Are we closer to…

[saintkev]

The root cause of the problem seems simple to me: Nettlefold, Watters and Pelchen traded away what remained of our best talent after Lyon left, and recruited rubbish in return.

We have never fully recovered from that. Picking McCartin over Petracca also didn't help the situation.

In recent years, the management of the club has done a good job in building up a reasonable list. But they were starting from scratch, which they wouldn't have had to do if we hadn't been so badly run in the years immediately following 2011. So we are still a fair way off being a successful club again. How we went in the modified 2020 season was totally misleading. We don't yet have whhat we need to become a serious threat for a flag: and I'm not sure even the young players we recruited in the past couple of years have enough potential to get us there.

But we have to keep trying. Talk of getting rid of Ratten and bringing in Clarkson is just pipe dream stuff IMO. Clarkson went well at Hawthorn in the period of time he was there with the talent he had available to him. There's no guarantee that he could repeat that success at another club: look how well the ace Hawthorn recruiter Pelchen went when he came to us.

I think the club is in the best possible hands at the moment, both in terms of management and coaching. We simply don't have the cattle, especially in the midfield. If only we had Petracca, but it's no good crying over spilt milk.

I know it seems desperately unfair to expect St Kilda fans to have patience, but it's the only way we can go.

Some of us old geezers have been waiting for 56 patient years. I was at the ‘66 Grand Final as a 13 year old. Leaving the MCG after Baldock had hoisted the cup high I was swept up by a sea of Saints’ supporters and surged onto a red rattler and sang the theme song, until I was hoarse, all the way back to Mordi. I thought that success would go on perpetually.
Now, given that males on average can last into our early 80s…I may have another 12 - 14 years. …how patient do you reckon I should be given this list’s lack of premiership hunger?

[MC Gusto]

"Post by Vortex » Thu 24 Mar 2022 12:43pm

Can we atleast now acknowledge our finals appearance in 2020 was misleading with regards to where the list is at and was merely the result of the slap and tickle in a Covid Cup year. Once the comp returned to full strength we were found out. Agree patients is going to be needed for a few more years until we can recruit a midfield."

Nope.

Outstanding coaching feat that 2020 effort. Great effort by players too.

Patients are not needed for a few more years; we already have plenty of our own that are casualties. (see under headings: missing mids; how to recover form after long term injuries).

Midfield will be delivered by Star track in a month or so. Have patience.

Intrigued by/with Star Track?

[bangaulegend]

Our next Premiership

OR

Our next wooden spoon?

Good question I doubt with our current list a Premiership is even a pipe dream & a wooden spoon is more of a worst case scenario but a solid 12th to 14th is on the cards IMO

[SunnyErnie]

The root cause of the problem seems simple to me: Nettlefold, Watters and Pelchen traded away what remained of our best talent after Lyon left, and recruited rubbish in return.

We have never fully recovered from that. Picking McCartin over Petracca also didn't help the situation.

In recent years, the management of the club has done a good job in building up a reasonable list. But they were starting from scratch, which they wouldn't have had to do if we hadn't been so badly run in the years immediately following 2011. So we are still a fair way off being a successful club again. How we went in the modified 2020 season was totally misleading. We don't yet have whhat we need to become a serious threat for a flag: and I'm not sure even the young players we recruited in the past couple of years have enough potential to get us there.

But we have to keep trying. Talk of getting rid of Ratten and bringing in Clarkson is just pipe dream stuff IMO. Clarkson went well at Hawthorn in the period of time he was there with the talent he had available to him. There's no guarantee that he could repeat that success at another club: look how well the ace Hawthorn recruiter Pelchen went when he came to us.

I think the club is in the best possible hands at the moment, both in terms of management and coaching. We simply don't have the cattle, especially in the midfield. If only we had Petracca, but it's no good crying over spilt milk.

I know it seems desperately unfair to expect St Kilda fans to have patience, but it's the only way we can go.

Some of us old geezers have been waiting for 56 patient years. I was at the ‘66 Grand Final as a 13 year old. Leaving the MCG after Baldock had hoisted the cup high I was swept up by a sea of Saints’ supporters and surged onto a red rattler and sang the theme song, until I was hoarse, all the way back to Mordi. I thought that success would go on perpetually.
Now, given that males on average can last into our early 80s…I may have another 12 - 14 years. …how patient do you reckon I should be given this list’s lack of premiership hunger?

