Media Speculation on AR's Future

[Sanctorum]

Matthew Lloyd (Channel 7) raised speculation about Alan Richardson's future as St Kilda coach after the loss to the Lions yesterday, confirming that if the Saints win a finals game this year that AR's contract will be extended for 2020.

It is no surprise that following the woeful performance by the team yesterday, Saints supporters are increasingly vocal in their demands that AR has to go, and now! There is no question that the current status of 6 wins/7 losses belies the true state of the 2019 Saints: the team is simply not playing well, and certainly on current form it is hard to see where their next win is going to come from, because all of their upcoming games are against sides that are playing a much better brand of football, viz Melbourne and Carlton who will be much harder to beat than when they played in the first half of the season.

It will be interesting to see how the club responds to the increased pressure on AR from the football media - in the post-match press conference AR quite rightly dismissed the mounting noise levels about his position from members and the media, and you'd expect him to do that. But senior management and the club board will equally likely be raising questions about the way the team is performing, and given the way the other 2 teams that replaced their senior coaches this year have responded positively, they may well decide to go down that same path in the near future.

The team that lined up against the Lions yesterday had given us all hope that they would be able to notch another win - it was an 8-pointer, win and the Saints would remain in contention for a spot in the 8. Instead, the Lions easily outclassed the Saints and it was the way that they lost that is going to damage AR's hold on his job. Yesterday's team was far more capable than that, so I am coming around to the view that if the club is not going to extend AR's contract for 2020 then it makes sense he should make way now, rather than eke out the rest of the season with a succession of poor performances.

If nothing happens this week, then surely next Sunday's game against Richmond, the annual "Maddies Match", should be the decider as far as AR's future is concerned.

[degruch]

I was sure he was going at the end of the season regardless, now I'm starting to wonder what damage will be done if we don't get rid of him sooner. It looks to me as if he has little to work with this week and we'll probably end up with much the same team facing Richmond...if he can't get them to extract a digit for Maddies and turn things around, I'm sure its a sign the team has little confidence in our current coaching structure and the club needs to make a statement. If we continue to get belted by 10 goals plus, given our easy draw, I fear worst case scenario, we'll start to go into a Fitzroy death spiral. Lets face it, the team that played the first 4 rounds should have won yesterday and continued on to win another 5-6 for the rest of the season...surely injuries can't be blamed for everything?

[samuraisaint]

There are four games I am very, very concerned about and they are:
North Melbourne in Tas
Geelong at Geelong
Adelaide in Adelaide
Sydney at the SCG

They all have the capacity to send our club backwards for many years to come.
I still believe that we will 3 more games for the season and take us to 9 wins for season 2019.
BUT I think that all four of these matches have 1979/1985 calamitous potential (older supporters will know what I mean by this).

[Saint 58]

I know what you mean
But all through the 80’s they had a crack
We were no where near good enough but occasionally they played well enough to win a game against a top side
May sound silly but it was more fun watching the Saints then than it is now