The gusty, searing north wind whipped past Adelaide Oval as you might expect on the opening day of a Test match at a cricket ground so often referred to as the most picturesque in the world. But there were no cricketers to be seen.

It was Saturday, September 29, 1973 and the first light was sprawling across South Australia’s sun-drenched sporting mecca.

Hundreds of young fans had been lining up at the Victor Richardson Gates on the eastern side of the Oval since the previous evening. These days when a major sporting event is coming, you simply log on to the internet and book your seats. But back in 1973 you had to buy your ticket on the day and at the venue of the event and these fans were determined to get the best possible vantage point right on the fence, even if it meant just a couple of hours of broken sleep on a concrete path, with or without a sleeping bag or pillow. By the time morning had broken a long line of football supporters was snaking towards King William St, then heading north. The North Adelaide cheersquad was in early voice, declaring “three in a row, way to go” and gently reminding any Glenelg fans around, “when was the last time you won anything?”

Glenelg’s passionate cheersquad members soon were attaching a long canvas sign to the white picket fence at the southern end of the Oval in the days before advertising took up every available space, their black-and-gold streamer floggers at the ready. Their sign boldly declared: “TREMENDOUS TEAM OF TALENTED TENACIOUS TITANIC TERRIFIC TEARAWAY TIGERS.”

And in 1973 that had definitely been the case. Glenelg had won 21 games and lost just one in a stunning season. But the nerves of the vast throng of Tiger supporters were frayed and jangling. They’d heard it was the “Year of the Tigers” before. But Glenelg, for all its great players and promise of success, had only won one flag. Way back in 1934. And there had been recent grand final losses to Sturt on Adelaide Oval in 1969 and ’70.

While the weather had an ominous touch to it, there were bigger worries for coach Neil Kerley and his men. North Adelaide. And Barrie Robran.

Little less than a year before on Adelaide Oval the mighty Roosters had achieved their greatest success. Mike Patterson’s men, having completed back-to-back premierships with grand final wins against Port Adelaide, overcame VFL powerhouse Carlton to claim the Australian championship, triple Magarey Medallist Robran at his skilful, unstoppable best in a thrilling one-point victory. And the week before the 1973 grand final the Roosters had overwhelmingly showed their intent by thrashing Sturt by 93 points in the preliminary final. Not only that, the only loss for Glenelg in its watershed season had been to North, although that was a full four months earlier.

The weather added another ingredient to an explosive mix as “King” Kerls roared his pre-match address in the cramped changerooms under the Adelaide Oval members’ stands. “I want you to start with confidence and an aggressive style. You dictate the play! Don’t sit back and take position waiting for them to make mistakes … You run the ball, back each other up, you talk, you work, you sweat your guts out,” came his impassioned plea. “You tackle. You block the ball off the boot. You check marks. You don’t give away 15-yard penalties inside their kicking area. Rucks, you have got to bust your guts out there today.”

Kerley was confident. “You smell the atmosphere in the rooms and you know it's right. You know they're ready. You know they are going to give their best. And they did on that day.” But Kerls' best-laid plans soon appeared in tatters.

Rooster Rodney Robran kicked the first goal of the grand final in the opening minute but gutsy rover Rex Voigt answered for the Bays from a lightning Fred Phillis handball. Livewire roving partner Greg Bennett sharked a goal off hands, while centre half-forward Peter “Super” Carey booted a super goal from an angle.

The 1973 season had seen the introduction of the centre diamond – two years later replaced by the centre square still used today – to prevent midfield congestion at ball-ups. There was no kicking backwards, no short passing to maintain possession, these were the days of a quick handball then kicking long to position, meaning plenty of rugged man-on-man contests. And plenty of goals. With big men John Spry and Gary Sporn taking charge, the Roosters rammed on the last five of the first quarter, a booming Barrie Robran screw punt goal coming just before the siren, and the reigning premier had charged away to a 7.6-to-4.3 lead. And, for Kerley, worse was to follow. Big Bob Tardif was hobbling around after injuring his hip in a collision in a ruck contest and was forced from the ground early in the second quarter. Channel Nine commentator Max Hall described this as a “major catastrophe for the Bays ... he's been a dominant ruckman this year”.

Before the game, Kerley had demanded his rucks bust their guts for the Tigers jumper. How Bob Tregenza answered that call, rucking almost singlehandedly in a performance that has since gained legendary status at the Bay.

“If you're looking for a bloke with guts and determination ... he had it,” Kerley said of Tregenza, saying his effort “was simply unbelievable. He absolutely ran himself into the ground”. Skipper Peter Marker recalled: “That goes the closest to giving everything you've got that I've ever seen.”

Modest “Big Bob” himself always thought his performance was blown out of proportion. “Kerls just said 'stay on the ball as long as you can'. 'Twiggy' Caldwell gave me a bit of a hand and I just got on with the job,” he said. But he got on with the job in the 30C heat to the extent he took four days to recover.