At least you've seen one. I was 3 in 1966 so I haven't seen one. I'm 59 now and running out of time

[Faulky63]

The root cause of the problem seems simple to me: Nettlefold, Watters and Pelchen traded away what remained of our best talent after Lyon left, and recruited rubbish in return.

We have never fully recovered from that. Picking McCartin over Petracca also didn't help the situation.

In recent years, the management of the club has done a good job in building up a reasonable list. But they were starting from scratch, which they wouldn't have had to do if we hadn't been so badly run in the years immediately following 2011. So we are still a fair way off being a successful club again. How we went in the modified 2020 season was totally misleading. We don't yet have whhat we need to become a serious threat for a flag: and I'm not sure even the young players we recruited in the past couple of years have enough potential to get us there.

But we have to keep trying. Talk of getting rid of Ratten and bringing in Clarkson is just pipe dream stuff IMO. Clarkson went well at Hawthorn in the period of time he was there with the talent he had available to him. There's no guarantee that he could repeat that success at another club: look how well the ace Hawthorn recruiter Pelchen went when he came to us.

I think the club is in the best possible hands at the moment, both in terms of management and coaching. We simply don't have the cattle, especially in the midfield. If only we had Petracca, but it's no good crying over spilt milk.

I know it seems desperately unfair to expect St Kilda fans to have patience, but it's the only way we can go.

Some of us old geezers have been waiting for 56 patient years. I was at the ‘66 Grand Final as a 13 year old. Leaving the MCG after Baldock had hoisted the cup high I was swept up by a sea of Saints’ supporters and surged onto a red rattler and sang the theme song, until I was hoarse, all the way back to Mordi. I thought that success would go on perpetually.
Now, given that males on average can last into our early 80s…I may have another 12 - 14 years. …how patient do you reckon I should be given this list’s lack of premiership hunger?

At least you've seen one. I was 3 in 1966 so I haven't seen one. I'm 59 now and running out of time

Ditto SE, also born in '63 and not having much faith with our current arrangements.

[meher baba]

I was 6 in 1966. I remember knowing that we won, but I don't think it was on TV in Sydney, where I grew up.

I well remember our great, but ultimately unsucessful efforts in the early 1970s. The 1990-2010 period was obviously the most exciting time for our club. While watching the 2010 GF in a bar in Hong Kong, there was a fraction of a second - which seemed to go on forever - when Milne kicked at the ball in front of the goals when I thought we were about to do it.

Last year, I came quite close to meeting the reaper and, while I'm now recovered and the prognosis is quite good, I feel far from confident that I will ever hear our song play at the end of a GF: other than perhaps while having a beer with Warnie in a celestial bar.

However, I still believe that the only way we can hope to get to another flag is to be patient, work with and build on what we've got, and don't go chasing messiahs like Clarko or Ben King or whoever. We've done too much chopping and changing over the years.

At the risk of attracting another barrage of insults from the tiresome Teflon, I will say that my mind keeps going back to 2006. We would have made the top 4 but for the AFL taking the unprecedented step of taking a point away from us and giving it to Freo. We copped terrible trouble with injuries that season, particualarly Lenny's ACL and the onfield criminal assault on Kosi. Our final standing that year was significantly better than that of Geelong, who we totally thrashed in the regular season.

Post-season, Geelong were patient and stuck with their coach and their overall strategy. We adopted an official policy of impatience, with Butterss making a statement to the effect that the board demanded one or more premierships with the list we had at the time. We were then extremely lucky to get Lyon, who turned out to be an excellent coach, when there was no cast iron guarantee whatsoever that he wouldn't turn out to be another Watson. And, if Milne could have nailed that opportunity, we might all be feeling much more patient about the circumstance we are in today.

But I still can't help feeling that I would prefer to have gone down Geelong's path from 2006 than down the one we followed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that retaining Thommo would have been the answer: I'm not a believer in messiahs. My concern was never about individuals, but about the management strategy and mindset, which went all wrong after 2006. Butterss, Waldron and Thommo had hit upon the right approach. Build the list: keep drafting the best players available other than where there were obvious holes (ie, the ruck, where they made some mistakes, but many clubs do in recruiting to that position). Build the supporter base. Get more and better sponsors. Aim to be a top club for as long as possible, and expect that the flags will come eventually.

