West Adelaide SC
association football club in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
West Adelaide Soccer Club is an Australian soccer club currently playing in National Premier Leagues South Australia. Traditionally named Hellas, the club was founded by members of the Greek community of Adelaide. West Adelaide became a founding member of the National Soccer League in 1977 and a year later became the first Adelaide team to be crowned national champion when it won the 1978 National Soccer League after a 1–1 draw in the final round match with Adelaide City in the local derby.
One of the most successful clubs in South Australia, West Adelaide competed in the national league for 19 seasons, interrupted briefly by two short periods in which it was relegated back to state competition. In the late 1990s, the club renamed itself the Adelaide Sharks in an effort to attract support beyond its traditional base in the Greek community. At the end of the 1998–99 National Soccer League season, the club was overcome by financial turmoil and entered administration. West withdrew from the national competition, and its senior arm declared bankruptcy. The club's juniors legally separated from the club and remained afloat.
In 2007, West Adelaide fielding senior teams in the South Australian competition once again. West gained promotion to the second tier in 2012 and returned to the top tier a year later, winning its first South Australian championship in 2015.
The public source identifies “West Adelaide SC” as association football club in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around West, Adelaide and association.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “West Adelaide SC”, the useful work is to connect “association football club in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2185176. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1978, 1998 and 2007.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “West Adelaide SC”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow West Adelaide SC primary sources, West Adelaide SC archive and West research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “West Adelaide SC” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.