Adelaide’s inaugural 1991 squad, finalised just 11 days before the Club’s first game for premiership points, holds an important place in our history.

Recruited from the ten SANFL clubs or enticed home to South Australia from interstate clubs, the 52 players were pulled together over the summer of 1990-91 as the Adelaide Football Club prepared for its entry to the national competition.

Chris McDermott was named as the first captain. After a decade of success in South Australian football with Glenelg and as State-of-Origin captain, it was the perfect next step in what had been an illustrious career.

His deputy was close friend Tony McGuinness, the 1982 Magarey Medallist who left Glenelg after the Tigers won the 1985 SANFL premiership to join VFL club Footscray, where he played 109 games in five seasons.

Most of the first 52 Crows had been part of an earlier squad of more than 60 players who tried out under first coach Graham Cornes but there was also an eye on the future with the selection of ten highly-rated young South Australian footballers.

This group included 16-year-old Rostrevor College schoolboy Ben Hart – who 18 months later would be an All-Australian – promising ruckman Shaun Rehn and Sturt junior Brenton Sanderson, who would play a total of 209 games for the Crows, Collingwood and Geelong before coaching Adelaide from 2012-14.

The squad included only seven players with VFL experience – McGuinness, Bruce Lindner, Mark Mickan, Danny Hughes, Bruce Abernethy, Grantley Fielke and Michael Murphy.

But Cornes was also able to call on a number of SANFL stars, including Magarey Medallists Andrew Jarman and Scott Hodges, former State captain Bruce Lindsay and experienced campaigners such as David Marshall, Darel Hart, Trevor Clisby and Tom Warhurst.

He also collected a core group of emerging players, such as Rod Jameson, Mark Bickley, Nigel Smart, Simon Tregenza, Matthew Liptak and David Pittman, who would be central to the Club’s development in the first decade.

Thirty-seven of these original Crows played AFL games in 1991.