They only tried this approach for a few years, and it looked to be working really well. And then the club lost its way and began to stagnate and then to decline. Before we began to fall, we almost won two GFs: full credit to Lyon and our star players for those stellar efforts. But the foundations were giving way and then the whole structure collapsed in the 2010s.

Now we're back where we were in the early 2000s. We won't get the wonderful draft picks we got back then, but neither will anyone else. So we just need to keep slogging on. As I said, we've got the right leadership. We'll get there eventually. Who knows, maybe Freo will be in for a shock tomorrow.

[meher baba]

Killa: "The McCartin/Petracca “debate” is tiresome
Simply McCartin was a key forward
Petracca was a mid fielder
Where would McCartin be today free of injury?
We may now get some idea as he runs around in Sydney colours
Noting he is now playing in defence"

From the first game he played for us, before the concussion problems began to emerge, Paddy never looked ike he had what was required to be a star AFL forward. He was big and strong, but there were others bigger and stronger. And some of those others had more mobility and much better positional strength and could do something when the ball hit the ground. He sometimes had good hands, but other times he looked pretty clumsy. He was far from being a reliable converter of set shots. When the other side had the ball, he lumbered around contributing little

In short, he didn't look remotely like a number one draft pick. I never saw him play junior football, but I assume he had reached physical maturity more quickly than his peers and was therefore dominant over smaller and weaker players. Good recruiters can normally adjust their assessments to take account of this factor. Ours clearly failed to do this.

Last night, he looked to me like he might make a reasonable contribution in the backline if he can avoid further concussions. I sincerely hope he can do this: he's clearly a lovely bloke and deserves a better fate than he has had so far. But he still looks like a journeyman rather than a star, and he's always going to struggle with opponents with a bit of agility and pace.

So the decision to draft him will always be a really bad one. In cricket, they say that the rule should be that you win the toss, you bat first, except for the times it looks like a good idea to send the opponents in, when you think about it, and then still choose to bat first.

In football drafts, the rule with early draft picks should be that you pick the best available midfielder based on skill, speed, agility and other physical attributes. Or, if a really good forward is up for grabs, you think about him, and then still end up recruiting the best midfielder: or, very occasionally, a really good ruck (the likes of Natanui). Or an exceptional forward like Riewoldt or Brown (but did McCartin ever look remotely like being another Riewoldt or Brown?).

IMO anyway.

[SydneySainter]

That train wreck of a 2014 draft will haunt us for a long time yet.

[Killa]

MB

I disagree with your opinions

On all matters you provide your opinion on

The reason St Kilda had the Number 1 Draft Pick was that we were the bottom side in the 18 team competition

McCartin came into a very, very poor side, as a key forward

His undoubted ability was on show v Hawthorn in Tasmania - a game we narrowly lost

From there injuries including concussions impacted

Currently he is a member of a Sydney side whose credentials have been on show over the first 2 weeks of the season v GWS and Geelong

[meher baba]

MB

I disagree with your opinions
On all matters you provide your opinion on
The reason St Kilda had the Number 1 Draft Pick was that we were the bottom side in the 18 team competition
McCartin came into a very, very poor side, as a key forward
His undoubted ability was on show v Hawthorn in Tasmania - a game we narrowly lost
From there injuries including concussions impacted
Currently he is a member of a Sydney side whose credentials have been on show over the first 2 weeks of the season v GWS and Geelong

The game against Hawthorn was definitely Paddy's best game of AFL to date, and - while it wasn't even remotely at the level of a Franklin or Lockett - it gave us all a lot of hope at the time. Unfortunately, he never produced anything like it again.

As I recall it, McCartin had already had a few concussions by then, and they were already impacting on his career, and putting the quality of his post-football life at serious risk. I'm really not sure it's a good idea for him to continue to play the game, but I nevertheless wish him all the best. I doubt he's ever going to cause us to regret letting him go, but I've been wrong before. If he succeeds in turning his career around and becomes a star at the Swans, it will be one of the great AFL stories.

[SunnyErnie]

I was 6 in 1966. I remember knowing that we won, but I don't think it was on TV in Sydney, where I grew up.

I well remember our great, but ultimately unsucessful efforts in the early 1970s. The 1990-2010 period was obviously the most exciting time for our club. While watching the 2010 GF in a bar in Hong Kong, there was a fraction of a second - which seemed to go on forever - when Milne kicked at the ball in front of the goals when I thought we were about to do it.

