Blight bags Thomas in Biography by Watson

[SaintPav]

GT wasn't the best listener and only paid only his assistants lip service. According to a very senior offcial (ex), when things went pair shaped in the last quarter of the 05 prelim, GT turned to Nathan Burke and asked him something like: "what are you doing about the backline" to which Burkey replied something like: "well, you haven't listened to me all year, ya not about to start litening to me now". Burkey resigned soon after that game.

[The Fireman]

GT was good for StKilda..Blight wasn't end of story.

[Spinner]

GT wasn't the best listener and only paid only his assistants lip service. According to a very senior offcial (ex), when things went pair shaped in the last quarter of the 05 prelim, GT turned to Nathan Burke and asked him something like: "what are you doing about the backline" to which Burkey replied something like: "well, you haven't listened to me all year, ya not about to start litening to me now". Burkey resigned soon after that game.

Holy s***!

[InkerSaint]

People who make it to afl coach, get there for a reason....

For all Blight's flaws and culpabilities he is entirely justified in his criticism of Thomas' appointment... that you dispute it simply betrays your bias in the debate.

[Johnny Member]

GT wasn't the best listener and only paid only his assistants lip service. According to a very senior offcial (ex), when things went pair shaped in the last quarter of the 05 prelim, GT turned to Nathan Burke and asked him something like: "what are you doing about the backline" to which Burkey replied something like: "well, you haven't listened to me all year, ya not about to start litening to me now". Burkey resigned soon after that game.

Burke should have been f****** sacked on the spot if that's what he said in the last quarter of a Prelim final.

Jesus.

[Johnny Member]

People who make it to afl coach, get there for a reason....

For all Blight's flaws and culpabilities he is entirely justified in his criticism of Thomas' appointment... that you dispute it simply betrays your bias in the debate.

I tend to think that history has been re-written a bit - or at the very least some things have been conveniently forgotten.

Blight was sacked, with 7 weeks to go. We were a mess, and Thomas was appointed as caretaker coach. I thought, and still do, that that was fair enough.

He performed really well. Really, really well it could be argued.

On-field, we improved and nutted the Hawks in the last game of the season with a goal after the siren - that win may have been justifcation on it's own to have the Board thinking that maybe he did have a clue and could guide the team. The team had found passion and a spark - and showed that they could play too.

But aside from that, he did really well in the face of all the s*** we were copping off-field. No one knew who he was and bagged him for that, the media and public had him painted as the 'Brutus' of the footy world, and our club was looking down the barrell of disaster with players looking to get out and members were irate. Thomas pretty much copped it all himself, and in a way guarded the club from it.

His handling of all that stuff, I think, definitely made him the best person to take over the job at that time in the off-field sense.

Remember as well, that there was the common theme out there that you'd have to be off your nut to want to coach the St. Kilda Footy Club.

So really, who else could have got the job? Who'd have wanted it! And who'd have been an obviously better choice than Thomas, considering that he'd done well during the last 2 months of the prior season?

So I don't think it was as clear cut as some bloke walking in off the street and getting the top job for no reason at all.


Anyway, it's history. I think the history books should be pretty clear cut in relation to his legacy. But for some reason, they're far from it!

[BigMart]

As above.....

Also

Had grant had any other coaching experience....experience in the afl box...

Warnambool, north melbourne, old xavs, st kilda.... Plus he played in the caper for nearly ten years and was a state rep...

It is made out as if was a complete novice.....

Voss and hird are novices....

[meher baba]

GT wasn't the best listener and only paid only his assistants lip service. According to a very senior offcial (ex), when things went pair shaped in the last quarter of the 05 prelim, GT turned to Nathan Burke and asked him something like: "what are you doing about the backline" to which Burkey replied something like: "well, you haven't listened to me all year, ya not about to start litening to me now". Burkey resigned soon after that game.

