The great Saints Conspiracy

[skeptic]

I've heard about this a few times in recent weeks and it seems to have garnered a bit more attention since the whole Carlisle non-free

It's the idea that some at AFL house don't want St.Kilda to ever succeed and work intentionally towards ensuring that we don't.

The most common example of this is through the umpiring that I've read a number of forumites say is deliberately skewed against us.

I'd like to hear from these forumites...
Is it really a thing?
Who?
Why?

How long has this been going on for?


My 2 cents... I'm a big believer in that in this business era, the AFL runs particular agendas and they skew the game and influence it unfairly to ensure these agendas are met...
e.g. the draw to maximise viewership, attendance, sponsors etc, ensuring expansion in NSW/QLD and throwing limitless good fortune to GWS, Sydney, AFL top up salaries for players to stay etc, getting rid of an unattractive style or types of players they don't want e.g. Baker etc

Whist I certainly don't think the game is fair, I've never personally thought the game was deliberately rigged against us but rather that we're not a priority for the AFL and hence favours tend to go in other directions. Not until we fix ourselves up and start a making the big boys money.

So lets hear... it there a national Saints conspiracy going on?

[parkeysainter]

I don't think there is a direct conspiracy against the Saints or any club, but the AFL does try and tip things kindly to interstate clubs (especially north of the Murray River). They would be aiming or wanting to have an interstate side win the GF 1 in every 2-3 years for example. They have purposely propped up and given alot of concessions to the 4 northern teams on purpose for business sense reasons. I suppose its part and parcel of a national comp and multi billion dollar sporting code. Gone are the days of the VFL. Long gone where it was just the big 4 with all the dollars and players.

Its like trying to justify the Apollo moon landings were fake. Just think of the sheer amount of AFL officials and employees that would have to be in on in this conspiracy for so many years and nothing ever gets out...its simply not possible!

[parkeysainter]

Plus the AFL is not that smart to pull it off. They probably think they are but they aren't...I mean Lethlean and that other bloke couldn't even hide their affairs with the opposite sex. Good luck to them with a national comp conspiracy.

[Winmore]

It doesn't matte if the AwFuL conspires against St K FC. Our own administration, present and past, has the particular skill set to balls it up.

[Spinner]

Don't think any of the above has any substance whatsoever.

[longtimesaint]

It may be that we see things from a Saints point of view but the rub of the green rarely goes our way.
Three decisions which any of which would have Saints winning were
1. The reversal on Hickey when lining up for goal. There may have been some push and shove which the tv didn’t show but normally you hear the umpire say “ you’ve got the kick don’t lose it”
2. The free kick to Gilbert which continuos play saw Membery mark in the goal square was inexplicably brought back to outside 50
3. The obvious free kick to Carlisle in the dying seconds. Carlisle was in the clear and the high tackle was a lot to do with him missing the mark.

[mr six o'clock]

Conspiracy / stereotypes can build up over the years and become ingrained into people's perception of others or establishments.
I know 6 people who are melbourne fans . None of which own range rovers or go skiing every winter
But that stereotype gets dragged up every year.
Our stereotypes are many and varied .
Our lack of success makes it hard to deny any of them .
They become ingrained into football public physche.
So the umpiring fraternity probably don't think much of us and treat us accordingly.
At the game i didn't think it was a missed free to jake .
I was more pissed off at the kick , thought jack should have hit him on the chest.
But seeing the replay, the free was missed and i have no doubt in thinking that if the situation was reversed then a giant would have been having a shot after the siren .

The saints have finished way down on the free kick ever since GT had a go at them 13 or more years ago .
Before 2000 you hardly noticed the umps
I mean there's always been dodgy decisions but the men in white weren't a bunch of tossers like they are today .
These prissy flogs who no longer want to bounce the ball cos there arms get tired.

So i don't think there is a conspiracy against us .
I just think that we are insignificant in the overall scheme of things and that makes us supporters feel that head office , the umps and sections of the media are against us .















Then again........?

[oh when the]

My conspiracy is that Collingwood and Essendon get a free kick out of the centre if they get 3 goals behind.

Essendon players always go over the mark when opposition marks and rarely get called back.

[saintspremiers]

Please don’t use the word draw to describe the FIXture ever again

[SaintPav]

I can think of at least 6 games we have lost over the last ten years because of incorrect umpiring calls. There is a bias against certain teams for whatever reason and we appear to be the league’s scapegoat.