Last year, I came quite close to meeting the reaper and, while I'm now recovered and the prognosis is quite good, I feel far from confident that I will ever hear our song play at the end of a GF: other than perhaps while having a beer with Warnie in a celestial bar.

However, I still believe that the only way we can hope to get to another flag is to be patient, work with and build on what we've got, and don't go chasing messiahs like Clarko or Ben King or whoever. We've done too much chopping and changing over the years.

At the risk of attracting another barrage of insults from the tiresome Teflon, I will say that my mind keeps going back to 2006. We would have made the top 4 but for the AFL taking the unprecedented step of taking a point away from us and giving it to Freo. We copped terrible trouble with injuries that season, particualarly Lenny's ACL and the onfield criminal assault on Kosi. Our final standing that year was significantly better than that of Geelong, who we totally thrashed in the regular season.

Post-season, Geelong were patient and stuck with their coach and their overall strategy. We adopted an official policy of impatience, with Butterss making a statement to the effect that the board demanded one or more premierships with the list we had at the time. We were then extremely lucky to get Lyon, who turned out to be an excellent coach, when there was no cast iron guarantee whatsoever that he wouldn't turn out to be another Watson. And, if Milne could have nailed that opportunity, we might all be feeling much more patient about the circumstance we are in today.

But I still can't help feeling that I would prefer to have gone down Geelong's path from 2006 than down the one we followed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that retaining Thommo would have been the answer: I'm not a believer in messiahs. My concern was never about individuals, but about the management strategy and mindset, which went all wrong after 2006. Butterss, Waldron and Thommo had hit upon the right approach. Build the list: keep drafting the best players available other than where there were obvious holes (ie, the ruck, where they made some mistakes, but many clubs do in recruiting to that position). Build the supporter base. Get more and better sponsors. Aim to be a top club for as long as possible, and expect that the flags will come eventually.

They only tried this approach for a few years, and it looked to be working really well. And then the club lost its way and began to stagnate and then to decline. Before we began to fall, we almost won two GFs: full credit to Lyon and our star players for those stellar efforts. But the foundations were giving way and then the whole structure collapsed in the 2010s.

Now we're back where we were in the early 2000s. We won't get the wonderful draft picks we got back then, but neither will anyone else. So we just need to keep slogging on. As I said, we've got the right leadership. We'll get there eventually. Who knows, maybe Freo will be in for a shock tomorrow.

You are correct mb about being patient. And that is why we are in this position, we lost patience. We should have rebuilt exclusively from the draft, just like we did from 1999 to 2003 (with the exception of Hamill and Gehrig). Our brainstrust thought we could start bringing FA's and big name recruits to speed up our rebuild but it has backfired. As I have said many times in the past, once you start rebuilding you must take your medicine and just keep picking the best young kids in the draft. No trading, no FA's until you make the 8.

The position we find ourselves in now means that we will not challenge with this list and we will again have to go down to the bottom and start the rebuild from scratch again. Unfortunately as good as Steele is, by the time we do challenge, he will be retired. You have to stay in the bottom 4 for 4 years and draft at least 4 guns to have a realistic chance of winning the flag 5 to 8 years down the track. Who / where are the guns that we drafted?????

[SydneySainter]

Killa: "The McCartin/Petracca “debate” is tiresome
Simply McCartin was a key forward
Petracca was a mid fielder
Where would McCartin be today free of injury?
We may now get some idea as he runs around in Sydney colours
Noting he is now playing in defence"

From the first game he played for us, before the concussion problems began to emerge, Paddy never looked ike he had what was required to be a star AFL forward. He was big and strong, but there were others bigger and stronger. And some of those others had more mobility and much better positional strength and could do something when the ball hit the ground. He sometimes had good hands, but other times he looked pretty clumsy. He was far from being a reliable converter of set shots. When the other side had the ball, he lumbered around contributing little

In short, he didn't look remotely like a number one draft pick. I never saw him play junior football, but I assume he had reached physical maturity more quickly than his peers and was therefore dominant over smaller and weaker players. Good recruiters can normally adjust their assessments to take account of this factor. Ours clearly failed to do this.

Last night, he looked to me like he might make a reasonable contribution in the backline if he can avoid further concussions. I sincerely hope he can do this: he's clearly a lovely bloke and deserves a better fate than he has had so far. But he still looks like a journeyman rather than a star, and he's always going to struggle with opponents with a bit of agility and pace.

