That is the backdrop to Saturday’s Port Adelaide-Adelaide Showdown clash, marking the triumphant return of football to Adelaide Oval.

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Football and cricket, once implacable enemies in South Australia, have reunited in the centre of Adelaide at a facility that cost $535 million to transform from sleepy to sparkling.

Cricket was deeply rooted to Adelaide Oval. Football had built a home and secured its financial future in the former swamps of West Lakes. And committed and highly influential powerbrokers from both sports were firmly of the belief that the status quo would always remain.

And if not for the resolve of AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou, former South Australian Cricket Association president Ian McLachlan and former South Australian state treasurer Kevin Foley, they would be right.

Cricket was first played at Adelaide Oval in 1873 and the first football was kicked just four years later. For the next 96 years, the winter game was played there but, over time, it was less of an equal tenant.

The tipping point came in 1965 when Port Adelaide beat Sturt by three points in front of a record Grand Final crowd of 62,543. 

It was a showpiece event for the South Australian National Football League, yet it was the South Australian Cricket Association which collected the considerable revenue from catering and parking and whose members got in for free.

Football’s move to West Lakes took several years to eventuate and came about only after a breakdown in discussions between the SACA and the SANFL. 

Several of the key figures of the time, such as Sir Donald Bradman, who led the SACA, and Don (later Judge) Brebner, his counterpart at the SANFL, have long since passed on, so much of what took place is a matter of hearsay.

Cricket people say Bradman was driven to protect the position of his sport, whereas football people say he was determined to obstruct their sport in every way. 

“He was the probably the main reason why football couldn’t negotiate a deal,” longtime SANFL CEO Leigh Whicker said.

Following the 1965 Grand Final, the SANFL started to consider its options, initially hoping to build its own members’ stand on the eastern side of the ground. But it was stonewalled at every opportunity. 

Bradman, reportedly, vowed there would never be an eastern grandstand as long as he was alive.

Eventually and partly inspired by the VFL, which was in the throes of establishing its own venue at what became Waverley Park, the SANFL started to look elsewhere. 

“It was not an easy thing to do because we had no finance behind us,” recalled former SANFL president Max Basheer. “We looked at a lot of venues and each time we thought we had one, something would happen to prevent us from proceeding with it.”

The long-held suspicion of many was that Bradman, who yielded huge influence in Adelaide, was at his obstructionist best, to the point of appearing before a parliamentary sub-committee imploring the government not to provide a financial guarantee to the SANFL to allow it to proceed with plans to develop a stadium at West Lakes.

 

“He was protecting the interests of the SACA,” said Whicker. “But I don’t think cricket ever thought we would have the courage to leave.”

Just as the SANFL was about to sign on the dotted line, Ray Turner, a mediator from Adelaide City Council, came in to try and get the two sports to reach an agreement to share Adelaide Oval on more equal terms. 

McLachlan has read Turner’s notes from the time. “Football wanted to move,” he said. “He (Turner) could tell they wanted to set up their own independent thing. There might have been a deal to be done, but his view was it was inevitable.”

Naturally, Bradman’s stance is viewed with more sympathy in cricket circles and McLachlan remains convinced that when the SACA’s own lease was up for renewal in 1985, Bradman would have then been open to an agreement that was more equitable for both parties. 

But, by then, football was established at West Lakes, 20 minutes north-west of the Adelaide CBD.

Bradman died in 2001 and it is believed he never set foot inside Football Park.

The 1973 Grand Final was the last at Adelaide Oval and was perhaps the best. Glenelg beat North Adelaide by seven points in front of 56,525 fans in a match best remembered by Graham Cornes’ freakish match-winning mark and goal deep in time-on. 

Football Park opened for business the following year, with barely a covered grandstand, just a smattering of seats and food and drink being sold from trestle tables behind the terraces. Clubs received no dividends from the SANFL for the first five years of its operation, with every cent ploughed back into the stadium for capital works. 