A "very" senior former official? So that's presumably going to be one of "Mr Integrity" Brian Waldron, Jim Watts (who seems to have arranged to have his son drafted to the club), Archie Fraser (stabbed everyone in the back left, right and centre and then went off to soccer where his true worth was recognised in about 5 minutes), or that profound mediocrity Sheldon. Or perhaps you mean Butterss? He'd be a reliable source, wouldn't he?
I heard Burke interviewed on the radio in 2006 and he said GT was good to work for and an underrated match day coach. At that stage Burke wasn't directly associated with the club in any way. Why did he lie?

[SainterK]

Didn't Thomas look at appointing Lyon as an assistant at some point?

Now that would of been interesting

Thomas like anyone, had his positives and negatives.

It isn't until I have watched him in the media that I have fully appreciated his great sense of humour, I can actually see why he would of endeared himself to the playing group, he seems a merry kind of guy.

He also seemed to be able to motivate, in a sense that players would push themselves (perhaps further than they should of at times) to make him proud. IMO this worked in his favour, and also against him at times.

He still seems to have alot of contempt towards other 'services' within a footy club, I think he was too simplistic in his approach towards if a player was truly 'right' to go.

He also appears to still place alot of emphasis on the intensity and being up on match day, above preperation, again this is just my read.

I only harbour resentment towards him in regards to playing guys that probably shouldn't of played, if this is misplaced, please correct me.

[BigMart]

I applaud gt for a lot of his cutting edge ideas, which initially he was mocked for....until 'worthy coaches' adopted.

Some were a success
Bottom oit rebuild, measuring kpi's wrt to effort and intensity, community camps, overseas camps, leadership groups...a lot of his ideas were about developing players character and attitude to footy..

Some i did not like
Rotating captaincy...worth a shot to develop, but put undue pressure on some young stars.

Robert harvey (c), aaron hamill, andrew thompson, lenny hayes, max hudghton, steven powell .... Should have been the leadership group, until
Nick R, Luke Ball, sam Fisher, Brendon Goddard were ready.

He is disliked by other clubs, no doubt, because many other club officials, coaches were annoyed about, firstly his appointment, then his success.....getting beat by an amatuer coach, annoyed them....

And of course the afl hated his guts, still do....

[Moorabbin Man]

With all due respect to GT who I respect as a passionate St Kilda person and a fine man manager, but not a patch on Stan, Blight or Ross as a coach. The sacking of Blight was one of the biggest knee jerk c**k ups in the history of our club.
In regard to Harvey, Burke and Loewe (all great champions of our club), Blight quite clearly denies there was an intention to move Harvey on and says he was a champion. In regard to Loewe and Burke, the question he would have asked himself was: will they be in our next Premiership side? The clear answer would have been NO. He had kids such as Riewoldt and Kosi etc to get games into and the thought of moving Loewe and Burke on wasn't completely heinous, far from it.
That knee jerk decision, probably due to some influential people at the Club (the same idiots that were bleeding because they couldn't sack Stan in 97 because we made the GF), cost a premiership or two between 2003-2007.
GT had a far superior list than Ross and blewn it. In addition to our current core, he had Gehrig at the peak of his powers, Aussie Jones, Heath Black, Andrew Thompson, Frankie Peckett, Stephen Powell, Brent Guerra and Kosi as a gun. Imagine what Blight would have done and we probably would have kept Barry Hall and Spider Everitt to boot.
A lamentable episode in our history, opportunities squandered, let's hope not for ever and we've learnt to keep our heads.

[saintsRrising]

GT's man management skills were his top strength, .

Bollocks....I think way too many people mix up contract negotiations with actual man management

Young impressionable players...who on the whole were quite low picks is the basis of this ill-considered myth.

Virtually any player with issues....which actually would be ( and was) a true test of "man management" skills.

In this regard GT was a dismal failure.

Everitt: could not handle him
Hall: could not handle him
Guerra: could not handle him
Beetham: wasted talent

I won't count Lawrence as he was a nutter....

If Everitt and Hall had been kept at the club we would probably have won a flag.

