1995 Sturt Football Club season

1995 saw the Sturt Football Club set a number of unwanted South Australian National Football League records:

• The first (and to date only) team in the VFL/AFL, SANFL or WAFL to finish with a 0–22 record
• The first team in the VFL/AFL, SANFL or WAFL since Fitzroy and Central District in 1964 to finish with a winless season
• The furthest a team in the VFL/AFL, SANFL or WAFL has ever been from winning a game: not once did the Double Blues come within four goals of their opponents at the final siren
• A seventh consecutive wooden spoon, beating St Kilda’s VFL record from 1897-1902 and Woodville's SANFL record from 1980-85
• Finished seven games behind second-last placed Woodville-West Torrens,^[1] equaling St Kilda’s VFL record from 1902

Background

The Sturt Football Club experienced a long-term decline following a record 1978 season that saw the team win a SANFL record 21 of 22 games,^[2] but then lose the 1978 Grand Final by the narrowest of margins to Norwood. The Double Blues fell from minor premiers to ninth of ten clubs in 1979,^[3][4] and although they recovered to make the Grand Final in 1983 with Rick Davies kicking a then-SANFL record 151 goals,^[5] after the controversial sacking of Mervyn Keane at the end of a 1988 season that had seen the club rise from second last to finalists and apparently to potential premiership contenders, the club went into free-fall under the coaching of Davies in 1989. That season the Double Blues won only four games and towards the end as their on-field performances deteriorated the off-field strife that had seen Keane sacked recurred, with Davies resigning after Glenelg beat them by 132 points in the final match.

A succession of coaches failed to lift the Double Blues off the bottom of the table: the team won only sixteen of 106 games between 1990 and 1994,

After an attempt to merge with Norwood and enter the AFL was rejected, Phil Carman, a former VFL star originally from Edenhope, took the reins on a three-year contract for 1995 after having been Sturt’s fitness coordinator.^[7] Nevertheless, the Double Blues’ inexperienced list almost never threatened any of its opponents and by mid-season it was clear that a win was unlikely^[8] and results became even worse later on; for instance, in a game against West Adelaide regarded the previous week as Sturt’s "best chance for a win this season",^[9] West Adelaide, when two goals ahead at quarter time, set a goal of keeping the Double Blues goalless on a rain-soaked Adelaide Oval in the last three quarters and succeeded.^[10]

Schedule and results

Aftermath

Following the 1995 season, it appeared certain that Sturt would not be able to survive for 1996 – indeed the 1995 players began training as soon as the horrific season finished,^[29] under uncertainty as to where they would be playing in 1996.

On 9 October 1995, a merger plan with North Adelaide was officially launched and the general public expected it to go through quietly,^[30] but a major membership drive^[31] to raise the $250,000 needed to keep the club afloat was a surprising success: in the following two months, the Double Blues’ membership rose from seven hundred to two thousand,^[30] and as Unley councillor Phil Sanders had feared, the merger with North did collapse.

Sturt were also able to engage in significant recruiting for the first time since the off-field strife of 1988 and 1989, acquiring twice