he interviewed me when I won, then put me in his car to take me to Channel Seven [for TV].
"Interstate football, it was always South Australia first against the Vics. Western Australia could perhaps say the same, but there seemed to be more venom in the games, more angst and more pleasure in [SA] playing Victoria, beating them," West Torrens defender Graham says. On the South Australian side, coached by Williams, there was Shearman as skipper, with Halbert in the centre.The visitors had Norwood's Bill Wedding in the ruck, and the ruck rover was Neil "Knuckles" Kerley, also known as the "King" of South Australian football — who the following year would make history by taking South Adelaide from bottom of the SANFL to the flag as captain-coach.
John Graham was 17 when he started at West Torrens, and played with Lindsay Head for 10 years until Head's retirement in 1970. Graham was West Torrens captain for a season in 1972 before retiring in 1974.Sadly for he and West Torrens, the club never made it back to a grand final. But the man known as the 'Artful Dodger' only got better, winning three Magarey medals in 1955, 1958 and 1963.
"He'd run down the ground and see people on the right out on an angle like 45 degrees, he'd bend the ball to get to that player. Just the way he used the football off his boot," Graham says. "You felt like the Victorians, because of their climate that they're probably a little stronger, they're probably a little more physical, but in terms of skill and talent, there was not much between them. So that's sort of the era I grew up in."
It didn't matter whether they were from Woodville like Malcolm Blight, Port Adelaide like Russell Ebert, or Glenelg like Graham Cornes. The Kangaroos wanted them. In the 1980s, a string of South Australian players went to the VFL, including the star duo of Craig Bradley and Stephen Kernahan to Carlton.
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