Crowded House

By PETER CORNWALL

Over the past year there’s been plenty of talk about the Crows and their ‘record’ crowds at Adelaide Oval – but the SANFL still hits the heights when it comes to sporting attendances at the iconic ground.

The halcyon years of our wonderful 148-year-old league of the 1960s and ’70s are times that brought fans to the epicentre of South Australian sport like nothing else from any era.

The record crowd at Adelaide Oval for any sporting event is the 62,543 that crammed into the ground for the 1965 SANFL grand final between Port Adelaide and Sturt. This represents a remarkable nine per cent of Adelaide’s population that at the time of this epic battle was 697,000.

In 1965-66 coaching legends Jack Oatey and Fos Williams were wonderful rivals as were their clubs and their army of fans. Williams won his ninth Magpies grand final as coach in 1965 but Oatey’s Blues made them earn it, the Pies hanging grimly on by three points, skipper Geof Motley securing his ninth flag.

The following year at the Oval 59,417 fans saw Double Blues captain John Halbert hold aloft the Thomas Seymour Hill premiership cup to end a 26-year premiership drought for the club, beating Port to start a stunning run of five successive flags.

Motley was in the spotlight in another grand final thriller in 1957 with more than one in 10 of Adelaide’s inhabitants cheering old rivals Port and Norwood on at the Oval. Port Adelaide came from behind to win another hard-fought epic, by nine points, thanks to Motley, shifted from centre to half-forward to boot seven goals in a virtuoso second-half blitz. The crowd was 58,924, while Adelaide’s population was 526,000.

These days 1.39 million people live in SA’s capital. And while some people were wanting you to believe the crowd of 54,283 in Round 23 against Collingwood was a record, the top nine sporting crowds at Adelaide Oval all are SANFL grand finals, with the Ashes Test at the redeveloped ground on 2 December 2017 (55,317) coming in at No. 10.