And expert "man manager"....who can forget the infamous "Exit him out" strategy for Banger. Ill-conceived, embarrassing to all and just down right wrong in execution and timing. A point GT brooded on when after he left he made the remark that he had "seen the signs" the year earlier when Banger had a quiet NAB Cup...to only have Banger come out and star in the H&A.

[Leo.J]

I remember back in 2004 GT began what appear to be the some of the first midfield rotations.

He was rotating the likes of Andrew Thomson, Frankie Peckett, and Stephen Powell off the bench.

From memory they more or less played a half or a third of a quarter each, keeping these older guys fresh. They would come on like impact players.

Imo it prolonged these guys careers.

[asiu]

There are a number of anti-GT obsessives

and quite a strong mob of anti anti-GT obsessives i'm glad to see.

gotta luv a thread about grant yougod thomas.

i'll save the rest for later reading.
(hopefully , after the purple prince turns up)

fair dinkum.

[Austinnn]

GT unfairly regarded as an ameteur failed coach, St Kilda laughed at as a joke club SHOCKER!

People have traditionally loved to have a pop at Grant Thomas, from the days of that c**k with the beard who kept on refering to GT as 'Cornflakes' (Patrick something) right up to the present day people saying that he didn't win anything, so he must have been s***. It's nonsense and it's all from the insecure agenda of wanting to keep St Kilda down.

People liked the funny old Saints, with our Social Club and our colourful characters and our loser culture, entertaining for them to watch us stuff up time and time again, the way people laugh at homeless people getting drunk and falling over. They're not so keen on the Modern St Kilda Football Club, one with the 'delusions of adequacy', one that actually might embarrass their team, or - heaven forbid! - actually end up surpassing them. This is proven time and time again by rabid supporters of rival clubs who continually wait for us to slip up; any little mistake is pounced on fervently and held up and pointed at maniacally to prove that we are still the Rabble from Morrabbin and we always will be LOL!

Grant Thomas - and Rod Butterss - did more than Malcolm Blight ever could have to turn us from rabble to a respectable feared football team. Maybe all the good stuff could have happened anyway, maybe someone else could have done a better job, but who?

Don't forget that in 2001 St Kilda were still a very small club in terms of our value to the AFL; similar to North and Bulldogs, just in front of the recently merged Fitzroy. We had little money or memberships, decrepid facilities in an unfashionable outer suburb of a city that everyone was convinced could no longer house all 9 football clubs. The smallest were fighting for survival in the face of expansionism and pragmatism.

Our team had potential, but were still abjectly underachieving. We had recently surrendered our home advantage at Waverley Park and had come off a disasterous Wooden Spoon year after winning 2 and a half games all season with failed and sacked coach Tim Watson (coincidentally, author of this current book), then comically and desperately given a lot of money to a football legend to kindly help us, only to sack him within weeks.

We were a joke, and as was widely touted at the time, no respectable coach would have taken that job. After the Blight experiment, it was plain to see that we wouldn't get anywhere with people who didn't have a vested interest in the club, and there weren't many people in the football community who gave much of a s*** about St Kilda, those that did had either been out of the game for decades or were recently sacked and damaged.

Blight didn't give a s*** about the club, didn't take his well-paid job seriously, got found out and humiliated. The best thing he did for us was help to bring in Hamill, Gehrig, and so on. He probably would have bailed out himself and pissed back off to the Gold Coast in a year anyway, not before destroying the club.

I'm sure I remember reading that GT was a Manager of an insurance firm before he got involved with the Saints, and he brought that approach into the club. He copped it from everywhere when he took the job; for being underqualified in terms of not serving an apprenticeship as an assistant, and for his approach, which was a world apart from the insulated outdated bubble of football coaching, a world that Blighty seldom left.

GT and Butterss were old Saints who still loved their club and were successful outside the football world. They brought in people like them to get their club some respect.

