How a club legend, a meat billionaire and a former premier led the Crows out of the darkness

The Age

29-05-2025

Every AFL club has a network of influencers who make things happen through their wealth, fame or political connections. This is our series on the football world's movers and shakers. See all 9 stories.
As Mark Ricciuto picked up the phone to call Neil Balme in the winter of 2020, little did the former Crows captain know that he was speaking with the figure who would become his replacement as the most senior football person on the board of the Adelaide Football Club.
Back then, Ricciuto was wrestling with the struggles of the bottom club in the league, with a rookie coach in Matthew Nicks, a thin playing list and a psyche bruised by the 2017 grand final defeat, the infamous 2018 pre-season camp and all that flowed from it.
Balme, then ensconced at Richmond, seemed the obvious choice for Ricciuto as what he called a 'godfather of football' for the Crows, steeped in both South Australian football (as former coach of Norwood and Woodville West Torrens) and more contemporary successes as a football department overseer for Collingwood, Geelong and the Tigers.
Those initial conversations with Ricciuto planted a seed for Balme to think more about Adelaide, even as health problems precluded him from accepting a full-time job.
The Crows were also searching for their next chairman. Rob Chapman, who had held the role since 2009, was aware that the club needed a fresh figurehead after the camp scandal. His first succession plan had been waylaid by the death of his well-liked deputy Bob Foord in December 2017, leaving Chapman to turn to someone who'd often been on the opposite side of the negotiating table: SANFL chairman and former Liberal premier John Olsen.
Olsen spent as much as eight weeks mulling it over. He was conscious of how the Crows carried so much expectation within the state, dating back to his time as premier between 1996 and 2001. Tellingly, Olsen had experienced the rush of optimism wrought by the club's only flags, in 1997 and 1998.
'The first flag was won just after we'd lost the [Formula 1] grand prix to Melbourne, we'd had a drought, the State Bank had fallen over, the psyche of the state was flat,' he says. 'But that win just lifted people. I can't describe to you just how impactful that was in the community.'
Olsen made two swift decisions on his arrival. He parted ways with the club's previous chief executive Andrew Fagan, who had a background in rugby union, and replaced him with Tim Silvers, Hawthorn's longtime COO. The other call was to push for the introduction of term limits on the board, to allow for continuous regeneration of the club's leadership and to head-off accusations of a 'boys' club' at Adelaide. Olsen wanted a 10-year limit, but ultimately agreed to a compromise of 12.
That meant Ricciuto's time would be up at the end of this year. He was the club's football director from 2014 after becoming disenchanted by the Crows' decision-making in the years after his playing retirement in 2007.
Ricciuto has been central to every major football appointment since: sacking Brenton Sanderson, then hiring senior coaches Phil Walsh, Don Pyke and Nicks, football department heads Brett Burton and Adam Kelly, and this year's addition of Brisbane Lions coaching stalwart Murray Davis to assist Nicks. He has since been a driver of the current rebuilding path.
But over the same decade, Ricciuto has also been a high-profile lightning rod for criticism of the club. In his morning radio gig with Triple M, the Brownlow medallist did not always respond to these barbs with measured words, and fired a few of his own at other clubs.
And while there was robust debate around the board table about the extent to which the turkeys would vote for Thanksgiving, a fresh approach to Balme, alongside former Crows utility and St Kilda list manager James Gallagher, brought reassurance that the club's football expertise would be enhanced rather than diminished in Ricciuto's wake.
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Importantly, Balme and Gallagher are running their eyes over the program of head coach Nicks, who is under contract until 2026, and will decide what else can be done to help the players make the most of their 'premiership window'. Balme, of course, has relationships with the likes of Damien Hardwick and Chris Scott, should the Crows decide they need to headhunt a premiership coach as the last piece of the puzzle.
But as multiple other clubs will attest, Balme primarily brings reassurance and a seasoned eye.
'Some of the meetings I've seen where they've had an issue they needed to fix and the way they've done that and engaged the players to come up with an answer and buy-in has been very, very good,' Balme says. 'They've got a very logical feel for how things are going, not 'if we don't play well you're a useless player, you're a useless coach'. And that's more important if you're a club like Adelaide where everyone has an opinion about you.'
Ricciuto is revered in Adelaide. He is in business with pub baron and former Crows director Peter Hurley, whom he counts alongside Chapman as his two greatest mentors. Until 2023, Ricciuto owned the iconic Alma Tavern in Norwood alongside Hurley and Crows champions Rory Sloane and Taylor Walker.
'I've always said to CEOs or chairs that I'll stay as long as I'm wanted and as long as they think I'm the best person for the job, that's all I'm interested in,' Ricciuto says. 'If term limits are going to help the football club then I'll do what needs to be done, but personally they're not the sorts of things I'm concerned about.'
