Adelaide Crows. The Crows also signed former Bloods Bruce Lindner (Geelong) and Mark Mickan (Brisbane) who under the rules of the time, were automatically allocated back to their former SANFL club. West Adelaide, which has earned a reputation amongst its fans as being "consistently inconsistent", would win through to their next grand final in 1991. After a slow start to the season under the coaching of former (VFL) premiership player Kevin Morris, the team won nine of its last eleven games to reach the finals in fifth place. With young players such as leading goal kicker Greg Mellor, full forward Tony Modra, and best and fairest Peter Banfield playing alongside returning experienced veterans such as captain Leon Grosser (who would miss the Grand Final through injury), Glenn Goss, as well as Mickan and Lindner (who while playing for the Adelaide Crows in the AFL, had played enough games with West through the season to qualify for the finals), West easily defeated three-time defending premiers Port Adelaide by 89 points in the Elimination Final before winning the First Semi against Woodville-West Torrens (a new team formed through the merger of West Torrens and Woodville at the end of 1990) by 60. They then defeated a determined South Adelaide by 21 points in the Preliminary Final and would then come up against North Adelaide, a team they had not beaten since Round 17 of the 1985 season. Despite the Roosters squad having far more finals experience than West, the in-form Bloods were rated an even chance to beat the Roosters who were playing in their fifth Grand Final since 1985. In the week leading up to the match there were rumours around Adelaide that Westies were going to "go the biff" in a bid to unsettle the Roosters and in front of 39,276, the smallest SANFL Grand Final crowd since the 1950s, the game became a spiteful affair with many brawls erupting between opposing players following Norths Steven Sims knocking out Wests Matthew Simpson early in the second quarter (it was alleged after the game that Sims had hit Simpson, not to knock him out but to stop his overly close tagging of North's Darel Hart). From that point on, West tended to forget about playing football and seemed more intent on punishing Sims, who finished the game with his right eye badly swollen and requiring 5 stitches. West Adelaide may have