The club needs to learn to grow some teeth when it comes to negotiating with AFL HQ but we are in a bind as we really have no bargaining power as we are in a very weak position. The bigger clubs like Collingwood and Essendon wouldn’t put up with this nonsense.

Calling it a conspiracy is the wrong way of looking at it and it’s also a strawman argument.

"the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

[asiu]

'move the enemy , whilst not allowing the enemy to move u '

[bigred]

The comp is completely rigged and has been for years.

The draw is not a draw, but a fixture. Which is quite fitting, since it is fixed.

[Mr Magic]

I don't believe there is an AFL conspiracy' against St Kilda (or any other club).
I do believe that there is an AFL 'conspiracy' towards the AFL.
What that means is that I believe every decision made/taken is in response to a single question ;-
'what's best for the AFL?'
Sometimes what's best for the AFL doesn't align with 'what's best (or even fair) for St Kilda' (or any other club).

[barneyboyz]

Conspiracy / stereotypes can build up over the years and become ingrained into people's perception of others or establishments.
I know 6 people who are melbourne fans . None of which own range rovers or go skiing every winter
But that stereotype gets dragged up every year.
Our stereotypes are many and varied .
Our lack of success makes it hard to deny any of them .
They become ingrained into football public physche.
So the umpiring fraternity probably don't think much of us and treat us accordingly.
At the game i didn't think it was a missed free to jake .
I was more pissed off at the kick , thought jack should have hit him on the chest.
But seeing the replay, the free was missed and i have no doubt in thinking that if the situation was reversed then a giant would have been having a shot after the siren .

The saints have finished way down on the free kick ever since GT had a go at them 13 or more years ago .
Before 2000 you hardly noticed the umps
I mean there's always been dodgy decisions but the men in white weren't a bunch of tossers like they are today .
These prissy flogs who no longer want to bounce the ball cos there arms get tired.

So i don't think there is a conspiracy against us .
I just think that we are insignificant in the overall scheme of things and that makes us supporters feel that head office , the umps and sections of the media are against us .




Then again........?

Yes they were. I went to a VFL umpire's wedding in the early 80's THEY WERE FLOGS

[Con Gorozidis]

I don't think it is deliberate but I think there are subconscious factors at play for sure.

Hawthorn manage to push the rules e.g. blakways shepherding the man on the mark and getting away with it.

There is some 'winner' versus 'loser' club mentality that acts on the subconscious.

[St Chris]

The results of the last 2 seasons have been very poor for the future our club. To be more precise, the Premiers of the last 2 years.

The AFL, despite their pleas of "equalisation", do not care about that. Crowd numbers, dollars, TV ratings, sponsors, that's where the AFL's concerns lie. And they have sat back and seen 2 ends of the scale - battler club win a flag against the odds, feel good moment for the AFL world, then back to the status quo. Doggies have had a mother of all premiership hangovers, their membership had a small spike the year after the fact, then back to cellar dwellers with member numbers even below the lowly Saints!! Compare that to Richmond, the dormant super power, who's "Tiger Army" has been unleashed, turning up every week, huge TV numbers, and plenty of cash being poured into AFL coffers thru merch and other means.

It's in the AFL's best (corporate) interest to see the big clubs be successful, and the small clubs to make their supporters believe they are a chance.

So there's no conspiracy theory against us specifically, but there is vested interest from the governing body to see us stay in our lane and know our place.

[GSG]

I don't think it is deliberate but I think there are subconscious factors at play for sure.

I don’t think there is a conspiracy against St Kilda. However, I do believe bias definitely comes into the umpiring.

We all grew up with barracking for our team. Then we have some teams we sort of like, some we are indifferent to and some we downright detest. The umpires, being only human, are exactly the same. They may try not to be biased, but I’m convinced it doesn’t always work and bias will sneak in.

We had some very lopsided umpiring, particularly with the Bulldogs and West Coast in the west. You look at Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond – they rarely have lopsided umpiring. I am sure if the Carlisle incident had happened to Collingwood, Eddie’s bleating would have been heard on the moon. Ditto Essendon. I don't think these clubs would put up with very lopsided umpiring and bad decisions.

We are simply a weak, insignificant club.

[St. Paul]

What about the fiasco in Launceston with the "Docker Draw?" The AFL basically overthrew its own rule to award the points to Fremantle. It still rankles me to this day, as it meant the difference between finishing fourth and finishing sixth that year. Can you imagine what would've happened if Essondope or Colonwood copped that decision? The Supreme Court would've ended up deciding the issue. That's if the AFL even tried it on in the first place. They did it to us because they knew we'd cop it without complaint or action.

