Former Adelaide Crows captain Mark Ricciuto has opened up about the infamous brawl between Crows and Power players at the Ramsgate Hotel back in 2002.
Ricciuto was on the Saturday Rub yesterday on Triple M and spoke of some details about the night, setting the scene for the brawl that was to follow.
โIt was the day after (the round 5 2002 Showdown) actually, and Port had had the edge on us for a while, and we went down to Henley Square, which is quite a good area of Adelaide to celebrate Simon Goodwinโs 100th game,โ Roo said.
โWeโd lost another one (Showdown) and they were getting on top of us a little bitโฆ it was a bit of a long Sunday afternoon.
โWe were down at a restaurant and theyโd run out of booze, so we sent one of the blokes Benny Nelson over to the Ramsgate bottleshop to get a few more bottles of wine.
โHe came back and said โthe Port boys are over at the Ramsgate!โ and someone said โwe better go over there.โ
โI said โif we go over there, make sure we donโt back outโ.โ
โWe went over there and we were half done by that stage, obviously werenโt thinking straight.
โOne thing led to another and next thing instead of 300 people being inside the Ramsgate, there were 300 people outside the Ramsgate and thereโd been a bit of shenanigans go on.โ
Ricciuto said not everyone that followed him to the Hotel was involved, but most players knew exactly what they were in for.
โThere was reports of someone hiding under a table, there was reports of someone hiding in the rose garden across the road,โ Ricciuto said.
โBut as you know when you do get in a blue youโre not too worried about what else is going on, youโre concentrating on the job at hand.โ
Along with the Brownlow Medallist the other main player in the fiasco was Port Adelaide's Josh Carr, but Ricciuto said there's no bad blood between the pair.
โHonestly in the end, on the night and at the time it was fairly full on but looking back it was a bit of a fun,โ Roo said.
โIโve had a few chats to Carry since and we didnโt speak for probably a year or two afterwards, but when youโve finished up and look back on it itโs a bit of fun.
โYou probably donโt see it happening too much these days, things have changed a bit.โ
Ricciuto also recalled a hilarious phone call the club received in the days following the incident.
โOne of the funniest things was we had a supporter ring up the club on the Monday or Tuesday after the blue," Ricciuto said.
"They said โlook I donโt care that the captains leading the players astray, I donโt care that weโve lost the Showdown, but Iโve got a bloody Mercedes with a dent in the bonnet and all I want is it to be fixed!โ