But now that the club has put a limit on his tenure, he is relieved that Balme was eventually able to answer the call. So is Olsen.
'Mark's hard to replace in the context of time commitment, his absolute passion for the club,' Olsen says. 'But in bringing Neil and James in, you bring in not only Neil's footy experience and a whole raft of intellectual property he brings to the board table, but also James in a different generation that brings in a list management skill set.
'You ensure that as far as football strategy is concerned you have people well-versed and experienced being able to have an informed debate at board level where decisions are made. You could argue there's two replacing one to get that, but the simple fact is term limits give you the guardrails to ensure you put in place measures for continuity, not disruption.'
Adelaide's $2.27 billion benefactor
If Ricciuto has been the Crows' highest profile powerbroker over the past decade, its wealthiest has arisen from the most successful business in South Australia over the same period.
Darren Thomas and his father Chris are the principals of the meat company Thomas Foods International, which posted revenue of $3.29 billion last year to make it Australia's 14th largest business by that measure.
Formed in 1988, the company built up over the same period in which the Crows did. In recent years Darren Thomas has effectively taken over from club patron and Clipsal impresario Rob Gerard as the club's most important benefactor. It's no coincidence that Thomas was one of a select few invited to help turn the first sod for the club's new base at Thebarton Oval.
Thomas played for South Adelaide and Sturt, before turning full-time to the family business, of which he is now the managing director. He counts inaugural Crows Peter McIntyre, Mark Bickley and Nigel Smart among his friends from South Adelaide, and also reels off Ricciuto, Simon Goodwin, Tony Modra and Matthew Powell as close mates. He was with Goodwin when Melbourne won the 2021 flag in Perth, and attended the Melbourne coach's wedding earlier this year.
He also has links to AFL House royalty, as a friend of Gillon McLachlan and one of his predecessors, Wayne Jackson. 'We still buy a lot of Wayne's cattle,' Thomas says. 'And we provide the meat for the annual AFL lunch at Australia House in London.'
It is not uncommon for Thomas to mentor Crows players. He was introduced to James Podsiadly in 2014, becoming friends and then business partners around the creation of the AFL Max indoor facility that numerous other Crows figures also invested in. And he is a regular coffee partner of Adelaide's precision goalkicker Darcy Fogarty.
'You're just there to listen and help them think through some things,' he says. 'Going back to the early days when we were nothing and I knew nothing, I had some people who were impactful on me, who happened to come through football and my school, Westminster, some of the teachers there. So I've never forgotten those things and I like to give back.
'Darce being a country boy and knowing his family for a while, it was just a good opportunity to be a sounding ear for him. If you keep players in the right headspace, the clubs will get them to perform at their optimum.'
Sturt's Unley Oval home was named Thomas Farms Oval last year, but it is with the Crows that the family has had a national impact, starting with a small sponsorship in the early 2000s and banner advertising at Football Park, to becoming one of Adelaide's biggest sponsors, alongside Toyota.
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Thomas' commitment can be measured by how he drove 17 hours from Toowoomba, where his daughter was competing in a national equestrian competition, to Melbourne in time to watch the 2017 grand final. He is hopeful the Crows have learned the necessary lessons from that period to sustain success.
'The club's really had a good inward look at itself and said 'we've got to change the way we go about things' and we're starting to see the fruits of that now,' he says. 'It was always hard for the club to attract or retain players, so I think the club has done a wonderful job to get into a position where players want to come here.
'Having Jordan [Dawson] and others coming back to the club has been a huge benefit and could set up one of those foundations, where clubs like Geelong and Hawthorn have been able to have very good success from stable groups of senior players, which allows you to blood younger players and gives you stability.'
Tragedy and misadventure
The Crows' sustained off-field success has long competed with unwanted headlines, fluctuating on-field fortunes and an Adelaide fishbowl.
The club sat highly in the public's estimation for how bravely, openly and gracefully it handled the unfathomable tragedy of senior coach Phil Walsh's murder in the middle of the 2015 season. The off-field response, combined with a sterling performance on the park, resulted in a finals campaign fought in Walsh's memory.
Adelaide's AFLW program is the envy of the league, with three premierships to date, despite not yet having a home ground on which to play consistently.
But over the past 15 years, there has also been the Kurt Tippett salary cap scandal, the aforementioned camp and former captain Taylor Walker's racial vilification case, to name three instances where the Crows became a national conversation topic for the wrong reasons.
'Having such a supporter base, anything that happens to the Crows is newsworthy, good or bad,' Olsen says. 'That brings a focus and profile that sometimes you would prefer not to have.