[fingers]

do you realise how many people need to shut up in order for conspiracies to work ? Never going to happen.

[parkeysainter]

C'mon SS.net, Lethlean and one of his mates couldn't even hide their affairs with younger women. There is not a chance they are out to get the Saints and would be able to covertly do it.

[one point]

I don't think it is deliberate but I think there are subconscious factors at play for sure.

I don’t think there is a conspiracy against St Kilda. However, I do believe bias definitely comes into the umpiring.

We all grew up with barracking for our team. Then we have some teams we sort of like, some we are indifferent to and some we downright detest. The umpires, being only human, are exactly the same. They may try not to be biased, but I’m convinced it doesn’t always work and bias will sneak in.

We had some very lopsided umpiring, particularly with the Bulldogs and West Coast in the west. You look at Collingwood, Essendon, Carlton, Richmond – they rarely have lopsided umpiring. I am sure if the Carlisle incident had happened to Collingwood, Eddie’s bleating would have been heard on the moon. Ditto Essendon. I don't think these clubs would put up with very lopsided umpiring and bad decisions.

We are simply a weak, insignificant club.

"Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness. Everyone holds unconscious beliefs about various social and identity groups, and these biases stem from one's tendency to organize social worlds by categorizing." You may be onto something.

[meher baba]

There's no conspiracy, it's a case of bias.

For purely commercial reasons - or what they see as commercial reasons - the AFL is biased towards the larger Melbourne clubs and, of course, the expansion clubs: particularly the Swans over many years, as has been shown in instances such as the favourable arrangements for the transfer of Plugger and Buddy to Sydney and, most distastefully, the AFL's unashamed lobbying in 2005 to have the tribunal find a way of somehow clearing Hall to play in the GF when every element of the rulebook demanded he be suspended. I don't think the AFL tries to hard to pretend that it runs a level playing field here: the competition is increasingly underwritten by TV revenue, and that in turn requires high ratings and a nation-wide spread of teams. So of course the AFL does what it can to achieve these outcomes, and there's nothing in that for a club like St Kilda which is Melbourne-based, has a relatively small fan base, and has typically played a defense-oriented style of football since GT was sacked.


I have always believed that the idea that the umpires are running an AFL agenda for/against certain clubs is bulldust. There's no conspiracy, there's just a highly unprofessional culture in AFL umpiring because the people in charge continue to focus on entirely the wrong things. The umpiring will never get significantly better until the responsibility for running that area is given to someone who considers 1) that the ideal umpire is almost invisible to the fans and displays no discernible personality traits on-field and 2) that bleedingly-obvious problems such as hometown decision-making for certain teams at certain venues (most obviously the Eagles in Perth) are a massive embarrassment to umpires generally and need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

[The_Dud]

The idea that there’s some kind of AFL/umpiring conspiracy against us (or any team) is almost at the flat-earth level of ridiculousness.

The fact that supporters of football clubs are so blind to their own obvious bias when making judgements about these kind of things is equally baffling.

All our misfortunes of recent times have been of our own doing, we don’t need any extra help to stuff things up.

[Wayne42]

it's always the Umpire adjudicating from the Grassy Knoll that causes us grief.

[Enrico_Misso]

What about the fiasco in Launceston with the "Docker Draw?" The AFL basically overthrew its own rule to award the points to Fremantle. It still rankles me to this day, as it meant the difference between finishing fourth and finishing sixth that year. Can you imagine what would've happened if Essondope or Colonwood copped that decision? The Supreme Court would've ended up deciding the issue. That's if the AFL even tried it on in the first place. They did it to us because they knew we'd cop it without complaint or action.

For over a century the rule was that a quarter is over when the umpire signals it.
- hence there have been incidents at Princes Park where the timekeeper had to run on the ground and inform the umpire after the siren failed
- Kerry Goode kicked a goal after a passage of play after the siren to win North a night premiership because the ump didn't hear it

But when it happened to us the AFL had an emergency meeting the next day and annulled Baker's point.

Nothing wrong with changing a rule, but to then apply it retrospectively is plain WRONG.
It remains the most DISGRACEFUL decision in AFL history.

I REMAIN BITTER AND CONVINCED OF A CONSPIRACY.