by SABRE » Thu Jul 02, 2009 8:13 am
If I've got the story straight, the original Adelaide Football Club (SA's oldest) twice suffered
break away groups who called themselves South Adelaide. Fortunately they merged.
As Leaping Lindner alluded to above, South really have been pushed from pillar to post.
Thanks to Full Points Footy for the following insights :
In 1897 the SAFA voted to introduce an electorate system of player registration, whereby players would be required to play for the club in whose electoral district they resided. The system was loosely implemented that very year, but only on a voluntary basis. However, from 1899 it became compulsory and, over the longer term, the big loser was the South Adelaide Football Club.
Initially, however, although the club lost a large number of highly talented and experienced players, including the likes of 'Dinny' Reedman, Jack Kay, Ern Jones, and Edward MacKenzie, the overall impact was negligible, as there were also a number of significant gains. Principal among these was the arrival from Norwood of the leading goalsneak in the colony, Anthony 'Bos' Daly, who promptly proceeded to help himself to 32 goals for the season as South procured the 1899 premiership courtesy of a 5.12 (42) to 2.2 (14) challenge final victory over Daly's former associates from the Parade. Unfortunately, however, in 1900 he was on the move again, this time to West Torrens, and although the blue and whites were still sufficiently strong to play off for the premiership (losing by 13 points to North Adelaide) the 'halcyon era' was very definitely over.
Over the course of the next decade, particularly after Sturt was admitted to the competition in 1901, the effects of the electorate system would truly begin to hit home. South Adelaide was the only club to vote against Sturt's admission - hardly surprising when you consider that the newcomers were to be allocated a major slice of South's territory, which would see them able to claim as many as a dozen former Blue and White players in their debut season.
South Adelaide's zone was actually centered on east Adelaide, one of the few areas of the city where the population was not expanding; moreover, with limited finances at its disposal, the club did not have ready recourse to alternative methods of recruitment. (Sturt, for example, had a major beneficiary in the shape of John Frederick Dempsey, whose money was used as bait to lure large numbers of top quality players to Unley from interstate; these players, known as 'Dempsey's Immigrants', would effectively sow the seeds of the Blues' first ever premiership in 1915.) The situation rapidly became self-perpetuating, and would continue, with only fleeting interludes, for most of the remainder of the twentieth century.
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