Darren Jarman

Biography

AFC Debut Number: 68               AFC Debut Game:  Round 1v Sydney, 1996

AFC Career Guernsey Number: 3

Although Darren Jarman was 29 when he arrived at Adelaide before the 1996 season, the younger brother of inaugural Crow Andrew had an enormous impact on the Adelaide Football Club.

He started his SANFL career with North Adelaide in 1985 and was a key player in their 1987 premiership win over Glenelg. He ignored offers from Melbourne and Brisbane through the 1980s but after winning North’s best and fairest in 1990 he joined Hawthorn. He played 109 games for the Hawks, including the 1991 premiership, twice earned All Australian selection and won the club’s best and fairest in 1995, the same season he finished runner-up in the Brownlow Medal.

A complicated trade deal brought him back to Adelaide to reunite with Andrew and it proved a recruiting coup. He was an All Australian in his first year with the Crows and then twice a grand final matchwinner for Adelaide. Jarman booted five goals in the last quarter of the 1997 grand final (for a total of six) after being moved to full forward and then kicked five goals in the 1998 win over North Melbourne. He retired at the end of the 2001 season after a career including 144 games for North Adelaide, 109 for Hawthorn and 121 at the Crows.

He was an assistant coach at Adelaide from 2002-04. In 2007 he became the first Adelaide player to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. He was awarded life membership of the Adelaide Football Club in 2008.

He was selected in The AFC Team of the Decade 1991-2000.

In 2021 he was selected in a forward pocket in Adelaide’s “Best 22 of 30 Years”.