The Interim Board (1990-91)

Standing (left to right): Ed Betro, Bob Hammond, Bill Sanders (general manager), Adrian Sutter, Rick Allert. Front: Leigh Whicker, Max Basheer, Bob Lee.

The Interim Board existed for only 128 days. In that time, it created and shaped South Australia’s first AFL club, from nothing.

Months of turmoil after Port Adelaide’s bid to join the AFL led to the SANFL signing an agreement (on October 10 1990) to enter a composite team in the AFL for the 1991 season. Two days later the SANFL directors elected seven interim board members, assigned to establish the Adelaide Football Club.

There was so much work to do. The new club needed a coach, to select players to start training in late October and make key staff appointments. Club colours, guernsey design and emblem, administration facilities and a gymnasium were a priority. Support staff had to be found, finances and agreements negotiated, contracts signed, sponsors secured and membership planned and then promoted. This was on top of dealing with numerous administrative matters.

At dozens of official and unofficial meetings, challenges were accepted and numerous essential decisions made by this Interim Board that set the foundation for the future success of the Adelaide Football Club.

The clock was ticking.

Adelaide’s inaugural board first official meeting was held from 7am on October 15, at Basheer Chambers in the city. There was no time to settle in. Board members, appointed three days earlier by the SANFL, had already turned their energy and thoughts to the enormous task ahead. A squad of more than 60 footballers was to start training in a fortnight and the first official pre-season game was less than four months away.

Once SANFL president Max Basheer was elected unopposed as chairman, item two on the agenda was the playing list. Hammond, who had been one of the men charged with retaining ten of South Australia’s best players and opening early discussions with potential recruits, presented a proposed player payments schedule with a $1.5 million budget. Betro tabled options for player insurance, essential as many players were to be asked to train without contracts.

The next item put forward Adelaide Football Club as the new club’s name. There was some consensus that the colours would be green, white and blue (as proposed by marketing specialists) and strong support for Sharks as the Club logo.  

The General Manager role had been advertised – and was soon filled by Woodville chairman Bill Sanders – and other key roles needs to be filled. A Football Manager, Marketing Manager and Finance Manager were required.

Sub-committees chaired by Board members were established for football, finance, administration and marketing, covering sponsorship and membership. SANFL staff including Murray Tippett, John Lyons, Mark Colley and solicitor John Ferguson would provide support and be involved with the various committees.

And then Betro raised some eyebrows in the room when he spoke of targeting a maximum 40,000 membership, including 11,500 Football Park members.

It had been a three-hour Board meeting but the next few days were also a blur of phone calls, catch-ups, interviews, negotiations and decisions.

Three days later, after the Board had interviewed Graham Cornes and John Cahill for the coaching role, Cornes was appointed as full-time coach.

The need to act quickly was reflected by the intense timeline for debate and decisions on the Club’s name, emblem, colours and uniform design.  

Initially blocked from using the State colours, the green, blue and white mock-ups were on October 24 quickly shelved by the Board in favour of red, navy blue and yellow designs to be prepared for television screen tests. Betro was given another week by the AFL to settle on a jumper. “When you get seven people around a board table trying to agree on a football jumper with so much at stake, you can imagine what went on,” he recalled.

Ed’s wife Iola also worked at Rowe and Jarman and was in constant contact with Adelaide-based Silver Fleece knitting mill, which made a series of designs to show to the board. “In the end we decided we would go with a hooped jumper,” Betro said. “You had to have colours that had some connection to our State and it had to be able to be sold in the marketplace. So, we ended up with navy, red and yellow. When it finally came off the press as we hoped it would, it really was an outstanding strip.”

The emblem continued to be a contentious issue. “Croweaters” had earlier been ruled out by the AFL, then the Board’s first choice (Sharks) was unavailable for copyright seasons. The marketing sub-committee pushed for Rams, but the Board’s order of preference was Giants, Rams and Falcons. Then, at the November 14 Board meeting, the “Crows” was suggested but “Rams” won the vote. A week later, after the Adelaide Rams name was blocked by the AFL, it was agreed the new team would be the Adelaide Crows. The guernsey and emblem was approved and then publicly revealed on November 24.  

Finding a home for the Club’s staff was another urgent issue. The players had access to changerooms and a small gym under the Football Park members’ stand while the first employees shared a small office in the SANFL admin area.

“This was my biggest challenge to start with,” Sutter recalled. “The league had no space for us and we had to find accommodation.” Through contacts at Santos, he found an ATCO Hut that was part of a transportable mining unit. “It was covered in mud, had broken windows, and was full of dust and cobwebs but it had nine rooms and a small foyer, so I said ‘let’s take it’”. The deal was done on November 16, it was installed at the south-western end of Football Park on December 17 and used for a Board meeting on December 19. The building cost about $68,000 to purchase, move and fit-out.  

At the same time, Sutter and his committee were also trying to appease football staff. “We had to build a gymnasium, it was desperately needed to change the profile of our players, to make them into AFL players,” he said. “There was a lot of pressure from Graham Cornes and Neil Kerley to get that up and running. We finished that in early December.” Sutter, who took a month’s leave from his job to focus on the new Club, also helped organise the purchase of the first pads, pencils, chairs and anything else needed.

Meanwhile, Betro and his marketing committee had membership and sponsorship under their portfolio, and both were critical to the new Club’s future financial security. It was agreed with the SANFL that Football Park members could pay extra to watch AFL games and the rest of the stadium could be sold to the public, although Betro’s enthusiasm for a full stadium was kept in check by budgets estimating average home ground crowds of 25,000. Tickets sales were sluggish in early weeks but exploded once the Crows started to play games.

The bar for sponsorship revenue was set high. “It was a terrifying prospect very early in the piece,” said Betro.  A key local sponsor was the first target and they had success with the Foodland grocery group. Then some interest in sponsorship from the Toyota dealers around Adelaide led to meetings in Sydney with the Toyota Motor Corporation. A new football club in South Australia was not an easy sell but by Christmas the major sponsorship deal was being negotiated. The “Camry Crows” were announced on January 30 and the deal was one of the biggest in Australian sport.

Most of the Club’s sponsors and coteries were signed before the inaugural board was in place in late February and delivered nearly $1.3 million to the financial statements.

The draft budgets were full of assumptions and estimates but were remarkably accurate and even conservative, the results defying some external predictions of massive financial losses. The early backing of the SANFL was essential and owning the licence quickly became a prosperous investment for South Australian football.

The football section charged ahead with a focus on preparing a team for the first games. Staffing roles were filled, recruits chased, internal trial games and training camps arranged and the names of those to be included in the final 52-man foundation squad debated repeatedly. Player insurance proved an intricate issue and Sutter led a task force that negotiated changes to Workcover legislation.

Betro’s vision of a sold-out Football Park suddenly seemed achievable when fans were turned away from the packed stadium for the first trial game against Essendon on February 1. Winning added to the momentum.

The Interim Board and AFL agreed and signed the sub-licence agreement between SANFL and AFC at its meeting on February 13. It last met on February 20, having worked passionately to launch the Adelaide Football Club.

It was, undoubtedly, an extraordinary and historic 128 days.