Off-field, they strengthened the connections with inner suburbs like St Kilda and Brighton, brought a lot more money in, and at a time where everyone was desperately claiming that 10 Vic teams could never survive, they put money into marketing, significantly increased our membership and made us more fashionable and respectable. They worked hard on bringing club legends back to the club. Neil Roberts, Cowboy Neil and even Allan Jeans got involved, Jeans' support of GT helping him at least get a chance from the faithful in the face of widespread derision.

Part of the deal with getting the genteel moneyed folk of the inner suburbs signed up was changing the club culture, from the players to the staff. A key requirement with all draftees was that they came from 'a good family', and that their moral compasses all pointed in the right direction. While guys from other clubs were getting in the papers for a wide variety of wrong reasons, apart from Milne & Montagna, and Gehrig being a boofhead, I think we kept our whistle pretty clean.

On-field, GT brought business-style process and accountability to the Saints, he saw his role more in line with the English Premier League manager, an attitude that ultimately signed his death warrant. He was ruthless with people who would never bring the club forward, like Capuano, he wasn't afraid to go against tradition, with the captaincy, player flexibility, rotation, his attitude to ruckmen and the defensive forward and all-over defensive strategy, (Tackles and hard-ball gets were focused on a lot more than before). Despite that, his teams were built to attack, with hard running midfielders and 2 or 3 tall forwards at the sharp end. If Hamill and Kosi had been on the field a bit more, GT may have won us a premiership and set up more. His ideas were laughed at heartily by the nearly all the media and opposition, but people are a bit more open to things like that now.

GT took a bunch of top level draftees, mixed them with some hardened veterans, turned us into a regular finals team, got to within a whisker of the GF a couple of times, got some of our record wins, built a great team.

He wasn't the finished article, and neither was his St Kilda. He made plenty of mistakes. He was probably sacked at the right time. His attitude towards the club post-sacking hasn't always been helpful and often selfish.

Nevertheless, he WAS the right man at the right time, and I don't think he was a poor coach.

Sadly, Thomas was never accepted by the wider football community, even if he succeeded in winning the support of hacks like Mike Sheahan and Mark Robinson, who'd previously had little positive to say about the club.

ULTIMATELY, and this is perhaps the key point of this long-winded post, most outsiders are happy to see St Kilda fail - just have a look at the bitter comments left by smug tossers in the SMH article about the book...

http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/gran ... 1h4rq.html

But they are just inscure fools. Blight is still embarrassed, and afronted. That's no surprise. As big a football brain as he has, he will never accept that Grant Thomas did a good job. He doesn't have the humility or the guts. Ask other people who know about footy, and are impartial. They'll tell you he was alright. Me, I'm very happy with the job GT did, and the team he coached was great to watch.

[saintsRrising]

There are a number of anti-GT obsessives

and quite a strong mob of anti anti-GT obsessives i'm glad to see.

gotta luv a thread about grant yougod thomas.

i'll save the rest for later reading.
(hopefully , after the purple prince turns up)

fair dinkum.

GT was very good for the Saints...but then he got a job he should never have had an lied about the process.


GT along with Butterss , Kellet and a number of others made a huge difference for the Saints and turned the club around. Well done to all on this.

Pity was that GT did not stick to Boardroom.

[dragit]

GT unfairly regarded as an ameteur failed coach, St Kilda laughed at as a joke club SHOCKER!

People have traditionally loved to have a pop at Grant Thomas, from the days of that c**k with the beard who kept on refering to GT as 'Cornflakes' (Patrick something) right up to the present day people saying that he didn't win anything, so he must have been s***. It's nonsense and it's all from the insecure agenda of wanting to keep St Kilda down.

People liked the funny old Saints, with our Social Club and our colourful characters and our loser culture, entertaining for them to watch us stuff up time and time again, the way people laugh at homeless people getting drunk and falling over. They're not so keen on the Modern St Kilda Football Club, one with the 'delusions of adequacy', one that actually might embarrass their team, or - heaven forbid! - actually end up surpassing them. This is proven time and time again by rabid supporters of rival clubs who continually wait for us to slip up; any little mistake is pounced on fervently and held up and pointed at maniacally to prove that we are still the Rabble from Morrabbin and we always will be LOL!

