• The redeveloped Adelaide Oval in pictures
AS THE finishing touches are put on Adelaide Oval ahead of Saturday's game at the redeveloped ground, AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou has spoken of the difficulty in putting the deal together.
Football and cricket in South Australia had to put aside nearly 50 years of mistrust and at times, enmity, to work together to make the $535 million redevelopment a reality.
Port Adelaide will host Adelaide in Saturday's Showdown clash in front of more than 50,000 fans.
"There was a lot of ill-feeling built up over a long period of time, which I didn’t understand," Demetriou told AFL.com.au. "I'd heard the stories but I didn’t intimately understand it all."
The SANFL initially left Adelaide Oval in 1974 for its own facility at West Lakes because of an inability to reach agreement with the SACA over revenue from football.
Demetriou said it took several weeks to get officials from the SANFL and the South Australian Cricket Association in the same room to first introduce the idea, which had been the been the subject of private discussions for several months before then between the AFL, the South Australian government and Cox Architects.
The meetings had to take place on 'neutral territory' in Melbourne to assuage the fears of both sports that they would be walking into a set-up.
But Demetriou said he was encouraged from the first discussion, which he thought might take less than 30 minutes, but ended up taking considerably longer.
"They more we talked, the more they seemed to have in common," he recalled.
Demetriou estimated he made about 40 trips to Adelaide to get the project going, many of them clandestine.
"(There were) two or three years of meetings, collapses, back-room conversations and lots of political movement. It was fascinating," he said.
The seeds for the redevelopment were first planted in Demetriou's mind in 2007 when he started to notice that AAMI Stadium was looking a little run-down. At the same time, it was becoming increasingly clear that the football experience was better when games were played in the centre of the city as was the case in Melbourne.
West Lakes is about a 20 minute drive from the Adelaide CBD.
"It was probably in the back of people's minds but no one was prepared to punt it," Demetriou continued.
"There was a lot of resentment from old timers, saying this couldn't happen. The government didn't believe it and in our first meeting, (then premier) Mike Rann said you'll never get these two people together but if you want money for the stadium, the only time I'll speak to you is if you come back with agreement from everybody.
"Two and a half years later we walked into his cabinet room and said we had an agreement and that's when he gave us the money," he said.
Several key figures in the project spoken to by AFL.com.au have been fulsome in their praise for the role played by Demetriou in bringing them together and the project to fruition.
Former South Australian treasurer Kevin Foley was a key driver of the redevelopment and said he thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working with the soon-to-depart AFL boss.
"When I got down in the blues, he would tell me to keep the faith, and as a non-practising Catholic, I took that on board and kept the faith," he said.
"The extraordinary thing was that Andrew never doubted he could convince the football people. The Adelaide Crows are very much a part of the establishment in this city and I had a lot of senior Crows officials pressing me not to proceed."
AFL club captains pose at the new Adelaide Oval earlier this year. Picture: AFL Media
Together with Demetriou and Foley, former SACA president Ian McLachlan was part of the triumvirate that worked discreetly to get the redevelopment going. The role played by SANFL CEO Leigh Whicker once he was brought into the loop is also considered critical.
"Andrew was seminal," McLachlan said. "He and Kevin decided that this was something that needed to happen for the good of the place, so we'd sneak off and have these meetings. It was fun."
Demetriou, Foley and McLachlan all admit there will be a great deal of satisfaction when the ball is bounced just on Saturday.
But even during the Ashes Test in Adelaide last December, which was the first unveiling of most of the redevelopment, there was emotion and excitement.
"I was there for the first day of the Test and to see the faces of happy people, they were thrilled. And that was just with 35,000 people there," Demetriou said.
"I went there for the cricket and a tear welled in my eye," Foley said. "It happened so fast in a sense but it's one of the best things I have done in my time in politics.
"There's no way it would have happened if we all hadn't come together at the right time."
