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The Adelaide Crows are a professional Australian Football team that competes in the Australian Football League (The highest level in the country).
The most important game in the Adelaide Crows history at Adelaide Oval was on the 22nd of September 2017. We faced the Geelong Cats in a home preliminary final where the winner would play in the grand final the following week. The rivalry was further intensified as former Adelaide Crows player Patrick Dangerfield moved to Geelong before the start of the 2016 season for family reasons, however a lot of fans are bitter after how he handled the media through the 2015 season when he was still a Crows player.
Let me take this back a few years to the greatest tragedy and how this galvanised our club.
On the 3rd of July 2015 Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh was murdered by his son which rocked the football world. This absolutely devastated our club and for the first time in the existence of the AFL our game that weekend was cancelled and instead our ground was opened so fans could pay their tributes. It's important to point out that not only did Phil have a huge impact on our club, he was a big part of the Port Adelaide football club and the West Coast Eagles as he was an assistant coach at both.
I was fortunate enough to meet Phil in early 2015 at the club members day and was in awe of the presence this man had. I was so confident he was the right person to lead our club to success and the values he has drilled into our club will never be forgotten.
Team first. Elite standards. Play your role.
We played against West Coast the following weekend in a brave loss which was the most emotional game I've ever watched. I wasn't able to be there but the pain on the players face after playing a week after his death was too much to bear. It is unusual to see an opposition crowd give a standing ovation to an away team but the West Coast fans were absolutely brilliant in trying times.
At our former stadium and training ground Football Park the tributes continued.
We managed to scrape into the finals that year and travelled to Melbourne to play the Western Bulldogs at the MCG. We won in the dying minutes in what was an incredibly emotional game for the players and all of us who travelled over to Melbourne. What the players achieved under the circumstances was inspirational.
You can view the full highlights of this game here:
Unfortunately we bowed out of the finals the following week to the Hawks and 2016 ended in similar fashion, with us being knocked out in the semi final.
Now lets move on to 2017
We dominated the majority of the year, beating most teams comfortably with impressive results. We dominated the GWS Giants in the qualifying final and met Geelong in a home prelim final.