After three successful night games at City Mazda Stadium, it got me to thinking about West Adelaide’s history in those pre and mid season cup games. From 1955-1993, West Adelaide played in 70 SANFL sanctioned night games and a further 8 NFL/AFC Cup games (Those games where we played sides from the VFA, VFL, WAFL, ACT etc…)
We had 70 players represent the club in the NFL/AFC games and 258 players in SANFL Cup games. Many of these players never represented West Adelaide in Premiership Point Games also known as the Home and Away / Finals series.
The first night series (Advertiser Cup) was held in 1954. It consisted of teams that did not make the finals. In 1955, West Adelaide was involved in its first Night Series competition. Games were played at Norwood Oval. The 1955 Grand Final was held on September 21 and the mighty Bloods were victorious downing South Adelaide by 66 points.
In 1957, West Adelaide participated yet again in the Advertiser Cup. On October 8, the winners of qualifying knock-out games (West Adelaide) were to play the eventual League Premiers (Port Adelaide) in the Advertiser Cup Grand Final. Once again under lights, West Adelaide was victorious by a margin of 20 points.
1959 saw the cup games held early in the season. On Tuesday April 19, Glenelg 11.9 (75) with less scoring shots defeated a gallant West Adelaide 10.13 (73).
1960 saw West Adelaide reclaim the mantle as night time kings when we defeated neighbourhood foes West Torrens by 10 points.
1961 was an incredible year. History shows that our mosquito fleet of champions won the clubs 7th day premiership. Earlier in the year however, we were defeated in the night grand final by our arch enemies Port Adelaide by 27 points. A year later in 1962, we turned the tables on Port Adelaide defeating them in the Night Grand Final by 3 points - If only that could have been that last Saturday in September where we fell 3 points shy of our eight premiership to those dreaded Magpies.
Night Football Competitions fell out of favour and were played spasmodically until the 1970’s. It was this period when competitions like the League Cup, Ardath, Escort and Foundation Cup competitions took hold of the SA Football landscape.
In 1985 under Jack Cahill, West Adelaide reclaimed night honours defeating Norwood in the Escort Cup Grand Final at Football Park two years after claiming its eighth and last day premiership.
This then brings us to 1987, the last time West Adelaide won silverware. It was April 28, Football Park where we met the defunct Woodville Football Club under lights at 8.30pm. At three quarter time, we held a 2 point lead and in a desperate and goal-less final quarter, our wonderful club with the score line 6.14 (50) defeated a gallant Warriors outfit 7.4 (46)
It would be remiss of me not to mention other night games that do not fit under the umbrella of NFC or SANFL cup competitions in which our club participated. In 1935 at Wayville, West Adelaide and Sturt played an Exhibition Game which we won by 16 points in front of an estimated crowd of 3,000. It’s hard to believe that lights pre World War 2 could have catered for league footy.
On September 28, 1955, Hawthorn Football Club defeated us by 1 point on the Norwood Oval in front of 8,600 spectators 13.10 (88) to 13.9 (87).
So in those years of non-premiership point games of Night Footy, we won 6 premierships and were runners-up twice. Let’s hope the tradition of West Adelaide as ‘Kings of the Night’ continues as we embrace our magnificent new facilities at City Mazda Stadium for years to come.
CLUB ARCHIVES
If anyone has any memorabilia, programmes or footage of SA football, we would welcome any contributions. The club is planning to establish an archives room and we are desperately trying to locate missing annual reports for a digitised archival project in the future.
Mark Beswick
Club Historian