While the Adelaide Football Club is still pondering a move to its as-yet-unspecified new digs, its existing HQ at West Lakes needed a clean-up last weekend, after a young player doing his best to be diligent inadvertently found himself in a disaster movie of Hollywood proportions.

Consider this scenario.

A young Crows SANFL development player took the opportunity to put in a bit of extra-curricular training last Saturday, while much of the rest of the club’s focus was on the AFL team’s impending capitulation to the Giants at Adelaide Oval.

The young fella in question – whom the club has not identified – was having a kick in an upstairs room at the Crows’ West Lakes training facilities.

However, one particularly ambitious mis-kick inadvertently flew roof-high, in the process knocking the head off a fire sprinkler.

Disaster (and, depending on one’s perspective, hilarity) ensued.

Suddenly, water was gushing everywhere.

Insiders say the entire building runs off the same circuit, so to the petrified player it would have looked like a Biblical flood (not to mention his professional life) was flashing before his eyes.

To make matters worse, it’s understood the sprinkler also tripped a fire alarm – the club confirmed that a local MFS unit turned up on site.

Suddenly this enterprising young lad’s harmless kickabout had turned into a full-scale emergency response.

Meanwhile, the rest of the building was empty, with the kid pondering what to do next.

He managed to raise his team manager, who also attended – to find the young player frantically dragging over wheelie bins to place strategically under the geyser.

Evidently he was expecting an imminent spray of a different sort – but fortunately there was no lingering damage, other than to the player’s pride.

Still, the synthetic grass might have needed some TLC for a few days.

While all this was going on, a disaster of similar magnitude (but somewhat less hilarity, in this reporter’s humble opinion) was playing out on the field at Adelaide Oval.

Fingers crossed for avoiding disaster both on and off field this weekend.

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