There was initial hostility towards the SANFL and the stadium following the move from sections of the Adelaide business establishment and the media, but the tipping point came with the Port Adelaide-Sturt Grand Final in 1976.

More than 66,000 fans got into the ground, with another 15,000 turned away. The crowd spilled over the fence on to the playing arena and it made for a chaotic scene. But it was also a massive vote of confidence in the new venue and within three months SANFL membership quadrupled and the stadium as a business venture never looked back.

Football Park came to provide the financial bedrock for the game in South Australia. Under the canny leadership of Basheer, who was president of the SANFL for 25 years, football’s footprint grew and, after initially leasing the land at West Lakes, the League eventually owned 23 hectares, including the stadium and its surrounds.

When Adelaide became the first South Australian team to join the AFL in 1991, written into the licence agreement was that all home games be played at Football Park. The same when Port Adelaide entered the competition in 1997, although not before the SACA made an offer to the fledgling club to play five of its lower-drawing matches at Adelaide Oval.

The SANFL had long been wary of the SACA’s desire to stage AFL matches and McLachlan recalls approaching most Victorian clubs about transferring home games to Adelaide Oval with the lure of a carrot worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each time. 

“We always said no,” Basheer said. “We knew Adelaide Oval was a better location and once there was a foot in the door, there would be public clamouring for more games there and we couldn’t afford that.”

So for 30 years, cricket ruled Adelaide Oval (with SANFL games there in winter) and football was happily ensconced out in the ’burbs at West Lakes.

Enter Demetriou. It was during a visit to Adelaide in 2007 that the AFL CEO remarked that Football Park – known by its corporate name AAMI Stadium since 2002 – was looking a little tired. This pricked the ears of McLachlan, a passionate Sturt man with a soft spot for the Power, who had never given up on his dream of playing AFL games at Adelaide Oval.

McLachlan, it should be noted, had family ties to the AFL. His nephew Gillon was by then a senior executive at the AFL and is now its deputy CEO and chief operating officer. 

Ian McLachlan met with Demetriou and learned that the estimated bill for bringing AAMI Stadium up to scratch was around $150 million. What Demetriou gleaned from McLachlan that day was that there was a growing belief in Adelaide that football ought to return to the centre of the city.

Discussions heated up, significantly, without the knowledge of the SANFL. Demetriou wanted to know whether Adelaide Oval could be redeveloped to a 60,000 capacity. McLachlan said it would have to be 55,000 because the northern hill, its famous Moreton Bay figs and the iconic scoreboard, would have to remain intact. 

While Demetriou, McLachlan and now Foley were huddling over Adelaide Oval, the SANFL was part of separate discussions about a new covered stadium on the fringe of the city that it estimated would cost $250 million.

Then the landscape changed. The global financial crisis started to bite in 2008 and several planned capital works funded by the South Australian government were shelved. Among them was a prison development worth $500 million; another was the $150 million previously promised for the AAMI Stadium redevelopment.

Shortly after, Whicker was summoned to Melbourne to meet Demetriou. It was there the AFL boss first sounded him out about a move back to Adelaide Oval. Whicker was gobsmacked and more than a little steamed that discussions had been taking place without the knowledge of the SANFL. 

“But I told him I’d listen,” Whicker said.

Now Whicker understood why the covered stadium plan the SANFL had been proposing had such little traction with the government. But he agreed to attend a two-day workshop in Melbourne in November 2009 brokered by the AFL to see whether the key points of an agreement could be hammered out.

All who were there recall how tense that gathering was. Whicker and the SANFL delegation threatened to walk out on more than one occasion. 

AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick was the convenor and McLachlan remembers after a bruising opening day, Fitzpatrick demanded that all those in attendance down tools, have some drinks and relax over dinner. 

It changed the mood of the meeting. The following day, the SANFL gained traction on its non-negotiables, which were that football’s hard-earned assets at West Lakes were to play no part in funding the redevelopment and that the SANFL could continue to run its business unfettered out of Adelaide Oval. 

