St Kilda is in trouble.
In the corporate world there is probably little worse than reaching the final year of a plan for success and realising that you are further away from that success than when you started. The plan for the Saints was to make finals in 2018 and win a premiership by 2020.
It was a very good plan, and It still is a good plan, just with some minor hiccups. The major one is that a team that was meant to be playing finals ended up third-last on the ladder with only four and a half wins for the entire season. That’s down from 12 wins and missing the finals on percentage in 2016 and 11 wins and missing finals by a game in 2017.
Maybe the plan wasn’t so good after all, or maybe something was missed along the way.
For comparison, this season was worse than 2013, the year Scott Watters was sacked; only half a game better than 2014, when St Kilda won its last wooden spoon and the ‘road to 2018’ plan was launched; and two games worse than 2015.
The club has to ask itself: did it overperform in the previous two seasons and did 2018 show the true nature of where it’s at or was this season simply a blip that can be fixed with a little bit of work around the edges next year?
Unfortunately it’s looking very much like it’s the former, and the Saints have a lot of work to do to before they even think about getting into finals.
Is the coach the problem? Possibly, but Alan Richardson alone cannot be blamed. The failures of recruiters to identify talent and the apparent failures in the alignment with Sandringham have meant that players are not coming on as fast or as well as expected. These are not the fault of Richardson alone.
(AAP Image/Joe Castro)
While the calls to sack Richardson have been growing louder week by week, St Kilda’s history is littered with stories of sacked coaches and the belief that all problems with the club can be solved with a new coach. History has taught us again and again that this is nonsense.
Richardson must stay on and must be given experienced assistants to work alongside, something that’s thankfully already happening with Brett Ratten and Brendon Lade joining the coaching ranks. But will this result in a miracle recovery? Probably not, and this might result in a problem for Richardson early next season.
The player cull and cleanout has already begun, and it looks as though it is going to hurt many fans. Already club favourites Hugh Goddard and Nathan Freeman have gone, raising questions about why other players are still on the list. The fact is, though, that St Kilda’s incredibly poor draft position this season – at the moment it has Pick 3 and then no other picks until the Pick 57 in Round 4 – means that the club will have to trade hard and extract all value that they can from players.
It looks as though very few players will be safe, and that is probably as it should be after this season. Certain underperforming players have not been delisted purely because they may have some trade value. There will be plenty of player movement at Linton Street yet, and it’s going to hurt.
As for the board and the president, for once it looks as if they are taking responsibility for the team this year, with Peter Summers stepping down and the board restructuring itself.
Questions have been asked of CEO Matt Finnis, probably unfairly considering the position the club was in when he took over and where it is now, but with Simon Lethlean having free rein to investigate every aspect of the club, no-one’s position can be considered ‘safe’.
(AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)
It’s an unfortunate fact of St Kilda’s history that a stable executive and a successful team do not often coincide. When the Saints were rising under Grant Thomas the board was in chaos and the president by his own admission was not always in a fit state of mind. His antagonism of Thomas saw the coach sacked.
Under Ross Lyon, at the point when the club should have been raking in money from the team’s performances, the board seemed to be asleep. Failures in negotiation led to the team shipping out to an undersized and unliked facility in Seaford, and the board’s inaction and laziness saw Lyon walk out of the club.
Unfortunately, now that the board is stable and competent, the team’s performance has dropped considerably.
This off-season shapes up as one of the most important in St Kilda’s recent history. The club stands at the crossroads – in the last 20 years they have ‘won’ only two wooden spoons, competed in six finals series and gone as close to winning a premiership as you can possibly go without winning one.
Membership is at record levels, there is stability in the boardroom and there is an orderly and clean transition between presidents. The facilities at Moorabbin appear to be at an AFL standard and have returned the club to a place where supporters can gather. The team is no longer the laughing stock it was for much of its history. But how quickly that can change.
St Kilda cannot return to the dark days. Barring a miracle, a premiership by 2020 is impossible. But hope must return to Moorabbin. The ‘road to 2018’ was misdirected, but at least it was a vision. Now comes the time for a new vision.
There are no excuses for this season, but there will be no forgiveness from fans, players or the AFL if next season turns out the same way.
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