THEY'RE the pride of South Australia, the mighty Adelaide Crows.

We think of Adelaide's AFLW team as an absolute powerhouse of the competition, but the Crows were tipped to finish stone-cold last in the first season of 2017.

Instead, it proved that everyone had completely misread the standard of women's footy in South Australia, which was very much in its infancy and considered less mature than Victoria and Western Australia.

Adelaide went on to win flags in 2017, 2019 and 2022 (season six), and have only missed finals twice in nine seasons, one of which was the aborted 2020 year.

How did the Crows do it? And what's the secret to their sustained success?

Building blocks

As was the case with every 2017 side, Adelaide signed two "marquee" players, both of whom were West Australians that the Crows convinced to move across the border.

One was a generational leader in Chelsea Randall, the other Kellie Gibson, a dynamic goalsneak at a time when forward craft wasn't quite as developed as it is now.

The Crows also genuinely lucked out in signing arguably the best AFLW player of all time – Erin Phillips – as a rookie, the former WNBA star who was keen to reignite her junior football dreams, while open-age state captain Courtney Cramey was secured as a priority signing.

As part of Adelaide's initial AFLW bid to AFL House, the Crows entered into a partnership with the Northern Territory, giving them exclusive access to talent from the Top End and playing a handful of games in Darwin in the early years.

Ange Foley, Sally Riley (two Victorians based out of Darwin at the time), 100-goaler Abbey Holmes, Stevie-Lee Thompson and Heather Anderson were among those recruited from the northern zone, with Jas Hewett and Danielle Ponter added in later years.

The South Australian landscape

Narelle Smith has long been part of the women's football landscape in South Australia, playing in the old South Australian Women's Football League (SAWFL) in the 2000s before taking up coaching with Morphettville Park women's side in 2009.

She has served as chair of the SAWFL and helped introduce divisions for teenaged girls, coached the state's side in the days of open-age national championships, coached men's football with Glenelg's reserves, been an assistant with Adelaide AFLW from 2019-2021, after which she was appointed head coach of Woodville-West Torrens' SANFLW side, a position she still holds today.

Eight of Adelaide's inaugural squad of 27 – Ebony Marinoff, Anne Hatchard, Cramey, Justine Mules-Robinson, Deni Varnhagen, Jess Sedunary, Dayna Cox and Georgia Bevan – came from Smith's "Morphies" team, with Eloise Jones joining the following year.

"Women's footy was building. There was an amalgamation between the old SAWFL and the Adelaide Footy League, because it was becoming too big for just volunteers to run. There was exponential growth in South Australia, and once we linked up with the Adelaide Footy League, which had fully paid positions, there was more time to actually invest in raising the brand and getting kids involved," Smith said.

"I knew AFLW was coming, but I didn't know quite when. So what I did at Morphies was really focus on high performance; we were the fittest side, which is probably why we were so dominant.

"I then had a group of probably 10 players - not all Morphies - where we'd train twice a week, and I'd just run them more than anyone else would run them. So that's probably why the Crows were better than we thought they'd be – they were just really fit.

"Everyone underestimated South Australia because we weren't really on the map as a power state in women's footy. So we were able to keep all of our talent untouched, then top it off with Randall and Kellie Gibson, who's a pretty talented footballer.

"I was helping David Noble (head of men's football at the time) with the initial list build. Most people don't know this outside of the Crows, but I had a relationship with Randall, and I knew the type of personality she was and that she likes adventure and moving around. So I rang her and asked if she'd be interested in coming across.

"Rhi Metcalfe was a great pick-up from NSW, because there weren't a lot of really strong rucks around, and she was pivotal. Plus the cream of the crop from NT.

"When I look back, there was no way a diluted Victorian side (a quarter of the state's talent pool) was going to beat that (Adelaide) side, and Brisbane were the same, and were left alone."

Laying foundations

Bec Goddard was a strong inaugural coach, a magnetic figure who helped bring together two disparate groups training in Adelaide and Darwin, and had immediate cut-through to the wider football world.

When Goddard and Adelaide parted ways at the conclusion of the 2018 season, Matthew 'Doc' Clarke took the reins, a gentle giant with a fierce competitive edge who has helped elevate the squad into a consistent pace-setter, and he has the best win rate of any coach in the competition's history to have led more than 15 matches.

The players themselves have become influential figures in the wider world of women's football.

Randall became one of the longest-serving captains in the competition, and notably sat out the 2021 Grand Final with concussion, speaking about her omission at the time with conviction.

Phillips' legacy speaks for itself, and her presence and skill did a lot to put the competition on the map in the early years.

Marinoff – the AFLW's first Rising Star – is unbelievably only just entering her prime, her ninth season in the competition earning here the AFLW Best and Fairest award. Her midfield buddy Hatchard underwent a complete physical transformation, becoming one of the hardest runners in the league.

Then there are the Allan sisters, Jess and Sarah, quiet leaders and outstanding citizens in their own right.

Ponter is a rising Indigenous leader, and is much loved by fans across the AFLW.

