THE DESIRE to dominate South Australia's football landscape, as Adelaide showed when it moved to wear the state jumper in a Showdown early last season, is no longer the case for the Crows, CEO Andrew Fagan says.
The Crows pushed to don the state's iconic guernsey in the opening Showdown at the refurbished Adelaide Oval in 2014, a bid that reflected the club's wish to be known as "the state's team".
It came when the fortunes of Adelaide's two clubs were headed in different directions.
The Power were coming off an inspiring first season under coach Ken Hinkley in which they rocketed up the ladder from 14th in 2012 to fifth.
Adelaide had failed to back up their 2012 preliminary final appearance and had finished 11th.
The trend continued once the SANFL stepped in and banned the Crows from wearing the state jumper – Port's year ended three points short of a Grand Final while a 10th-placed finish for the Crows saw coach Brenton Sanderson replaced by Phil Walsh.
While Adelaide still regards itself as "the team for all South Australians", Fagan, who was appointed as CEO last September, told AFL.com.au it didn't mean his club was the only team for all South Australians.
He said the health of both clubs was crucial to the game in the City of Churches.
"I don't believe you have to be seen as the dominant club; I don't sit there each day thinking how are we going to become the dominant club in Adelaide," Fagan said.
"I've got no problems with competition – I encourage it.
"In Adelaide if we’ve got two competitive clubs they will go head-to-head to ensure that football's the winner.
"I don't mind being pushed, but we don't spend our time thinking about what the other guys are doing – we spend most of our time thinking about what we're doing.
"You look at your opposition and we'll benchmark ourselves against them constantly, not just across to Port Adelaide but to Collingwood and Hawthorn and to Sydney.
"How well our competitors do it comparative to us will determine how the pie is shared."
On field, premiership success is all that matters in any given marketplace.
At the start of the 2015 season only the most biased of Crows supporters would claim their side is closer to a flag than the Power.
This year could well by Port's, particularly with the arrival of ruckman Patrick Ryder from Essendon.
It's been almost a decade since the Crows missed their opportunity to replicate the heroics of 1997/98 when they were bundled out in consecutive preliminary finals in 2005 and 2006 by West Coast.
But although the Power seem destined to soon add to their 2004 glory, Fagan insisted his club wasn't far off either.
With Walsh as new coach, and Taylor Walker as new captain, Fagan believed premiership foundations have been laid.
"I think it'd be reasonable for our supporters to expect the next three to five years are going to be successful ones for the footy club … as long as we get our backyard right," he said.
"I'm not going to walk away from that expectation.
"We made a heap of change and we believe that's been really positive in how the program's being run, and I expect that change will continue over the next couple of pre-seasons until we get everything just right.
"It's a bit like layering; you're building upon the framework that you bed down from the season before.
"I am really comfortable that Phil's the guy who's going to deliver on that and my job's to give him all the tools he needs to deliver on that."