So the decision to draft him will always be a really bad one. In cricket, they say that the rule should be that you win the toss, you bat first, except for the times it looks like a good idea to send the opponents in, when you think about it, and then still choose to bat first.

In football drafts, the rule with early draft picks should be that you pick the best available midfielder based on skill, speed, agility and other physical attributes. Or, if a really good forward is up for grabs, you think about him, and then still end up recruiting the best midfielder: or, very occasionally, a really good ruck (the likes of Natanui). Or an exceptional forward like Riewoldt or Brown (but did McCartin ever look remotely like being another Riewoldt or Brown?).

IMO anyway.

100% agree. Every man, woman and their dog knew Petracca was the clear standout. Blind Freddy could have told you that takinh Paddy within the top 3 was a risk. One our club could not afford to take.

Simply put, our recruiters crapped their pants over the Boyd deal and tried to outsmart the draft.

[Teflon]

Spoon
I think we’ll seriously get to a point where we realise that given we made choices to trade early picks in recent years to get ready made players in that our genuine A grade youth talent is light on and certainly not midfield strong.

It’s not all criticism - the club has done done good things eg recruiting Howard, Higgins, Ryder, Jones (when around) and grabbing Wilkie , Sharman and Hayes for steak knives has been good and probably outweighed the Hannerbury disaster. I back Gags in and if he has top picks I don’t think he’d stuff it like Trout…..reality is to get those picks you need to bottom out properly and we haven’t done that.
I truly can’t see how we are going to find a genuine Nick Daicos like mid to walk in….I love Bytel and co but don’t think he, Owens etc are of that ilk and the top sides at least have 1 or more A grade guns

We did bottom out. The problem is we squandered our draft picks.

2012 - 9th
2013 - 16th
2014 - wooden spoon
2015 - 14th

In the above 4 years we should have picked up at least 3 guns through the draft plus at least 3 "A" graders. But we failed miserably!!!!!

That’s not bottoming out
We tried to fill holes traded picks
Not take best kids in draft and rebuild from youth
That’s bottoming out
No surprise the best players in recent years are more often than not top 10 picks, always exceptions…but they are just that exceptions

[Impatient Sainter]

We are St Kilda FC nothing comes easy to our club!!!

If we can find a way to mess things up we have have done it! Whether it be poor administration, disastrous funding, relocating to Seaford, decades of poor list management, decades of extremely poor recruiting, poor coaching, poor VFL alignments - there is not much our club hasnt got wrong in my time.

BUT while there is hope there will always be life at Moorabbin. In recent years there has been a slow but gradual evolution to us becoming a professional niche Victorian club. So I have faith one day in the future our time will come, when its our turn to bask in the glory. Until then I will continue being part of the Saints army and love every minute of the club (warts an all).

Up the mighty Sainters!!!!

[shanegrambeau]

The root cause of the problem seems simple to me: Nettlefold, Watters and Pelchen traded away what remained of our best talent after Lyon left, and recruited rubbish in return.

We have never fully recovered from that. Picking McCartin over Petracca also didn't help the situation.

In recent years, the management of the club has done a good job in building up a reasonable list. But they were starting from scratch, which they wouldn't have had to do if we hadn't been so badly run in the years immediately following 2011. So we are still a fair way off being a successful club again. How we went in the modified 2020 season was totally misleading. We don't yet have whhat we need to become a serious threat for a flag: and I'm not sure even the young players we recruited in the past couple of years have enough potential to get us there.

But we have to keep trying. Talk of getting rid of Ratten and bringing in Clarkson is just pipe dream stuff IMO. Clarkson went well at Hawthorn in the period of time he was there with the talent he had available to him. There's no guarantee that he could repeat that success at another club: look how well the ace Hawthorn recruiter Pelchen went when he came to us.

I think the club is in the best possible hands at the moment, both in terms of management and coaching. We simply don't have the cattle, especially in the midfield. If only we had Petracca, but it's no good crying over spilt milk.

I know it seems desperately unfair to expect St Kilda fans to have patience, but it's the only way we can go.

Some of us old geezers have been waiting for 56 patient years. I was at the ‘66 Grand Final as a 13 year old. Leaving the MCG after Baldock had hoisted the cup high I was swept up by a sea of Saints’ supporters and surged onto a red rattler and sang the theme song, until I was hoarse, all the way back to Mordi. I thought that success would go on perpetually.
Now, given that males on average can last into our early 80s…I may have another 12 - 14 years. …how patient do you reckon I should be given this list’s lack of premiership hunger?