"'Randy' (Randall) is amazing with the culture and she's a great leader. She was my captain in my first year at the club, it was amazing to watch her and see how she goes about it," young Adelaide defender Sarah Goodwin said.

"Now 'Noffy' (Marinoff), the standard she sets and asks everyone to come along with her on the training track, it's just unreal. She pushes us to our limits and gets the best out of us."

Young talent time

The SANFL introduced a women's competition for the first time in 2017, with players having previously taken to the field through the Adelaide Footy League and SAWFL, essentially local-level competitions.

The step up in standard – coupled with a footy-mad state with plenty of girls and women just waiting for an opportunity – saw an enormous pipeline of talent explode onto the scene.

Adelaide undoubtedly benefited from exclusive access to the South Australian pool for six drafts, but the players were also stepping into an AFLW environment that allowed them to feel welcome and thrive.

"[Adelaide's hierarchy] asked a lot of questions in the early days of what's needed to be good, and how they could get it done, and they made sure they got it done," Smith said.

"I'm massive on high performance. Other clubs went for footballers who weren't able to excel in the high performance space, whereas the Crows found footballers and said, 'this is our standard'.

"Brad Newton, who's now the high performance manager for St Kilda men's, he ran the girls from word go. I know some other clubs didn't invest in high performance, because they felt like the time they wanted to use was for football. Whereas I reckon the Crows got the balance right really early about education, high performance and culture.

"The culture piece (led by Randall and Phillips) was huge. They had their 'true player' (team trademarks vote), which the players devised, and year two I think they got Leading Teams in to tidy it up."

South Australian players competed in the under-18 championships from 2017-2019 through the Allies' side. Given the COVID interruptions of 2020 and 2021, it took until 2022 for the South Australians to enter their own side in a full-blown championships, and they immediately won the tournament two years in a row.

"Being a two-team town, it's just growing heaps," Goodwin said.

"You look at all the juniors coming through in SA, it's huge, especially the girls through the national champs in the past few years. SA has played pretty well, given they competed as the Allies not long ago.

"All the girls in school, they're all playing, and I just never really had that when I was younger."

Goodwin was just 13 when the AFLW competition started.

A mad Crows fan who loved Kurt Tippett, Simon Goodwin, Rory Sloane and Taylor Walker, she was playing local footy with the Plympton Bulldogs at the time.

While it took a few years for the AFLW to fully grab her attention, attending the 2019 Grand Final was a milestone moment.

"Being at that game was just like, 'yeah, this is what I want to do when I grow up'," Goodwin said.

"Ebony Marinoff became a pretty big hero for me. One of my under-15s state coaches was Eloise Jones, so that was pretty cool. Then the Adelaide academy, we had Chelsea Randall, MJ (Marijana Rajcic), Courtney Cramey at the time as coaches.

"And then when I played at Glenelg (in the SANFL), 'Noffy' and 'Guldy' (Caitlin Gould) came and played a few games, which helped us win a premiership that year. I think I was 16, and getting to play with them and look up to them was pretty cool.

"To be able to see them play and playing with them helped [my journey]. Not that I didn't have the motivation, but I played a lot of different sports growing up, and the Adelaide Grand Final with 53,000 was like, 'wow, people want to watch this game and the girls play'."

Sustained success

Players rarely leave Adelaide.

The introduction of Port Adelaide was meant to somewhat break up the kingdom, but only three players – Phillips (whose father Greg is a Port legend), Foley and Justine Mules-Robinson – jumped ship.

Just seven ex-Adelaide players are currently on other clubs' books, inclusive of Mules-Robinson.

Chloe Scheer was head-hunted by Geelong, with the coastal lifestyle appealing; the Giants came hard for developing player Taylah Levy; Najwa Allen was struggling for game time and with injury when Hawthorn came knocking; Ash Woodland joined Phillips in attack back in 2023; Montana McKinnon was in a ruck log-jam at the Crows; while Gibson returned home to WA quite a few years ago.

While success always helps, the South Australian community has fully embraced both Adelaide and Port Adelaide's women's sides.

A record crowd of 53,034 poured into Adelaide Oval for the 2019 Grand Final triumph, with ground staff having to continually open up new sections of seating to accommodate the eager fans.

Both clubs have active Pride supporter groups that are heavily involved in supporting their women's sides, and games at Norwood and Alberton Ovals are often at capacity.

"I was on boards back when we were fighting to not wear hand-me-down guernseys," Smith said, marvelling at the transition.

"(At the 2019 Grand Final), the game had started, and I was distracted, looking up at the southern (Riverbank) stand, and the people looked like ants. The coaches boxes are soundproof, so you couldn't hear the crowd, and were just watching all these ants pour in.

"My voice doesn't go high very often, but I went high pitch and said, "they've opened the southern stand", and Phil Harper (head of AFLW) said, 'Relle, did you ever think you'd see this?'

"And I said, 'Phil, I always knew it would happen, but wasn't sure it'd be in my lifetime.'

"That's one of the most special, pivotal moments in my involvement in footy."