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St Kilda is finding it difficult to contain a balance of youth players that they have on their list with older club champion players.
The problem for the people involved with the club is being able to satisfy their older players in the twilight of their careers, but to also get games into their young players.
Especially considering the likelihood that the older players that will stay with the Saints will not have another go at winning a premiership.
This list development problem arose during the Lyon era, where poor team management and future planning took place for short term success.
The Saints between 2007-10 recruited poorly and played an almost “moneyball” scheme to win a premiership, rather then develop young players like Geelong.
St Kilda involved themselves in trading away early draft picks for older middle age players, which sounded like a good idea to plug holes in the list at the time, but the Saints are paying dearly for it now.
Getting serviceable players like Farren Ray to the club was handy, but they are not players that are going to break a game apart.
After not winning a premiership, it seems like this scheme has left Saints fans with more heartbreak, especially following Lyon’s departure as he knew the Saints were going to go downhill.
Not all is lost. The Saints are starting an ambitious plan to stockpile youth in the next few years, to fast-track its attempt at another flag within the near future.
While this is painful for some and it has already involved the loss of a club favourite in Ben McEvoy, these are the tough decisions that the Saints need to make if they are to climb back up the ladder.
The important part of this process is respectfully looking after your veterans – players like Nick Dal Santo, Leigh Montagna and Nick Riewoldt – as they need to be around to look after the next generation of players coming through.
You don’t want to have a diabolical situation like Melbourne where all their leaders left the club around the same time, leaving the young players with no one to guide them.
What will be hard for the Saints is keeping players like Dal Santo, who will want another tilt at the premiership. Using Brian Lake as a classic example, his career was stalling at the Dogs before he was traded to the Hawks.
He ended up winning a premiership and then going on to win the Norm Smith for best on ground. His departure wasn’t a popular decision among Dogs’ fans, but it allowed them to play more youth in their side and blood a young defender.
As for Saints coach Scott Watters, the Saints don’t want to continue their history of sacking coaches. Watters is more then capable of taking the Saints into the next era.
His approach to discipline is something that the Saints need following a run of off-field controversies which resulted in both Andrew Lovett and Jason Gram being sacked by the club.
This trade period will be an integral part of the future ambitions of the St Kilda Football Club and no doubt there will be some difficult decisions made by the footballing department.
These decisions will be tough and I don’t envy them one bit.
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