1975 season

[smithy]

That premiership table encapsulates the notion of The Big Four - Norwood, Glenelg, Sturt and Port.

I remember a journo stating a figure during grand final week when North played West in 91 that it was the 1st time that one of the big 4 wasn't involved in a GF for 40 odd years.......

[spell_check]

Well, all the Grand Finals since 1898 (including the deciding matches before 1931) to not have included one of the above mentioned four teams are (with winning team on the left)
1900: North South
1902: North South
1927: West North
1949: North Torrens
1991: North West
2000: Central Eagles
2001: Central Eagles
2003: Central West
2004: Central Eagles
2005: Central Eagles
2006: Eagles Central
2007: Central North

And out of those years, the third placed club was also not one of the four:
1900: Torrens
1991: South
2003: Eagles
2006: North
2007: Eagles

And finally, the closest the finals have come without either team, with the fourth placed team named:
1991: Eagles
2006: South

But as I said before, there is only a "Big 1" nowadays.

[spell_check]

There has always been at least one of those four clubs in the finals, these are the years where three missed out:

1922: Port, Sturt, Glenelg
1927: Sturt, Norwood, Glenelg
1949: Glenelg, Port, Sturt
1963: Norwood, Sturt, Glenelg
1991: Glenelg, Norwood, Sturt
2004: Port, Glenelg, Norwood
2006: Glenelg, Norwood, Sturt

And all four clubs comprise of the most common final five combination (three times), with West Torrens being the other club.

[am Bays]

In those days it was usually windy at Football Park due to breezes coming off the coast and the arena not being surrounded by stands as it is today. The previous year, Sturt also hung on into a stronger breeze in the final term to defeat Glenelg.

Glenelg had played enough footy at the Park to know how to cope with the windy conditions, they were simply outplayed. A lot was made of Fred Phillis' inability to kick goals but Jim Michalanney kicked a purler of a goal from the right forward pocket to demonstrate how it could be done.

100% agree. As I said previously I wasn't there or old enough to understand but everything I've read and heard was that we were just beaten by a better team. No complaints from me but one of the 3 GFs I put down as opportunity wasted (1981 and 1990 are the other two) and that problem is our own making.

[robranosgod]

After 1976, all four teams competed in the same finals series in the following years: 1977, 1978, 1980, 1982, 1988, 1999.

Final five in 77 was Port, Norwood, West Glenelg and South, Sturt finished 7th IIRC

I think, I've corrected the Master....

You didn't need to edit your post, you deserve it.

Didn't the 'Big Four' term really get kicked along by Daryl Hicks, when he went to Centrals, and kept saying how he wanted to smash the big four control of the finals. To be honest, I always took it mean the numbers of Grand Finals and premierships claimed by the four clubs from the mid 60s through to early 80s. After West and South won flags in the early 60s, you only had North win a couple in the early 70s, and play in another to break the monotony if you didn't barrack for Glenelg, Sturt, Norwood or Port. Those four clubs kept on appearing on the last day pretty much every year, bar the one appearance from South in 79, until Westies saluted in 83.

But Doug Thomas always referred to the Big 5, and included North. Thus he was able to boast that West were the first premiers in almost 20 years from outside the big 5.