Glenelg had claimed a one-goal advantage by half-time but North was four points up seven minutes into time-on of the third quarter before Voigt took the game by the scruff of the neck. He booted his fifth major, then within moments had another before the three-quarter-time siren sounded. His purple patch continued after the break when a left-foot snap seemingly had the Bays destined for that elusive premiership. By the time creative centreman Kerry Hamilton, the Tigers’ best-and-fairest winner for the 1973 campaign, had goaled from a free kick at the 15-minute-mark and Glenelg led 19.11 to 16.14, the flag looked on its way to the Bay.

But North Adelaide wanted it just as fiercely. Mike Patterson had been passionate and emotional at the three-quarter-time huddle, pleading with his players, “Boys, it’s there … link your arms together, feel it together … the emotion, the feeling. We are the greatest side that has ever played at North Adelaide … boys I implore you, go out and give me 30 minutes of excellent football.” North had a shot at winning its first hat-trick of SANFL premierships. And inspirational captain Bob Hammond had plenty of incentive of his own. He had told the Roosters he was retiring after the grand final, so “I went in with the attitude that it was my last game I was ever going to play and tried to make it as good as I could”. He did just that, in the last quarter-of-an-hour of the game desperately stonewalling just about any attack Glenelg could muster.

Umpire Murray Ducker said: “Bob Hammond was probably the best man on the ground. He played a superb game at full back. He had about 25 touches and he cleared the ball time and time again under enormous pressure because the Bays were pushing all the time.” Hammond was simply inspirational, Glenelg’s score was stalled on 19.11 for what was an agonising 15 minutes for Tigers supporters and when century goalkicking full forward Dennis Sachse grabbed a strong marked and goaled, the Roosters were within just one point. Suddenly the red-and-white floggers at the northern end of the iconic ground were being ferociously waved. A piece of Barrie Robran magic, where he wheeled onto his left foot and poked the ball towards the goalsquare for John Plummer to haul in a strong mark had Patterson up from the bench, his fists pumping in the air in delight. As Plummer steered the ball through a remarkable game had been turned on its head. “I’ve got to be honest, I thought when we hit the front at about the 29-minute-mark of the last quarter that we were going to win,” Robran said.

Hammond wasn’t the only inspirational leader out there. And the Roosters weren’t the only ones desperate to write their own piece of history.

Marker, like Kerley always exhorting his men to give it everything they had until there was nothing left to give or no time left to give it, ran to his team-mates screaming: “We're not dead yet ... keep fighting.” Hamilton said this “was a group that didn't lay down when the going got tough”. And young gun Greg Wickens thought “we don't deserve to lose this”, the idea of what he believed to be an injustice giving him “a steely resolve to win” that he also observed in the eyes of his team-mates.

Peter Anderson burst out of the Tigers’ defence with a desperate run but when the ball reached the goalmouth Hammond was there again, paddling the ball towards the boundary and it seemed destined to trickle over the line. But livewire rover Craig Marriott, fresh from the bench in the days there were two reserves and no interchanges, refused to concede as he rescued the ball from going out-of-bounds and hooked it into the goalmouth. The ball hung there, where, with a supreme effort, weary, socks-down Graham Cornes rose over the pack to claim the most critical mark in SA football history. It was the SANFL’s equivalent of Leo Barry’s last-gasp mark for Sydney in the 2005 AFL grand final against West Coast. But, while Barry saved the game for the Swans with his incredible pack mark, Cornes won the game with his desperate grab.

“I don’t know where he got the strength from because it was right in the dying minutes of the game but he flew and grabbed it and it was a great mark under pressure,” Ducker said. “I had just cramped in both calves … it just wasn’t looking good at that stage,” Cornes recalled. “I hadn’t done very much all day … I just had to do something.” But, even after rising for his breathtaking mark, he still had to do something. “Why me?” he asked as he went back on a testing angle. Kerley reckoned he shut his eyes and offered a quick prayer but the ball could hardly have been in better hands. “Luckily I was dead in line with a tree – dead-set in the middle of the goals there were some kids in the trees – I remember them waving – but I was just concentrating on dropping the ball right and getting the leg through the ball straight,” Cornes said. Barrie Robran recalled the ball never deviated from the middle of the goal. “It was a very, very good kick in the circumstances,” he said. The noise from the bumper crowd of 56,525 was deafening and Cornes conceded as the ball sailed through “it was quite an emotional moment” but, although for the second time in a few minutes the epic game seemed to have a winner, there still was time for another goal. 

The drama and tension was at fever-pitch as Terry Collins tried to kick the Roosters deep into attack only for Glenelg back pocket Jim Rawson to throw himself across his boot to pull off a courageous, critical smother. Fred Phillis pumped the ball into the Bays’ forward line one last time and powerful forward John Sandland grabbed the final mark of an unforgettable final. The siren sounded before he popped through the goal that made the final margin seven points. It was a game Glenelg had deserved to win … but North Adelaide had not deserved to lose.

