Adelaide Crows Football Club
The Adelaide Football Club, commonly referred to as the Crows or the Adelaide Crows, were formed in 1990, and played their first competitive match in the AFL (Australian Football League) in 1991.
Owned by the SANFL (South Australian National Football League), the Crows were the first AFL team from South Australia, and were part of the VFL/AFL’s expansion with new teams across Australia.
We believe that the football club’s official nickname comes from the term croweater, a term used to refer to South Australians.
According to the State Library of South Australia, from the Register dated February 6, 1925, the term croweater “was first applied to some of the original settlers at Mount Barker who – whether from necessity or a desire to sample strange native fauna – killed, cooked and ate some crows disguised under the term ‘Mount Barker pheasants’… Later the term… was applied generally to all.”
Additionally, the term croweater may have initially referred to West Australians, not South Australians.
And, as an interesting aside, the crows found in Adelaide are actually all Australian ravens or little ravens. Both ravens and crows, though, belong to the genus corvus.