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Now I like many others on this site have praised Lyon for getting us to the top (well, close to it anyway.....) BUT
The off season carnage has definitely increased and has now begun to eat away at the clubs culture.
IMHO none of these incidents would have happened under Thomas.
He would not have picked up Lovett.
Would not have shafted Luke Ball.
Players taking nude pics of eachother, no way unless they had a death wish.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a Thomas pusher and thought he needed to go (at least out of the main coaching role) but fair dinkum he would have throttled anyone who put the club into disrepute.
I reckon that most difficult issues confronting the club were handled well when GT was the coach (including Lawrence, M&M, Gehrig, etc) and have continued to be handled well since that time: sure, we perhaps shouldn't have recruited Lovett in the first place, but the club did everything right after the alleged rape took place. And I reckon the club is doing the right thing this time.
The only events where I'd take issue with our handling were sirengate and Baker's suspension for the incident with Farmer. I would blame both of these lame responses on Butterss being too concerned
with sucking up to Demetriou when I reckon there was a good chance that, if we'd taken the AFL to court, they'd have quickly backed down (the only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them).
I really don't think the current incident says anything much about our club's off-field culture. The photos are just evidence of some hi jinks by players on an off-season trip. Yes, there is perhaps an emerging common theme across a number of incidents (M&M, the context and language used around the Lovett event, the initial involvement of players with the 17 yo, the condoms in the recent photo) of a pack of wolves on the prowl for women, but that's hardly an earth-shattering revelation about a bunch of male sports stars.
I still think it's all a storm in a teacup and will quickly pass. I reckon that, once they've made their point in court today (and demonstrated to the players that they care) the club should drop it's pursuit of the girl and let the story die it's natural death.
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
- Jonathan Swift
Whilst the M&M, Lovett, 17 y.o saga...all show the pattern of male sports stars chasing women and that it isn't a new thing one would hope that our blokes have learned their lesson by now.
I don't see our culture as being on the slide but it appears we have more of a culture than other teams atm.
FullMonty wrote:
Players taking nude pics of eachother, no way unless they had a death wish.
Have you ever played footy? Not just for a season, but really got into the club and made great mates who you can go away with and really have fun?
It is stupid to take the photo's and even more stupid not to delete them, but that is what happens. Its all about mucking around and having fun. Especially for AFL footballers these days, these guys have to be so squeaky clean out in the public surely they are allowed to be idiots with each other behind closed doors.
Most AFL footballers are 18 to 30 and this time in your life is the best time for mucking around and having fun, before you settle down and get married, have kids etc etc.
As I said, it was stupid to take the photos and stupid to not delete them, but everyone does stupid things and these guys must be allowed to live life.
My memory only goes back as far as the sixties when Ian Stewart was allowed to play pissed and was in trouble with John Nicholls for passing dodgy cheques, but I can't remember too many years since then when some kind of controversy has emerged concerning the St Kilda Football Club. If we had some kind of achievement to our credit then maybe you could almost excuse the cheeky 'cavalier' attitude, but we Ken Don't for effs sake.
we are not alone but like all mud it's stuck worse than honey
West Coast - let's not go there.
Dees a few years back - they were all getting into punch ons pre-season.
Adelaide - Nathan Bock plus their fair share of drink drivers.
Bombers under Sheedy - Lovett, plus numerous others getting p!ssed all the time.
Hawks - thank God for supression orders ay.
The list goes on and on. Lovett at our club has been by far the most serious - and you could hardly say that he was a saints player. The rest haven't been anything like other clubs. Sadly our rep has taken a beating , the perception is we are all a bit sexed up. WE're sthe news of the moment until the next big story comes along. Then ppl will look back I reckon and say - 'Oh yeah, that nude thing.....' Let's face it, it's only big news b/c it's Riewoldt.
Seriously the Saints fans are getting more worked up about this than anyone else.
When the Tigers went troppo up in Sydney my Tiges supporting mates gave a s*** but I was only mildly amused.
Essendon had Hurley beating on a cabbie- I couldn't give a s***, Bomber fans were freaking out. Same goes for everything Lovett did there.
Hawks did there impression of resurrecting St kildas 1980s party club image which caused a mate to act like he was premenstrual for months. I count give a s***.
For all those who follow us, the only people that are really investing themselves emotionally over this are our own fans.
I wondered if there were some way this could all be blamed on Grant Thomas. Going the other way round is just as good. Now the saga is complete, and we can move on from this "scandal" to a good, old fashioned GT v RL slanging match.
I never thought I'd think so... but what a relief....
"Everything comes to he who hustles while he waits"
- Henry Ford
There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, "Enough is enough." For me, that time is now. I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in <redacted>. Over the past three years, I have been subjected to a <redacted>investigation followed by <redacted> witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for <redacted>and on me leads me to where I am today – finished with this nonsense. (Oops just got a spontaneous errection <unredacted>)
