What’s the first thing you noticed when the draw was released for 2025?
It’s a fair bet that the eye-popper for most Saints fans was the fact that three of St Kilda's first five games were to be played in Adelaide, but imagine what it’s like when you have just hopped off a small ship on the Saturday morning of a game, suffering from seasickness, and you win two games in three days in the Croweaters’ capital.
Racking up frequent flyer points today is a vastly different scenario to the Saints' first venture to South Australia way back in 1877. In fact, the Saints were just the second Victorian team ever to head to SA, only pipped by Melbourne who played there a week earlier.
In that year St Kilda was one of the clubs who formed the Victorian Football Association which would be the controlling body of football until the VFL was created 19 years later. The trip to SA was a big deal, a real big deal. In their fifth year of existence the Saints had their share of problems, getting a reputation for turning up late in dribs and drabs. When they journeyed to Williamstown there were only 12 men on the field at start time before others drifted in one by one. Then in a match against Melbourne the slow arrivals wandered onto the field, and when the team scored its first goal just before half-time it was discovered they had 22 men on the field rather than the legal 20.
The pundits declared St Kilda had no hope of winning its pioneering games in Adelaide because it had been thrashed by a South Melbourne junior side the previous week.
Despite many players feeling the effects of seasickness - their ship the SS Aldinga had only arrived on the morning of the game - St Kilda disposed of Adelaide by five goals to two in front of a big crowd that included such dignitaries as the acting Governor, the Mayor of Adelaide and the Anglican Archbishop of Adelaide, wearing the the red and black hoops that the Saints will wear against the Giants at Norwood Oval for Gather Round this season.
A brass band started the day and once they left the field the man at the centre of the action was Saints captain Tom Riddell. Said to be a 'hard-working and energetic captain who used great judgment in placing his team to the best advantage', the 25-year-old Riddell was at the peak of his sporting powers and two days later he led the Saints to another win over a combined team of South Australian-born players by seven goals to two.
Tom Riddell had a rich and varied life as firstly a judge’s associate, then a stock agent, commission agent and was aide-de-camp to three Victoria Governors. He enlisted in the Victorian Mounted Rifles when it was feared that there would be a Russian invasion to steal Victoria’s gold reserves. He later commanded the Australian Light Horse Regiment.
On that August 1877 day in Adelaide he was reported to have barked orders to his footballing troops right to the end of each game.
Riddell’s father had been the first settler on a patch of land 45 kilometres north east of Melbourne which we now know as Riddell’s Creek.
And Tom Riddell left his mark on the St Kilda footy map by creating a little piece of history 148 years ago.
