A Club Champion ruckman, dedicated long-time staff member and two volunteers from Adelaide’s inaugural 1991 season have been awarded Crows Life Membership.

Reilly O’Brien, Michelle Allen (nee Behrendt), Leo Groenewegen and Brendan Campbell have more than 100 years of combined service which was recognised at a Club function on Wednesday night.

O’Brien became eligible for life membership after clocking up 10 years on the playing list and playing more than 100 games.

Drafted as a rookie in 2014, the 29-year-old is a great story of persistence having waited until 2016 to debut and not playing at AFL level again until 2019, before winning the Malcolm Blight Medal as Adelaide’s Club Champion just a year later in 2020.

Since assuming the mantle of Adelaide’s lead ruck, O’Brien has been both durable and consistent, playing his 100^th game in 2023 for a current career tally of 121, and has won three consecutive Best Team Man Awards.

At a towering 201cm, O’Brien also makes a big impression off the field where he is a passionate advocate of the Club’s community programs, and last year received the AFL’s Jim Stynes Community Leadership Award for his involvement in the Open Parachute youth resilience training program.

Allen has been with the Crows for more than 26 years after starting in October, 1998, and has seen various evolutions of the Club from its Football Park days to the move to Adelaide Oval.

Her first role was casual facilities receptionist before progressing to finance clerk, administration assistant and commercial operations assistant before her current role of Commercial Administration Executive.

Among her many achievements have been training staff in customer relationship management and managing the Premiership Suite on match days at AAMI Stadium and Adelaide Oval.

Victorian-based pair Groenewegen and Campbell are the only original 1991 staff still working for the Crows after 34 years.

They served the Club as statisticians until 2019 and since then have continued to volunteer for Adelaide’s AFL and AFLW teams whenever they are playing in Victoria.

Together they have worked at more than 250 AFL and AFLW games and have also been involved in state games for South Australia in the 1990s.

In the early years, club statisticians were the only source of statistics for AFL coaches and Groenewegen and Campbell would manually record every kick, mark, handball and hit-out for the Crows and their opposition, before rushing them down the race to the coaches during the breaks. They later switched to using computer to input the data and now remain involved as match-day support staff in the rooms before, during and after games.

They join Adelaide’s AFLW midfield coach and development manager Courtney Cramey who was also awarded life membership last year, in recognition of her outstanding service to the Crows and SA football.

Already a premiership player with Sturt and Morphettville Park, Cramey was a priority selection for Adelaide ahead of the inaugural AFLW season in 2017, and starred in the Club’s first premiership and made the All-Australian team.

She retired in 2020 and moved into a coaching role where she continues to guide Adelaide’s midfield and the emergence of its young players.