ike2112

Roar Rookie

Joined July 2020

Views

Published

Comments

Published

Comments

ike2112 hasn't published any posts yet

I think the intial hit from Covid won’t put Saints under pressure, purely because a move to Tassie would require an initial outlay which the AFL just wouldn’t have right now.

Finnis said St Kilda debt was 8m four years ago and they got severe warnings over getting it reduced. It was increased to 12m at start of this season! Now granted some of that was because they got agreement to get Moorabbin done, but at a time when the club wants to be spending and contending more on the field through recruiting and building a better off-field facility and staff… we also need to tighten the purse strings. The club had 30% less staff than Hawthorn for example, and has been under the cap for 4 years (way under 2yr ago), yet is still spending too much to balance the books. That’s not good, because in that same period the club has had record numbers of members sign up! So where’s the extra income going to come from? They’re not strangled by the Marvel stadium deal any more so that’s good, but there’s no real way to increase income other than increase membership fees, but those tend to be fairly level across the comp. Saints just don’t have the benefactors that other Vic clubs have (neither do North) – as much as the inequalities of the old VFL have been addressed in the draft etc, the income streams is still inequitable.
Add on top the covid issue and economic depression – as recession hits over the 5 years to follow, there’s lot of factors to consider. We’ll have less staff. We’ll cut the list – and that probably affects the Saints worse than others because our drafts 2011-2016 were terrible so we actually need some of the current youngsters on the list to develop and kick on; instead some will be delisted without a decent crack this year.

Honestly I am really worried about my Saints and where they’ll be by 2026 or thereabouts.

Four burning questions for St Kilda ahead of the AFL restart

View Comment

AFL

2020