Grant Thomas - and Rod Butterss - did more than Malcolm Blight ever could have to turn us from rabble to a respectable feared football team. Maybe all the good stuff could have happened anyway, maybe someone else could have done a better job, but who?

Don't forget that in 2001 St Kilda were still a very small club in terms of our value to the AFL; similar to North and Bulldogs, just in front of the recently merged Fitzroy. We had little money or memberships, decrepid facilities in an unfashionable outer suburb of a city that everyone was convinced could no longer house all 9 football clubs. The smallest were fighting for survival in the face of expansionism and pragmatism.

Our team had potential, but were still abjectly underachieving. We had recently surrendered our home advantage at Waverley Park and had come off a disasterous Wooden Spoon year after winning 2 and a half games all season with failed and sacked coach Tim Watson (coincidentally, author of this current book), then comically and desperately given a lot of money to a football legend to kindly help us, only to sack him within weeks.

We were a joke, and as was widely touted at the time, no respectable coach would have taken that job. After the Blight experiment, it was plain to see that we wouldn't get anywhere with people who didn't have a vested interest in the club, and there weren't many people in the football community who gave much of a s*** about St Kilda, those that did had either been out of the game for decades or were recently sacked and damaged.

Blight didn't give a s*** about the club, didn't take his well-paid job seriously, got found out and humiliated. The best thing he did for us was help to bring in Hamill, Gehrig, and so on. He probably would have bailed out himself and pissed back off to the Gold Coast in a year anyway, not before destroying the club.

I'm sure I remember reading that GT was a Manager of an insurance firm before he got involved with the Saints, and he brought that approach into the club. He copped it from everywhere when he took the job; for being underqualified in terms of not serving an apprenticeship as an assistant, and for his approach, which was a world apart from the insulated outdated bubble of football coaching, a world that Blighty seldom left.

GT and Butterss were old Saints who still loved their club and were successful outside the football world. They brought in people like them to get their club some respect.

Off-field, they strengthened the connections with inner suburbs like St Kilda and Brighton, brought a lot more money in, and at a time where everyone was desperately claiming that 10 Vic teams could never survive, they put money into marketing, significantly increased our membership and made us more fashionable and respectable. They worked hard on bringing club legends back to the club. Neil Roberts, Cowboy Neil and even Allan Jeans got involved, Jeans' support of GT helping him at least get a chance from the faithful in the face of widespread derision.

Part of the deal with getting the genteel moneyed folk of the inner suburbs signed up was changing the club culture, from the players to the staff. A key requirement with all draftees was that they came from 'a good family', and that their moral compasses all pointed in the right direction. While guys from other clubs were getting in the papers for a wide variety of wrong reasons, apart from Milne & Montagna, and Gehrig being a boofhead, I think we kept our whistle pretty clean.

On-field, GT brought business-style process and accountability to the Saints, he saw his role more in line with the English Premier League manager, an attitude that ultimately signed his death warrant. He was ruthless with people who would never bring the club forward, like Capuano, he wasn't afraid to go against tradition, with the captaincy, player flexibility, rotation, his attitude to ruckmen and the defensive forward and all-over defensive strategy, (Tackles and hard-ball gets were focused on a lot more than before). Despite that, his teams were built to attack, with hard running midfielders and 2 or 3 tall forwards at the sharp end. If Hamill and Kosi had been on the field a bit more, GT may have won us a premiership and set up more. His ideas were laughed at heartily by the nearly all the media and opposition, but people are a bit more open to things like that now.

GT took a bunch of top level draftees, mixed them with some hardened veterans, turned us into a regular finals team, got to within a whisker of the GF a couple of times, got some of our record wins, built a great team.

He wasn't the finished article, and neither was his St Kilda. He made plenty of mistakes. He was probably sacked at the right time. His attitude towards the club post-sacking hasn't always been helpful and often selfish.