Finally, the redeveloped stadium would have to be run as some sort of partnership between football and cricket and without state government involvement.

By the end, Whicker had got what he wanted. “But it took a fair bit of angst to get it through because we were poles apart for so long.”

In December 2009, the SACA made the surprise announcement that football would return to Adelaide Oval, pending an agreement by the South Australian government to fund the redevelopment. 

Before long the government agreed and the Adelaide Oval Stadium Management Authority was created, with four directors from each of the sports. McLachlan would be the initial chairman, Whicker its first CEO.

Then South Australian premier Mike Rann was among the skeptics, telling Foley he’d find the money in the unlikely event he could get football and cricket to agree. Like just about everybody in Adelaide, Rann thought there was such enmity between the two sports that they would never agree to share.

Demetriou remembers his first meeting with Rann: “He 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.”

Even so, there were still significant parties that needed convincing. While Port Adelaide recognised immediately what a salvation the move would be, the Crows were furious, having just invested $12 million into a range of facilities at AAMI Stadium in the belief it would remain their long-term playing home. And they had powerful allies in the government and corporate sectors.

The construction of several new grandstands and the requirement for drop-in cricket pitches rankled a noisy minority of SACA members, with several prominent media identities, such as leading ABC sports broadcaster Roger Wills, leading the way. However, in the end, 80 per cent of members voted in favour of the redevelopment, a figure that even surprised McLachlan.

And then there was Basheer, the battle-scarred godfather of South Australian football. Demetriou wanted his approval. 

“I went and saw Max because I really like him. His contribution to the game was incredible and I didn’t want him finding out about it in the paper,” Demetriou said.

“We actually met twice,” Basheer countered. “I listened to him the first time; he listened to me the second time. He then told me I had done a great job but that it was old hat and this is the way of the future.”

Basheer’s blessing would eventually come. “The money had been provided to establish one of the finest grounds you could ever see, so close to the CBD. We had no choice but get behind it. I’d be a fool not to support it.”

Fittingly, Basheer will be tossing the coin before the opening bounce on Saturday. His name sits on the new eastern stand right on centre wing and, with a touch of irony, directly opposite the Sir Donald Bradman Pavilion. 

“The fact my name is up there in perpetuity is a great thrill, particularly as I’m still alive. These things usually happen when you’re dead,” he said with a laugh.

Four years on, and on the eve of the first AFL game, all parties are stunned at how it has come together and how well cricket and football appear to getting along.

“AAMI Stadium was run down and this will give our clubs a wonderful venue to maximise revenues in the national competition with facilities that are second to none,” Whicker said.

From his office in the centre of Adelaide, barely a five-minute walk to the ground across the new pedestrian bridge, McLachlan said cricket would have survived in its own right at Adelaide Oval, but that the partnership with football will revitalise the city and the river precinct because of the influx of people AFL football will bring. 

“All the things aligned at the right time, including Foley being there and Rann being there. Andrew was seminal. We had a lot of fun, it was a secret operation for a while,” McLachlan said.

Demetriou’s role in sealing the deal is widely praised by all. Some at the AFL believe that when he walks away at the end of the season, this will be his best deal of all. 

“I don’t know if it’s the best, but it was the hardest,” he said, estimating it took about 40 trips to Adelaide to get it done. 

“Considering from where we came from, it was a long way back. There was a lot of ill feeling built up over a long period, which I didn’t understand, but that was probably an advantage. There were a lot of times the deal fell over and got back up and it needed lots of leaps of faith by a lot of people.”

Foley concurred. “We are the most difficult state in Australia to change long-held views and perceptions. But this was a game-changer not just for football, but for the city of Adelaide,” he said.

“In the end, Ian had to use his force of position to convince the SACA, Andrew had to use his force of office to convince the SANFL and the Crows, while I did the same to the same for the body politic. 

“We were three bastards who came together at the right time.”