Do the Saints have a messiah complex?

[Austinnn]

Bear with me as I’m just thinking this through myself. I think one of the prevailing stereotypes about St Kilda - from both insiders and outsiders - is that we have historically relied on star players to pull us through. When you think back to the teams around our most feted players, this theory does seem to carry weight. Barker, Lockett, Harvey, Loewe, McNamara, Riewoldt, etc.

It’s no doubt a consequence of being a perennially poor club and having to use up the bulk of our resources on one or two players, and pay pennies to the rest of the squad. Nonetheless, I remember when Grant Thomas was in the process of building the team, his key message was that he was assembling a champion team, rather than our historically-favoured model of a team of champions. I thought that was a great concept and it did nearly work.

When I read ppl on here talking about some of our players like they are sacred cows, I wonder if that attitude hasn’t been holding us back through time. Many Saints fans react with white knuckle fear and wailing despair when faced with personnel changes.

Robert Harvey - and to a lesser extent Stewart Loewe - was the first ‘messiah’ in my Saints experience. The mere whisper that either of those two were being traded or sold would have hundreds of members reaching for their memberships with one hand, holding a lighter in the other. I wasn’t around for Plugger’s time at the Saints, but I remember Hall and Everitt being difficult amputations also. It’s rare to build a love for a player and greet the sight of him kicking goals in an opposition guernsey with indifference or positivity. It speaks to the very heart of us, the fear of rejection and the suspicion that we are not good enough. The Saints history only validates this feeling or at least amplifies it. This is mirrored from the scorn or disgust at the club from opposition forces, and it’s easy to feel insecure when the world is telling you that you are a rabble for letting a particular star leave, like women who gossip unkindly about one of their sisters who can’t keep a man.

There are two problems I have with revering one particular player, or even a small group, one is a football reason and the other a psychological reason. I’ll explain the football one first.

Most people agree that it’s poor for a team to be too one-dimensional; it makes it easy to predict and therefore prepare against. We got stuffed in the 97 GF cos no one expected Ellen to bob up and snag 5 goals - ironically, that may never have happened if their messiah Tony Modra had been in the side - whereas Blight neutralised Loewe by putting 3 crows on him, knowing we didn’t have the depth to find other avenues. We were predictable, because we had no depth. We’d invested all our energy in using our stars effectively that when Joel Smith and Spida got injured, we were caught short. And that was when we had a team almost full of very good players. It also allows other players the luxury of not needing to up their game, a point which I will develop later.

I’m sure you can think of plenty of other examples of teams that have been held back by their reliance on one player, especially these days when we really need a team effort 100% of game time. Of course, the more elite players, the better your chances, but if the 2009 squad was as even as Geelong’s had been, might we have won that GF?

Talking of Geelong, when they sold Gary Ablett II, people went bananas. He was their champion, the son of their greatest player, some might say their messiah. They don’t seem to have done too badly since. Of course they are loaded up with stars, but it’s the performance of the emerging players which has been instrumental to their success, and is a key reason why they can countenance offing Chapman and J-Pod. Look at the way Hawthorn were happy to let Trent Croad (and Luke McPharlin) walk too; why wouldn’t they be? They had a good team, minus one star player and they used that trade to get Hodge and Mitchell. We love our heroes so much more at the Saints, but the time has come to once again look to level the playing field and build a battalion, not a pyramid. We need to stop with the teenage fanlove and be serious, because the pressure is on and we are far far behind the pace.

Anyway, the real reason I don’t like this Messiah idea is that I am opposed to the idea that we need this one particular person to be successful, or happy. Anyone who’s been in a position to see this mindset in real life will tell you it’s a losing philosophy, be it in marriage, the workplace, religion, war, whatever. The positives of it in a large group is that the person can galvanise the group and make them walk taller, etc. But the reason it’s destructive is that if you take this position, you are saying “I am far less/nothing without you”. It is tantamount to defeatism, and it’s also a way of taking the pressure off yourself to perform. If the messiah does his magic, we can win, in other words, my contribution to this relationship is essentially irrelevant. It’s lazy, it’s defeatist, and it’s incorrect.

Coming back to our example, in the last week or so, I spat the dummy at BigNote who told us that oft-used line that the management at St Kilda is the club. It’s a common misconception, coming from a place called WEAKNESS. If you believe that any of the players or staff are the life or death of our club, you are effectively saying that your - our - contribution is pointless. That the club will exist without you/us.

We are seeing right now the flaws in that thinking. Our club has lost thousands of members since 2009, and that has taken us from a decent position in the AFL, (able to better dictate when/where we wanted to exhibit the god awful spectacle of the Lyon Cage) to right back down to the bottom, under the new clubs, down to the more vulnerable of the 10 vic clubs that the AFL will be looking at to merge, move or shut down.