Nevertheless, he WAS the right man at the right time, and I don't think he was a poor coach.

Sadly, Thomas was never accepted by the wider football community, even if he succeeded in winning the support of hacks like Mike Sheahan and Mark Robinson, who'd previously had little positive to say about the club.

ULTIMATELY, and this is perhaps the key point of this long-winded post, most outsiders are happy to see St Kilda fail - just have a look at the bitter comments left by smug tossers in the SMH article about the book...

http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/gran ... 1h4rq.html

But they are just inscure fools. Blight is still embarrassed, and afronted. That's no surprise. As big a football brain as he has, he will never accept that Grant Thomas did a good job. He doesn't have the humility or the guts. Ask other people who know about footy, and are impartial. They'll tell you he was alright. Me, I'm very happy with the job GT did, and the team he coached was great to watch.

Great post, for all his flaws he really loves the club and gave his all. Not many coaches get the sack after 3 years straight of finals. He really was a better manager than coach and could have benefited from a really seasoned senior assistant (though he may have not listened to a word!)

[bigcarl]

GT unfairly regarded as an ameteur failed coach, St Kilda laughed at as a joke club SHOCKER!

People have traditionally loved to have a pop at Grant Thomas, from the days of that c**k with the beard who kept on refering to GT as 'Cornflakes' (Patrick something) right up to the present day people saying that he didn't win anything, so he must have been s***. It's nonsense and it's all from the insecure agenda of wanting to keep St Kilda down.

People liked the funny old Saints, with our Social Club and our colourful characters and our loser culture, entertaining for them to watch us stuff up time and time again, the way people laugh at homeless people getting drunk and falling over. They're not so keen on the Modern St Kilda Football Club, one with the 'delusions of adequacy', one that actually might embarrass their team, or - heaven forbid! - actually end up surpassing them. This is proven time and time again by rabid supporters of rival clubs who continually wait for us to slip up; any little mistake is pounced on fervently and held up and pointed at maniacally to prove that we are still the Rabble from Morrabbin and we always will be LOL!

Grant Thomas - and Rod Butterss - did more than Malcolm Blight ever could have to turn us from rabble to a respectable feared football team. Maybe all the good stuff could have happened anyway, maybe someone else could have done a better job, but who?

Don't forget that in 2001 St Kilda were still a very small club in terms of our value to the AFL; similar to North and Bulldogs, just in front of the recently merged Fitzroy. We had little money or memberships, decrepid facilities in an unfashionable outer suburb of a city that everyone was convinced could no longer house all 9 football clubs. The smallest were fighting for survival in the face of expansionism and pragmatism.

Our team had potential, but were still abjectly underachieving. We had recently surrendered our home advantage at Waverley Park and had come off a disasterous Wooden Spoon year after winning 2 and a half games all season with failed and sacked coach Tim Watson (coincidentally, author of this current book), then comically and desperately given a lot of money to a football legend to kindly help us, only to sack him within weeks.

We were a joke, and as was widely touted at the time, no respectable coach would have taken that job. After the Blight experiment, it was plain to see that we wouldn't get anywhere with people who didn't have a vested interest in the club, and there weren't many people in the football community who gave much of a s*** about St Kilda, those that did had either been out of the game for decades or were recently sacked and damaged.

Blight didn't give a s*** about the club, didn't take his well-paid job seriously, got found out and humiliated. The best thing he did for us was help to bring in Hamill, Gehrig, and so on. He probably would have bailed out himself and pissed back off to the Gold Coast in a year anyway, not before destroying the club.

I'm sure I remember reading that GT was a Manager of an insurance firm before he got involved with the Saints, and he brought that approach into the club. He copped it from everywhere when he took the job; for being underqualified in terms of not serving an apprenticeship as an assistant, and for his approach, which was a world apart from the insulated outdated bubble of football coaching, a world that Blighty seldom left.

GT and Butterss were old Saints who still loved their club and were successful outside the football world. They brought in people like them to get their club some respect.

