CARLTON’S links with South Australia’s leather hunters can be sourced to the old colonial days of the VFA – to 1887 when the-then Adelaide footballer Edward Melling and Norwood’s George Christian Australasia Coombe stood in for a touring Carlton team which was two men short for an exhibition match with Port Adelaide.

Today, the two Durdins in Corey (Central Districts) and West Adelaide’s Sam, North Adelaide’s George Hewett and Sturt’s Lewis Young do the old dark Navy Blue guernsey proud - and as South Australian natives they also fly the flag for the many who came before.

In the 125 years of League football competition, no fewer than nine South Australians have savoured Grand Final glory across the border at Carlton – the first of them West Adelaide’s George Bruce, one of only 11 men to have featured in each of the club’s hat-trick of premierships under Jack Worrall’s watch - 1906, ’07 and ’08.

Another was North Adelaide’s Norman ‘Hackenschmidt’ Clark, the 1899 Stawell Gift winner, who not only savoured Carlton’s ultimate on-field successes of ’06-’08 as a player, but also coached the Blues to their Grand Final triumphs of 1914 and ’15.

Fast forward almost three quarters of a century, to the second of the back-to-back Carlton premiership teams coached by David Parkin, and there you’ll find both Robbert Klomp (Sturt) and Phil Maylin (Woodville) – teammates in that 1982 triumph.

The all-conquering Carlton team of 1887 on tour in Adelaide.

Klomp was also part of the ’79 Grand Final victory, while Maylin featured in the first leg of the back-to-back wins in 1981.

Carlton’s 375-game record holder Craig Bradley (on the back of 98 at Port Adelaide) and its leading career goalkicker with 738 Stephen Kernahan (ex-Glenelg) sweltered through Grand Final day to take the 1987 trophy - and who could forget the late South Adelaide rover Mark Naley’s barnstorming goal in that one?

Bradley and Kernahan were also part of the demolition of Geelong on that last Saturday in September 1995 – a match in which Woodville’s Scott Camporeale and Glenelg’s Andrew McKay also featured.

At game’s end, just as he had done some eight years before, Kernahan as captain raised the cup.

Had fate not cruelly intervened, Sturt’s Peter Motley would almost certainly have featured in those aforementioned Grand Final victories of 1987 and ’95.