nickname wrote:Barto wrote:nickname wrote:Who would have followed a 'Crows MkII' side though? Once they'd admitted what was essentially a state side, I would have thought the only supporters you could attract to a second side would be those with a loyalty to an existing club.
You'd be surprised. Look at Freo (forget about the fact they've done f*** all etc), they're basically a composite club but have much better levels of support than Port Adelaide and the split in the support for the two teams locally is much closer than Crows/Port.
Even if Port Adelaide had triple the level of support of any other club, that's still only 30%.
Freo supporters would initially have been made up of supporters of East Fremantle and South Fremantle, i.e. existing clubs.
You'd think so looking from the outside. A lot of die-hards Souths and Sharks fans weren't impressed at all from the early days. Neesham was a Claremont bloke, many of the initial squad were Claremont players.
It's too simplistic to say "Dockers supporters were originally Souths and East Freo". Those two groups of supporters hated each other with a passion and their criticism of the Dockers is that there wasn't much "Freo" in Freo.
Believe me when I tell you that the Dockers were more and anti-Eagles than anything.
I go back to my point that SA football would have been better served by a strong single club. Than one profitable composite team and one loss making traditional club.