"I arrived at Norwood in 1994 after being delisted from Fitzroy when Glen Rosser chased me down and signed me up. Neil Craig was my coach then for the next two years and he played a huge part in turning me from a forward into a running backman. As far as I'm concerned he really improved my game, I really rated him as a coach and he can take a lot of credit for Norwood winning the 1997 flag with a lot of the things he put in place and the juniors he blooded. Everything about my move to Norwood was positive especially coming from Fitzroy. It felt like a more professional club and certainly like a more financial club as we saw when Fitzroy folded a few years after. I suppose I started at Norwood with the aim of getting back into the AFL but during my first year there I realised this was my new home. I went over for one year and stayed for ten, that's how much I loved the place.

I think the season in 1996 had a lot to do with us winning the flag next year. A lot of people have said that the Preliminary Final that year was one of their worst footy memories and it was made even worse for me by being injured and sitting on the sidelines. I remember just watching from the side and realising that the season was over and there wasn't anything I could do about it. But the whole season next year had just one outcome that was ever going to happen, us winning the premiership. The only time I doubted it was in the last quarter against Centrals in the prelim and I thought 'wouldn't this be shocking if they pulled it out of their arse and won it?'. But when Macca belted Stewy Dew, which cost him the Grand Final, it stopped their momentum because Dew was hurting us. Macca won't admit it but he probably thought to himself it might cost me my spot but if I get to stop this bloke we'll win.

We didn't lose too many games in 1997, maybe only three. One thing that not a lot of people know is that when the State team, which had about ten Norwood players in it, was flying back from Canberra after we won and we had the likes of Scott Lee telling us that they'd pretty much accepted that Norwood had it in the bag that year. 'Just take the flag now' and those kinds of comments. I know we're all mates playing in the state game but you never, ever give the opposition that kind of lift or ammunition. I remember thinking then that the other teams in the competition looked at us and knew that they couldn't beat us. It was a great team we had that year, strong all over the ground with an absolute stack of AFL games to their credit with people like Jarman and Brett James. Running through the midfield that year we had Macca, Jars, Rowey, Harvey, James, Thiessen and Obst. That's a group that could look after itself anywhere let alone the SANFL. Up forward we were more than handy and the backlines were a pretty tight unit as well, we really didn't have too many weaknesses that year.

We bombed out in the 1998 finals series but in 1999 we had that amazing run from the Elimination Final and found ourselves in the Grand Final. Then we found ourselves leading at the twenty five minute mark of the last quarter only to have the guts ripped out of us by Phil McGuiness who everyone hated. He kicked a goal out of his arse after spending all day hearing footsteps and jumping at shadows and then he turned out to be the hero. I know Lenny Pascoe still beats himself up about not marking the pass from Roger James but I have honestly never heard a louder crowd than that day and he probably just didn't hear the Port guy behind him.

I don't really know why Norwood has never been able to string flags together. One thing that never really came out was that after 1997 everyone at the club assumed that Andrew Jarman was going to retire. He was keen to play on but no one at the club ever actually asked him to. If they had worked hard on him he probably would have played another year. Maybe winning the flag in '97 was such a relief for the club they never really stopped and thought 'we've got one but how do we keep going'? If the board were planning for success one of the first things they should have done was to try and get Jars to play another year. The fact that they didn't approach him suggested they weren't planning for long term success.

I honestly believe that one of Norwood's main problems through the nineties was that we hated Port too much. Instead of trying to outdo Port by being completely different we probably should have tried to copy them a bit more, like Centrals have done. Don't get me wrong I hate Port and can barely stand saying the name but the thing is you have to admire them. We got there in '97 because we had so much talent but if we had a bit more ruthlessness about us maybe we wouldn't have dropped off the year after. There's a lot made of Norwood's values but do they win premierships? Someone once told me that the club would prefer Norwood to keep its standing in the community at a high level rather than the team winning flags. I remember thinking at the time how honourable that was but aren't we here to win premeierships?

We have to face up to it, the fact that the club has only won two flags in nearly twenty five years is underachieving. Norwood is a great club and though most of this time we've had all of the resources to win many more but what it hasn't had is the indefinable commodity that Port had and Centrals have now. We might have won flags on sheer talent but these clubs have won things when they clearly weren't the best side."

Dale Fleming

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