Our History

This section of the website contains a great deal of information about the Club’s glorious history. It is maintained by the History Committee.

The History Committee

In an attempt to improve the Club's existing website in 1999, it was discovered that the Club's holdings of historical photographs and other memorabilia were not properly stored or catalogued. To address this issue, it was suggested that the Club set up a committee to undertake this work.
The Board approved the establishment of a History Committee in March 2000 and its inaugural meeting was held on 31 May 2000. The role of the Committee was laid out at this time - interestingly, it has subsequently been reviewed and is virtually unchanged :

Role

Catalogue all historical material held by the Club.
Develop standards for resolving the authenticity of historical records.
Investigate and resolve particular questions which the Board may refer to it.
Record the history of the Club faithfully and accurately.
Advise the Club on storage and maintenance of its historical records.
Provide advice on displaying photos and memorabilia.
Plan and develop suitable displays of the Club's history.
Where appropriate, seek funding to facilitate establishment of displays.
Assist with the preparation of historical material for publication (eg on the website, in special publications etc).

Achievements

The main difficulty in those embryonic days was to work out what to tackle first. But priorities were developed and slowly things began to take shape. As the work of the Committee became better known more members joined and progress accelerated. The major achievements of the Committee to date have been :

Establishing a database to record details of the Club's memorabilia collection and then cataloguing and storing all memorabilia to archival standards
Scanning the Club's photographic collection to archival standards
Producing books :

North Adelaide's Greatest (about our Team of the Century)
North's Record-Making Year (the story of the 1952 premiership year)
Never Say Die (the story of the 1960 premiership year)
Power, Guts and Glory (the story of the 1987 premiership year)

Acquiring the Farmer collection of scrapbooks and trophies
Mounting two exhibitions :

Legends (featuring Barrie Robran and Ken Farmer)
Fabulous Forwards (featuring Darren Jarman, Grenville Dietrich, Dennis Sachse, Don Lindner, Ron Phillips and Ken Farmer)

Organising functions to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our 1952 premiership, the 45th anniversary of our 1960 premiership, the 100th anniversary of our 1905 premiership and the 20th anniversary of our 1987 premiership
Establishing the Legends Room at the Club (featuring displays of all of our premierships, photographic tributes to Robran and Farmer, the Magarey Medal bar, Honour Boards and a datashow of images of the Club's history)
Producing and installing an explanatory plaque next to the Reedman Memorial next to Adelaide Oval
Completing and displaying membership badges throughout our history
Researching, documenting and displaying jumper designs used by the Club
Recording interviews with past players and officials

Current And Future Work

As well as the ongoing collection, cataloguing and storing of memorabilia, the Committee has the following goals for the next 2 to 3 years :

Completion of a Games and Players database, recording details of every match played by the Club and every player who has represented the Club
Establishing suitable archiving procedures for preserving all film of SA football
Collecting video of all matches involving North
Digitisation of the Club's Annual Reports to produce a searchable document
Establishment of a NAFC Hall of Fame

The Committee

The current members of the Committee are listed below with their main areas of responsibility to provide a guide to the kind of work in which each person is involved. There are, however, many areas in which several members contribute to the outcome.

Alan Mead

Scans photographs and negatives and stores and archives images

Alan Phillips

Digitises Annual Reports and the Farmer scrapbooks to enable them to be made accessible

Barry Dolman

Chairman of the Committee
Management of historical displays at the Club (subject to funding and Board approval)
Negotiate archiving of all film related to NAFC
Enter player details in the Games and Players database
Project management of the NAFC Hall of Fame