Off-field, they strengthened the connections with inner suburbs like St Kilda and Brighton, brought a lot more money in, and at a time where everyone was desperately claiming that 10 Vic teams could never survive, they put money into marketing, significantly increased our membership and made us more fashionable and respectable. They worked hard on bringing club legends back to the club. Neil Roberts, Cowboy Neil and even Allan Jeans got involved, Jeans' support of GT helping him at least get a chance from the faithful in the face of widespread derision.

Part of the deal with getting the genteel moneyed folk of the inner suburbs signed up was changing the club culture, from the players to the staff. A key requirement with all draftees was that they came from 'a good family', and that their moral compasses all pointed in the right direction. While guys from other clubs were getting in the papers for a wide variety of wrong reasons, apart from Milne & Montagna, and Gehrig being a boofhead, I think we kept our whistle pretty clean.

On-field, GT brought business-style process and accountability to the Saints, he saw his role more in line with the English Premier League manager, an attitude that ultimately signed his death warrant. He was ruthless with people who would never bring the club forward, like Capuano, he wasn't afraid to go against tradition, with the captaincy, player flexibility, rotation, his attitude to ruckmen and the defensive forward and all-over defensive strategy, (Tackles and hard-ball gets were focused on a lot more than before). Despite that, his teams were built to attack, with hard running midfielders and 2 or 3 tall forwards at the sharp end. If Hamill and Kosi had been on the field a bit more, GT may have won us a premiership and set up more. His ideas were laughed at heartily by the nearly all the media and opposition, but people are a bit more open to things like that now.

GT took a bunch of top level draftees, mixed them with some hardened veterans, turned us into a regular finals team, got to within a whisker of the GF a couple of times, got some of our record wins, built a great team.

He wasn't the finished article, and neither was his St Kilda. He made plenty of mistakes. He was probably sacked at the right time. His attitude towards the club post-sacking hasn't always been helpful and often selfish.

Nevertheless, he WAS the right man at the right time, and I don't think he was a poor coach.

Sadly, Thomas was never accepted by the wider football community, even if he succeeded in winning the support of hacks like Mike Sheahan and Mark Robinson, who'd previously had little positive to say about the club.

ULTIMATELY, and this is perhaps the key point of this long-winded post, most outsiders are happy to see St Kilda fail - just have a look at the bitter comments left by smug tossers in the SMH article about the book...

http://www.smh.com.au/afl/afl-news/gran ... 1h4rq.html

But they are just inscure fools. Blight is still embarrassed, and afronted. That's no surprise. As big a football brain as he has, he will never accept that Grant Thomas did a good job. He doesn't have the humility or the guts. Ask other people who know about footy, and are impartial. They'll tell you he was alright. Me, I'm very happy with the job GT did, and the team he coached was great to watch.

Agree with pretty much all of that. Well said.

How long have you been doing GT's public relations?

[SaintPav]

GT wasn't the best listener and only paid only his assistants lip service. According to a very senior offcial (ex), when things went pair shaped in the last quarter of the 05 prelim, GT turned to Nathan Burke and asked him something like: "what are you doing about the backline" to which Burkey replied something like: "well, you haven't listened to me all year, ya not about to start litening to me now". Burkey resigned soon after that game.

A "very" senior former official? So that's presumably going to be one of "Mr Integrity" Brian Waldron, Jim Watts (who seems to have arranged to have his son drafted to the club), Archie Fraser (stabbed everyone in the back left, right and centre and then went off to soccer where his true worth was recognised in about 5 minutes), or that profound mediocrity Sheldon. Or perhaps you mean Butterss? He'd be a reliable source, wouldn't he?
I heard Burke interviewed on the radio in 2006 and he said GT was good to work for and an underrated match day coach. At that stage Burke wasn't directly associated with the club in any way. Why did he lie?