'The profile builds supporter base, membership and interaction with the club, but the high profile also brings its challenges, particularly for some of the players where the 'fishbowl' is evident in their daily lives out and about in the community. That's a part of it, but it goes with the territory.
'I think it's really important to be as transparent and open as you can be. If you make a mistake, the best thing to do is to front up and explain it immediately, and cop it on the chin, certainly not to attempt to obfuscate.'
Since 2020, Adelaide's efforts to recover from the own goals of 2017 and 2018 have been slow but steady. The club now has an enviable playing list, an improving industry reputation, and is back growing its membership and supporter base after several years of dwindling numbers.
Olsen and his board have made a point of reconnecting with past players, supporters or the small and medium-sized businesses that have always been the lifeblood of SA.
Counsel is sought from a clutch of former club decision-makers, including Chapman, his former deputy Jim Hazel, Hurley and also Bill Sanders, the club's avuncular first chief executive and later its third chairman. Sanders has spent long hours working to repair the relationship between the club and Andrew McLeod, one of their greatest players.
McLeod was among the most outspoken critics in 2020, pointing particularly to a sense that Adelaide's history had been taken for granted. That is something Silvers and Olsen have worked to rectify, although the chairman says carefully that the Crows' relationship with McLeod is still 'a journey'.
Another member of the premiership group is former ruckman Shaun Rehn, who spoke frequently and at length with Olsen in the early part of his time in the chair. But, adds Olsen, 'Not recently, because I presume that therefore we've done a journey and picked up on a number of aspects that guys were disappointed about.'
Other past players spoken to by this masthead still believe the Crows can do more to connect with those who did not play in premierships or play 100 games or more. Sam Jacobs leads the past players' group, with premiership captain Bickley as his deputy. 'There's not that tribal connection you see at other clubs,' one player says.
Nonetheless, Balme's appointment has offered cause for optimism. He is a figure synonymous with smart decisions, care for players and staff and premiership success. It has taken a long time to get there, however.
'If I gave advice to future chairs, avoid rebuilds,' says Olsen, who plans to retire from the board in 2027. 'They are long and they are painful and you've got to work your way through it. I remember Rob Chapman sending me a text when we had a really good win, he said 'enjoy the moment, because it will make up for all the others you'll go through'.'
Ghosts of Football Park
Max Basheer, the long-serving SANFL president, has penned a memoir of his decades in football that will only be published after he dies.
One nugget Basheer has offered up already is how he effectively secured the creation of the Crows in September 1990 with cold, hard cash. He promised to hand the league's then-chief Ross Oakley $1 million in the AFL's bank account within days of a secret meeting at the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne.
The speed and the secrecy were necessary because Adelaide's creation came as a result of Port Adelaide's own attempt to join the AFL by stealth a couple of months earlier – after years of talks about an SA-based VFL/AFL team had got nowhere. A court injunction by SANFL clubs succeeded in stalling Port's bid, but it was Basheer's speedy use of the league's bank account that truly kicked off the Crows.
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That 1990 saga was the starting point for a rich rivalry between Adelaide and Port, but it also underscored how much the Crows were considered to be the SANFL's baby. Independence from the state league, a more focused club identity and even a base to truly call home were elusive for decades, largely because of those origins.
It is also why when the AFL, the state government, Port Adelaide and the South Australian Cricket Association began scheming for a way to get football back to Adelaide Oval, the Crows were initially left out of the loop, and spoke for some time about not leaving Football Park until they got the best possible terms.
All parties – even Basheer – now accept that the Adelaide Oval redevelopment was a multimillion-dollar revelation. Not only did it save Port from insolvency but helped the Crows to grow, also attracting previously unseen levels of interstate interest, personified by Gather Round.
Even so, the move came with financial machinations that were added to the case, often made by Port supporters and others, that the Crows are not a 'real club'. In moving home games from West Lakes to Adelaide Oval, the SANFL handed over the licences for the two clubs to the AFL, which held them as security for the Crows and Power to pay a fee back to the state league.
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Until that fee is paid off in 2028, the AFL owns the licence and theoretically has the right to veto club board appointments and other major decisions. That has led to claims that the Crows are the plaything of AFL House. But Olsen stresses work is under way to turn Adelaide into a more traditional, membership-based organisation when the final payment is made three years from now.
'At that point, the licence held by the AFL and their one voting member returns to us and we will then look at the constitution,' Olsen says. 'We're a club that's never reached out for mendicant funding from the AFL, always stood on our own two feet, and in this whole period the AFL has never rejected a board member or any decision the Adelaide Football Club has taken in regard to its governance structure.'
The Crows' new home at Thebarton– a $100 million development partly funded by donors including the Thomas family in addition to $40 million in state and federal money – will mark the completion of a journey from SANFL invention to fully realised independence.