Originally posted by Still Crowing
Am sending email to club now........'91 guernsey or don't bother. We still have our original guernsey 14 seasons in, a fact that I am proud of. Long live the 'licorice allsorts' kit.
dont you mean "fruitloops" kit?
hands off the state jumper crows - you have no right to wear that.
from the advertiser:
AFTER having no throw-back jumper to wear in last year's AFL heritage round, Adelaide wants to dust down an old SANFL state team guernsey for this season's theme weekend in late July.
And while the Crows say they have every right to wear the state jumper against the Kangaroos at AAMI Stadium on July 30, the move – still to be approved by the AFL – will stir heated debate.
No disapproval will be louder than that of former state players who say the SA jumper should always be earned – and some Crows players are not worthy of wearing it, let alone capable of upholding its traditions.
Former state and Sturt captain John Halbert – who emphasises he is "very proud of my state jumper" which he wore with honour 17 times – says he is not "very keen" to see an AFL club side wearing an SANFL state guernsey.
"The Adelaide football team and the SA state side are two seperate identities – and they should not be confused," says Halbert, the 1961 Magarey Medallist.
Halbert wonders how Port Adelaide-based players worthy of wearing the SA jumper in Origin football, if this still existed, would feel in seeing Crows players adorning a jumper denied to them by the AFL's focus on club football ahead of state games.
Fellow Magarey Medallist and former West Torrens captain Bob Hank, who represented SA 27 times, also says the state jumper cannot be handed down to a club side. "Adelaide's request (to wear a state jumper) is really stretching it a bit far," he said.
"It would lower the standing of the state jumper."
Adelaide says the state jumper – whether it be the chocolate-and-brown version worn early in the 20th century – is appropriate for the Crows.
"It reflects we are born from the SANFL, from the SANFL clubs," says Adelaide general manager of commercial operations Phil Harper. "We are a conglomeration of the SANFL clubs. We're not technically a state side but we need to recognise that we come from the SANFL."
It is doubtful the Crows would adopt the 19th century state jumper that had the SANFL's representative team wear black-and-white stripes, a uniform later claimed by Collingwood.
And it is intriguing that the Crows have not revived the red-and-black jumper of the original Adelaide Football Club which won the SA premiership in 1886.
This would follow the path taken by Fremantle, which joined the AFL in 1995 with no direct link to a WAFL club. The Dockers last year adopted for heritage week a red-and-white jumper worn by the original Fremantle Football Club that set the roots of WA football in the late 1800s.
SANFL president Rod Payze last night said Adelaide's plan had still to reach the SA Football Commission, the highest authority in SA football and guardians of the state jumper and the two SA-based AFL licences.
He would not comment on Adelaide's rights to the state jumper before reading its proposal at the commission table.
Port will not again wear the black-and-white jumper of its SANFL past when it plays Essendon at Telstra Dome in heritage week. The Power is working through its 19th century wardrobe to find the guernsey it will revive this season.