FlyingHigh wrote:Pseudo wrote:therisingblues wrote:Yep, it's true. My mum grew up around Thebarton and both her brothers were Torrens boys. She doesn't like footy at all but she used to get excited when Torrens had a home game because the streets around the oval would become choked with cars and foot traffic. The stories I used to hear seemed out of place growing up in the footy atmosphere of the 80's which was all Port, Norwood, Glenelg and Sturt, but clearly there was a different rege back then and Torrens were a club of influence. I imagine there'd have been thousands of sleeper supporters who would've stormed back in droves if the Eagles success was actually solely Torrens's and not amalgamated with Woodville.
Insofar as it is possible to storm anywhere on a gopher or other mobility assistance device. Not having a go, just saying that most of Torrens' latent support would be of the age where gathering around the wireless in the day room would be preferred to actually attending a game.
True now, but 20 years ago if the 50-60 year olds (at the time) kept going, it may have kept the next generations going along too.
Out of the merger, the one disappointment is, given our reasonable on-field success and over the last 15 years what seems good off-field set-up, we haven't been able to keep even a middle-of-the-road supporter base.
That's right.
Torrens won their last flag in 1953, capping off a 30 year period in which they won 4 flags (1924, 1933, 1945, 1953) the era was also peppered with magarey medals for the Eagles and one of their players (Neil Hawke) captained the Australian cricket side. Their location in the burgeoning Adelaide inner western suburbs and their appreciable record through the era must have contributed to a massive following.
In 1962 a record attendance at Thebarton of 20,832 turned up to see Torrens and Norwood play out a draw. The timing of this attendance would suggest that quite a few younger baby boomers had joined the ranks of their parents and grandparents bonded to the club through the earlier decades of individual and team success. Their record attendance at Adelaide Oval was 48,755 in 1948, again vs Norwood. I think what they had by the early 60's was the desirable situation of families following the club through the generations, encouraged by their elders and the prospect of more success.
I'd imagine some of those more impressionable baby boomers were siphoned off by more successful clubs in the 70's and 80's but the majority would have been simply not attending. My uncles would have been in their 20's in the 60's, by the time of the 1993 Eagles premiership they were early to mid 50's. I'm guessing there'd have been a few thousand baby boomers in their early teens at the 1962 blockbuster vs Norwood, I'm estimating a few thousand nostalgia driven Torrens fans in their mid 30's getting their kids out to yell for Torrens, just like the good old days. Under other circumstances the 1993 Eagles flag could indeed have resurrected the massive sleeping population of Torrens fans throughout SA.
I think we have a situation comparable to the 1998 Sturt resurgence and the thousands of Sturt fans standing in the terraces in all their old gear.
But as was pointed out, Torrens amalgamated with Woodville in 1990, and the sheer impact that a Torrens only revival would've had was greatly reduced.