Australian Football

South Adelaide’s games record holder with 337 appearances, Stuart Palmer was rarely in the headlines, but often in the best player lists, during his 17-season stint with the persistently under-achieving Panthers.

Born in the northern English town of Nelson, Palmer moved with his family to Australia when aged five, and, having made his way through the club’s junior ranks, made his South Adelaide league debut in April 1969, shortly before his 18th birthday, when he came off the bench in the second term to register a goal with his first kick in league football. The fact that South’s opponents that day were Port Adelaide, and the venue Alberton, made the achievement even more meritorious, and when Palmer booted four goals from centre half forward the following week he was immediately hailed as a star in the making. 

At season’s end, he won a media award for the best first year player in the SANFL. “I would have preferred to make an honest start and build a reputation,” he later confided, recalling how his career subsequently stalled for a few years before, under the astute coaching of Haydn Bunton junior, he, along with South Adelaide, re-emerged as a force during the second half of the 1970s.

Under Bunton, the 193 cm, 86 kg Palmer demonstrated his versatility, playing in a number of positions, including full back in the 1979 Grand Final, one of only two premiership play-offs contested by the Panthers since the Second World War.

A spectacular high mark and excellent reader of the play, Palmer was a regular member of South Australian interstate training squads during the late 1970s and early ‘80s, but made just one appearance, against Queensland in 1980. He was South Adelaide’s skipper for three seasons, from 1982 to 1984.

Author - John Devaney