I can't verify that it was said becuase I didn't hear it with my own ears and the person who told me wasn't any of those that you have mentioned. According to this bloke, GT was a control freak and had his own agenda which was GT incorporated. He was pretty pissed off with him becuase he had brought him onto the board in the first place and he was trying to run the whole joint. Maybe the source had his own agenda..Who knows. If it was true, I think Burkey would be dumb to bag his former employer in public. He was probably being diplomatic which is human nature.

[SaintPav]

GT was good for StKilda..Blight wasn't end of story.

Blight was a bum at St Kilda.

[Enrico_Misso]

Well said Austinn.
Great piece of context.

There is no question in my mind that the infamous GT/RB meeting during that infamous Round 12 1999 debacle against Hawthorn saved this football club.

Whilst they ultimately didn't get the ultimate prize,
and it ended in tears for both of them.
there is no doubt that their legacy is a modern professional club equipped for the 21st century.

[Austinnn]

Thanks Dragit, Bigcarl and Enrico.

Yeah, I can understand outsiders laughing at GT, they'll never have a bloody clue how important he was to us.

But it amazes me when our own supporters forget where we were in 2000 and where we were in 2006 and how that transition occured. Personally, I'll always be grateful, no matter all the fall-out later.

Not that GT is faultless, we all know his faults. Still rather have him than Terry Wallace, or some of the other nearly-men touted as vastly superior by morons. Imagine him as Manager with Ross Lyon as Coach, if they could work together as a team and not tried to dominate.

Not a publicist for GT, though, no!

[SaintPav]

Thanks Dragit, Bigcarl and Enrico.

Yeah, I can understand outsiders laughing at GT, they'll never have a bloody clue how important he was to us.

But it amazes me when our own supporters forget where we were in 2000 and where we were in 2006 and how that transition occured. Personally, I'll always be grateful, no matter all the fall-out later.

Not that GT is faultless, we all know his faults. Still rather have him than Terry Wallace, or some of the other nearly-men touted as vastly superior by morons. Imagine him as Manager with Ross Lyon as Coach, if they could work together as a team and not tried to dominate.

Not a publicist for GT, though, no!

Do you really think that GT could take a back seat in anything to do with St Kilda? I don't think that relationship would have worked very well.

[Verdun66]

Austinnn's post is right on the money. And I think we moved GT on at the right time. The job was going to kill him sooner or later, and getting the Football First lot in got us further up the scale in terms of professionalism. RL and Misson have moved us on so much that we are unrecognisable from 5-6 years ago.

Saints infighting has always been the achilles heel of the club, and I hope we always see loyalty and a measured response to any crisis from now on.

[I Love Peter Kiel]

Some very good posts here, like Austinn.

The point is...hindsight is a wonderful thing!
The fact is I've loved all 'my' Saints coaches from the 'Swamp Fox' Mike Patterson onwards so for the purpose of this post I'll restrict myself to the year 2000 onwards.

I don't really understand the draft and trades but from what I know, we obviously got the no.1 draft pick and we managed to trade to get Gehrig and Hamill for the 2001 season with new coach Blight.
We won the first game, but from then on things didn't go to plan. I think in '01 no one said anything about 'tanking' and having patience to build a list. we wanted everything NOW.
More recently, look at Melbourne and Carlton...they basically 'tanked' for two or three years to get draft picks.

Maybe if we'd had more patience and given Malcom a couple of years...who knows?
He obviously had an old-school Barassi style of relating to players...he called one of his Crows, Pittman, 'pathetic'.

Should we have 'moved on' Loewe and Burke? Burkey was really losing it in the last few years. It worked for Blight at the Crows...unceremoniously dumping home-grown heroes like McDermott.

The other factor is...we don't know whose toes Blight had stepped on at the Saints.
It's generally accepted that he was burnt out in '99 at the Crows and embittered.

A side benefit of the lack of success in '01 and '02 was high draft picks...which helped build the side of '03-'06 and some of those guys were still on the list in '09/'10,

Anyway, once the decision was made to get rid of Blight I reckon GT did very well. I don't think we would have attracted a high-profile coach at that time anyway.