West Adelaide Team of the Centuries

At the Adelaide Oval last night, 350 people packed in to be part of a wonderful evening, celebrating all that's good about football.

Still pinching myself after being able to chat footy with most of these legends.

Can someone post the team, please?

BENNETTS.....LUDERS....GROSSER

DAY...........MCGREGOR...MORRIS

LYNCH.............HEAD.......FIELKE

B SMITH..........FAEHSE......EUSTICE

BROWN...........THOMAS.....BRAY

MICKAN
KERLEY
DOWLING

INTERCHANGE
C SMITH
LOVEDAY
FERGUSON
PORPLYZIA

EMERGENCIES
MUERET
TIERNEY
POPE
SNELL

Must be a great team First Blood and Thiele didnt make the cut

The half back flankers were really good players

Great side. Up there with Port and North as clearly the 3 best teams of the century.
A couple of surprising omissions in Tom Leahy and Jack Broadstock.
Leahy was considered the best ruckman in Australia for the first 25 years of the 20th century.
Mike Coward and Geoff Kingston rated him the 4th best South Australia player of the first 100 years.
Many old timers from Westies rated him the greatest footballer ever.
Personally I rated Rodney Pope higher than Bob Loveday but that of course is subjective.

Agree with you about Tom Leahy, but one of the conditions for the side was that a player couldn't have played more games for another club than West. This also ruled out Fos Williams.

Fair point about Rod Pope, but Bernie Smith and Ken Eustice were hard to replace on the HB line. Bob Loveday was also perhaps more versatile.

Jack Broadstock was close, but less service to West than some.

Heres another 21 players
No restrictions on who and where they played in their careers
The only criteria, is they have played for WA
Apologies, if I have overlooked any other WA stars

In alphabetical order

BORCHARD
BROADSTOCK
COONEY
B COUCH
A DALY
J DALY
DANGERFIELD
EDWARDS
R GRAY
G HEWITT
KEDDIE
LEAHY
LINDNER
MODRA
RHEN
ROO
RUTTEN
D TAYLOR
F WILLIAMS
M WILLIAMS
ZUENER

Lee wrote:Agree with you about Tom Leahy, but one of the conditions for the side was that a player couldn't have played more games for another club than West. This also ruled out Fos Williams.

Fair point about Rod Pope, but Bernie Smith and Ken Eustice were hard to replace on the HB line.  Bob Loveday was also perhaps more versatile.

Jack Broadstock was close, but less service to West than some.

As much as I admired Rodney Pope, no way could he replace Smith or Eustice. I was just comparing him with Loveday. As a schoolboy I saw every game of the 1969 Australian Championships. To this day I am certain that the All Australian selectors chose the wrong South Australian half back flanker. Pope played a much better series than the other player who won All Australian selection.

Thanks for explaining about Tom Leahy's non selection, but I am even more confused now because Leahy played more games for West than Bernie Smith did, but I guess Bernie played most of his games for Geelong in the VFL and not for another SANFL club.

Finally I don't know whether you or any of the other historians were at last weeks meeting of the Chris Halbert group. One of the North historians stated that he, the late Mark Beswick and the late Terry Page from Norwood were putting together a submission to the AFL to have Tom Leahy accepted to the AFL Hall of Fame. Apparently their efforts have fallen on deaf ears.

Until Leahy becomes a member of the Hall of Fame, it remains a Hall of Shame.

Scrappy wrote:Heres another 21 players
No restrictions on who and where they played in their careers
The only criteria, is they have played for WA
Apologies, if I have overlooked any other WA stars

In alphabetical order

BORCHARD
BROADSTOCK
COONEY
B COUCH
A DALY
J DALY
DANGERFIELD
EDWARDS
R GRAY
G HEWITT
KEDDIE
LEAHY
LINDNER
MODRA
RHEN
ROO
RUTTEN
D TAYLOR
F WILLIAMS
M WILLIAMS
ZUENER

Good list.
Not sure can you add Hamish Hartlett, Rory Laird and Jono Beech

Just a note. Teams like the teams of the centuries are hard to pick as some of the players are just from records and no one living has seen them play.