It’s not just numbers, it’s the nature of our support. A crowd half-full of auld arses half-heartedly croaking support isn’t going to make any player want to push themselves to the limit. A stadium full of proud fierce Saints, united and loud will get that team across the line better than Tom Boyd, Nick Dal Santo and the reincarnation of Trevor Barker… I’ve gone on about this sort of thing before, so to avoid repeating myself here is just one of many examples... viewtopic.php?f=1&t=70956&p=1108113#p1108113

Its us. We are the club. All of us, from the scummiest idiot troll on Saintsational to Eric bloody Bana, without us this club would be University. Be proud of our club, and be proud of your part in it. Look at that ring around the Stadium thing that Eastern organised. That is the bloody spirit! Make Eastern our CEO, he gets it. Make players want to come to deepest darkest Seaford. Make more recruits end up being players like Lenny, Roo and Kosi who would give one of their testes to give their fans success.

The club understands. Despite a few poor decisions along the way, it is taking steps to remake our image to bring back old supporters, and bring in new ones. They hired Watters as much for his media-friendly sales pitch as for his football smarts. St Kilda is taking a stand too. Dustin Martin is a fantastic footballer, but we’re not touching him because we don’t need more problems with our image. Stephen Milne is one of our all time goal kickers and my favourite Saint. Jason Gram was a vital element of our team and our best player in the 2009 GF. Andrew Lovett could have possibly been alright… ahem…

The club made hard calls on all because it is desperate to attract more dedicated fans. They know who the messiah is here, and it’s not Nick Riewoldt*.

*I am not advocating selling Roo particularly, just chose his name cos he's the best example of a "messiah" we currently have.

[Con Gorozidis]

Vive le Austinn
Vive le admirateur
Vive les supporters

Great post! Hate to say it - but thats why the 'family club' do so well.

[Verdun66]

Good post. I tend to think though that while we have had poor teams over the years, we always had Champs. It was probably all Saints fans had to look for in the lean years. Thus our fine haul of Brownlow Medals, and near misses. With nothing else to look forward to at least we had our stars to watch.

I think the Administration has mostly been at the heart of our troubles. I'm not an expert in this, but reading and listening to people the various factions fighting amongst themselves at Committee level has not allowed the Football club to flourish.

The Neil Roberts interview on Open Mike the other day had some fascinating stuff. He reckons we've always had the players (or a good core of them with some stars) but off field we never got our act together. Short periods we might have been lucky with players that overcame the off-field stuff.The 1960's for example. The other thing that Coco said was the sectarian nature of the factions, which spread it's influence into the senior players. All unfortunate, but a reflection of society at that time.

We have held our stars up in great esteem, and I know what you are saying Austinn about a messiah complex. But I do think our greatest problem over the years was poor (or non-existent) administration. With a sectarian nature to it, was probably very difficult to overcome. Have a look at that interview.

[Austinnn]

I agree Verdun, and I'm not saying the messiah thing is more of a reason than anything else, just that it's significant and restrictive.

But yes, sadly poor management is probably a far bigger factor in our history than wise management.

Archie Fraser, for example. Still makes my blood boil when I see that name.

[SemperFidelis]

Its us. We are the club. All of us, from the scummiest idiot troll on Saintsational to Eric bloody Bana, without us this club would be University. Be proud of our club, and be proud of your part in it.

Loved this line, Austinnn. It almost has bumper sticker appeal ...

Great post. If more of the knockers and leakers were actually members, "we are the club" would start to take on some currency. That's one of the critical challenges for the new CEO.

[Scollop]

Not saying it was the wrong thing to do or that Roo didn't deserve to be the permanent captain, but the plan under GT was to rotate the captaincy. GT had buy in and engaged the players and it helped create a sense of equality as well as all the other benefits for the young emerging leaders

GT gave the young guys the responsibility of being captain which would ultimately benefit the team as a whole - i.e. the maturity, the ability to handle pressure and the strength of an expanded leadership group

Post GT's sacking, RL and the board gave the captaincy to our best, most highly paid and most brilliant on-field player!!

A messiah was created there and then

[seano1]

Listening to robert shaw on sen yesterday and he was saying that Fremantle like the Saints under Lyon lost the GF for the same reasons.....lack of forward power and to plays that dont change..they have Pav like our Roo as the main targets.....he gave the example of Hawks while dockers defence was all over Roughy and the millionare the young blokes were left 3 guys that were often shorter than the Gunston. I dont think this has changed much with the saints and it would be hard not to kick it to Roo everytime as he demands the pill maybe a year or 2 of the pods sitting in the pocket wouldn`t be a bad idea.

[PJ]

It's why we have trouble moving our fading stars on. Can't trade a legend/hero/superstar.

[Austinnn]

Not saying it was the wrong thing to do or that Roo didn't deserve to be the permanent captain, but the plan under GT was to rotate the captaincy. GT had buy in and engaged the players and it helped create a sense of equality as well as all the other benefits for the young emerging leaders

GT gave the young guys the responsibility of being captain which would ultimately benefit the team as a whole - i.e. the maturity, the ability to handle pressure and the strength of an expanded leadership group

Post GT's sacking, RL and the board gave the captaincy to our best, most highly paid and most brilliant on-field player!!

A messiah was created there and then

Excellent point.