Andrew McLeod

Biography

AFC Debut Number: 66         AFC Debut Game: Round 6 V Melbourne, 1995

Career Guernsey Number: 23

Andrew McLeod cemented himself as one of the AFL’s best throughout a prolific career with Adelaide. The Darwin-born star played a Club record 340 games over 16 seasons, and his success included back-to-back Norm Smith Medals in 1997 and 1998. He was the first player to achieve the feat.

If not for a couple of sliding door moments, Adelaide would not have been the lucky Club where McLeod made his name. His father brought him to Adelaide in 1994 and he battled homesickness (and the cold) while playing for Port Adelaide in the SANFL. He ended the season, however, as an SANFL premiership player with the Magpies. Then, when Fremantle had access to McLeod for its inaugural squad at the end of 1994, it chose to instead trade the 18-year-old to the Crows.

In his second AFL game for Adelaide the next year, McLeod gave a glimpse of the influential moments he would become famous for, kicking the match-winning goal against Hawthorn with a clever snap in the wet from deep in the forward pocket.

For many, his 1997 grand final performance was an introduction to his talents. But that had been merely the last game in a break-out season in which he won his first Crows Club Champion award playing mainly as a small forward or across half back. In 1998 his second Norm Smith Medal was won the week after he kicked seven goals in the preliminary final, and after he had been named an All Australian for the first of five times.

In 2005 he was selected in the AFC Team of the Decade 1991-2000 

In 2021 he was selected in the AFC Best 22 of 30 Years

Despite a chronic knee problem, McLeod’s list of achievements continued to grow. Ten years after becoming Adelaide’s youngest Club Champion at 21, McLeod became its oldest winner with his third award. As a measure of his remarkable consistency, he finished runner-up or third in the best and fairest another six times. On retirement from playing, Andrew remained at the Club for several years managing the Club’s Indigenous programs, and also helping to design Adelaide’s Indigenous Round guernseys. In recognition of his achievements, McLeod entered the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Adelaide Football Club Hall of Fame in 2015.