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In July 1990, Port Adelaide started negotiating with the AFL to get into the league (which was still than known as the VFL). While this was happening other South Australian teams were starting legal action to stop the talks between Port and the AFL for one month.

During this month the SANFL sent the AFL its own proposal to start a team for the season starting on 1991. On the 19th of September, 1990 the other AFL club directors voted 13 - 1 in favour of the SANFL team joining the league. The Adelaide Crows were born.

The SANFL immediately appointed Bob Hammond and Neil Kerly to look for and secure players for the team. The first Crows coach was Graham Cornes (Cornes played in the VFL and is considered one of the greatest players of his era) who led the Crows to a very competitive first season winning 10 matches and finishing 9th. They also finished 9th in there second season.

The Crows first played in the finals in 1993. They made it to the preliminary finals were they were beat by the premiers of that season Essendon. Also in 1993 Tony Modra kicked 129 goals. However with there first 3 years of success they finished 11th for the next two seasons. This was due largely to the fact that the Crows struggled to win games in Melbourne.

At the end of the 1994 season, Cornes was sacked and replaced with ex-Fitzroy coach Robert Shaw. Shaw had little success and two years later was sacked and was replaced with former South Australian and AFL legend and champion Malcom Blight. Blight immediately went to work changing the teams attitude and weeding out the players that were no longer needed. High profile players to get the boot included Andrew Jarman and Tony McGuinness. Blight had put a lot of faith in his younger players and it paid off with the Crows making the Grand Final at the end of 1997.

Right from the start the Crows were pegged as the underdogs against St Kilda. Blight's coaching experience (and brilliance) and the skills of Darren Jarman and younger players Andrew McLeod and Shane Ellen lead the Crows to their first premiership.

Season 1998 started off somewhat slow but the Crows made the final series again. After being beaten by Melbourne in the first final critics had already written off the Crows. But after comfortably beaten Sydney in terrible conditions and beating the Bulldogs in successive years the Crows were in the Grand Final against North Melbourne. A brilliant come from behind victory lead the Crows to back to back premierships. Malcom Blight had become known as the 'Messiah'.

Season 1999 was somewhat of a disappointment after the two previous years with the Crows not even making the final series. At the end of the season Malcom Blight resigned as coach. Gary Ayers has now taken over the reigns.


For the first Adelaide Crows game (22/3/91), 44,902 turned up to see the Crows thrash Hawthorn, 24 . 11 . 155 to 9 . 15 . 69.

First Official Adelaide Football Club Team

FIELKE Grantley
HART Darel
HOCKING Eddie
JAMESON Rodney
JARMAN Andrew
KLUG John
LEE Scott
LINDSAY Bruce
LINDNER Bruce
MARSHALL David
MAYNARD Rodney
McDERMOTT Chris
McGUINNESS Tony
McINTYRE Peter
NEGRI Romano
SMART Nigel
SMITH Darren
THOMPSON Robbie
TREGENZA Simon
WARHURST Tom

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