One of the defining images of a remarkable battle was a desolate Hammond in the goalsquare after the siren, looking down, hands on knees, feeling nothing – “an absolute vacuum” – not wanting to believe what had happened. But all around him was pandemonium. The crowd was streaming onto the ground, Bays supporters young and old dancing, leaping about, embracing and kissing total strangers. The Oval’s hallowed turf was completely covered by a sea of faces, Kerley and his men mobbed to an extent they could hardly breathe and they certainly could not complete the customary lap of honour.

Carey, rated best-afield with six goals from centre half-forward, was “pretty happy with my game”. But whether he was happy or not actually was far from the thoughts of a man who went on to play a staggering 448 games for the Bays. “I didn't want to let the coach down,” he said of his biggest motivation to perform in that unforgettable grand final. “I wanted to do it as much for Neil Kerley as for myself.”

Channel Nine Footy Show host of the 1970s Max Hall admired the way Kerley could get the best out of his players, recalling the coach’s fanatical determination to win. “People would do things for Neil Kerley they wouldn't do for other coaches and he demanded only the best,” Hall said. “I remember I was in the dressing rooms before the game one day and a well-meaning supporter came in to try to wish one of the Bay players a happy birthday. 'Grrrrrrrr, don't come in here with that happy birthday stuff, we're here to win a bloody game of football.'”

Kerley’s men did win that “bloody game of football” back in 1973 and even Kerls would have reckoned it was time to celebrate. But it was not quite as you may have expected. And someone was missing. Seven-goal hero Voigt recalled when Glenelg headed out of the city on a team bus it was not full of shouting, singing or celebrating. “Everyone was as quiet as a mouse because we were all so exhausted,” he said. “We got to the Pizza Hut on Anzac Highway and Bob Tregenza told the driver to stop the bus because he had to vomit.” That he was so dehyrdated was hardly suprising – these were the days when footballers were warned against drinking during games. “I said to Kerls, 'I'm going home ... I'm too crook to celebrate,” Tregenza said. “I'll celebrate tomorrow.”

Thanks to Tregenza and Cornes, Carey, Voigt, Hammond and Robran, Kerley and Patterson, this game still is being celebrated more than four decades later as one of the greatest contests to have graced Adelaide Oval. But you can bet there are more great battles to come now that the AFL – and the Adelaide Crows – are making themselves at home at the great South Australian sporting mecca.

1973 GRAND FINAL TEAMS

GLENELG 
F: Neville Caldwell (22), Fred Phillis (19), Rex Voigt (10)
HF: Peter Marker, captain (1), Peter Carey (5), Greg Wickens (9)
C: Peter Millard (26), Kerry Hamilton (17), John MacFarlane (3)
HB: Brian Colbey (14), Wayne Phillis (20), Stephen Hywood (16)
B: Bob Tregenza (4), Peter Anderson (15), Jim Rawson (29) 
Ruck: Bob Tardif (21), Graham Cornes (12), Greg Bennett (11) 
Reserves: John Sandland (7), Craig Marriott (18) 
Coach: Neil Kerley

NORTH ADELAIDE
F: Barry Hearl (14), Dennis Sachse (30), David Marsh (4) 
HF: John Plummer (13), Barrie Robran (10), Rodney Robran (20) 
C: John Phillips (7), David Burns (28), Barry Stringer (9) 
HB: Alan Howard (15), Neil Sachse (12), Bronte Mumford (35) 
B: John Robinson (16), Bob Hammond, captain (29), John Spry (1) 
Ruck: Gary Sporn (26), Charlie Payne (5), Terry von Bertouch (2) 
Reserves: Adrian Rebbeck (18), Terry Collins (21) 
Coach: Mike Patterson
 

Glenelg                4.3     9.10     16.10      21.11 (137)
North Adelaide    7.6     8.10     14.14     19.16 (130)

BEST
Glenelg: Carey, Voigt, Tregenza, Hamilton, Anderson, Colbey, W. Phillis
North Adelaide: Hammond, Marsh, Howard, Sporn, Robinson, Stringer, von Bertouch

SCORERS
Glenelg: Voigt 7.1, Carey 6.1, Sandland 4.3, Wickens 1.2, Bennett, Cornes, Hamilton 1.0, Caldwell 0.2, Marker 0.1, rushed 0.1
North Adelaide: Rebbeck 4.1, D. Sachse 3.3, R. Robran 3.1, Marsh 2.2, Plummer 2.1, Payne, von Bertouch 2.0, B. Robran 1.2, Stringer 0.3, Hearl 0.2, rushed 0.1

UMPIRE: Murray Ducker
CROWD: 56,525 at Adelaide Oval