At least you've seen one. I was 3 in 1966 so I haven't seen one. I'm 59 now and running out of time

Ditto SE, also born in '63 and not having much faith with our current arrangements.

Me too.
Born '63.

Ha...what a road? Like boarding the bus of our trusty heroes and riding off into the desert with the rodeo fading in the rear view mirror ('71-'73) , as the country side gets sparser and drier, and strange animals start appearing. A mirage on the horizon ('78) then a dust bowl. We finally reach a billabong ('91 - '92) lake ..almost an oasis ('97)...the story goes on! Still here! Saints...what next??? Holy F?

[axcellence]

Our next Premiership

OR

Our next wooden spoon?

Spoon in 2023 or 2024.

Coach change as well. As soon as the current coach is fired, it will be spoon time. Rinse and repeat of 2014.

[Killa]

For all the noise on here, in my view the reason we lost 2 Grand Finals over 2 years (so our bottom 6 and the non promotion of Drafted players to start their careers alongside the cream of those sides instead recruiting who we recruited from bottom sides) to wooden spoon in a matter of only a couple of years sits behind the problems of the current administration

And they are being addressed

Make no mistake, a side which goes from drawing a Grand Final to bottom within just a couple of years is a very poor side

Since then we have struggled

That said we have improved more recently

But given that building a side and building depth are what they are the absence of depth remains the challenge for a young group

Hence injuries have had the impact they have had, including in 2020 where the addition of Ryder, Carlisle and Gresham to the side that lost to Richmond would have made a difference, noting we beat Richmond during the minor round

The intention of the Club and the player is to have Hannebery available - because he is a required player on our List to add class, experience and depth

Ditto Ryder

One player a team does not make

Did we not learn that from losing Grand Finals with our super stars?

It is your bottom 6 - and your depth on your List

The Club is working on that, by recruiting Steele, Membrey, Jones, Butler, Higgins, Howard, Ryder and Hannebery

And also going to the Draft, so Billings, Clark and Coffield as the start point

Dunstan and Acres were first round Draft picks

I trust Acres does not burn us today

[Killa]

Just to add, we have recruited the following over the recent seasons

Jones, Crouch, Hill, Steele, Hannebery, Butler, Ryder, Howard, Higgins, Kent, Membrey, Lienert, Wood and Campbell.

Some of those, being particularly Kent, Lienert, Wood and Campbell, are depth players.

From Drafting we have added the following over the (mostly) recent seasons

Coffield, Gresham, Wanganeen, Clark, King, Baynes, Geary, Billings, Windhager, Marshall, Long, Bytel, Owens, Battle, Adams, Webster, Allison, Paton, Highmore, Sinclair, McKenzie, Connolly, Joyce, Heath, Sharman, Wilkie, Peris, Kyle and Hayes.

So the experience we have remaining from Drafting is Geary, Webster and McKenzie (excluding Billings and Sinclair who are now past 100 games as regular selections post being Drafted).

Look at the number of games played across the Drafted List.

THAT has been where the gap has been and the reason we have been a poor side for the last 10 or more years.

And the List we have now, and who we recruit into the future is our future.

Courtesy of the current administration.

To my mind, given the foregoing, it is a pity we have lost McCartin, Dunstan and Acres being First Round Draft Picks across recent seasons for the reasons we have.

The reason why, post Gallagher, we recruited from the State Leagues was because of the gap in our age profile across the List.

We are now moving past that. But it takes time - and some luck.

Mind you, a good run with injuries would not harm.

But that will come.

[saintbob]

The list needs a clean out, while we keep rewarding mediocre players with contracts we’ll never be a premiership contender.
Ratten and the club put us back 3yrs drafting the likes of McKernan, Hunter and Frawley last year whilst keeping ordinary players like Lonie, Alabakis, Clavarino.

[Killa]

With all due respect, Frawley, McKernan and Hunter were one season (cheap) back ups for the structural deficiency in our List and were never the future of the Club

Absent injuries they played VFL, exclusively

Unfortunately we incurred injuries

Clavarino was very poor below his knees, Lonie was given years of opportunity and the ruckman was an experiment given his height

All are no longer on our List

You do not win a premiership by Drafting a Number 1 Draft Pick

You win a premiership by building a List

High Draft picks can accelerate that process (but not in the case of Carlton or Melbourne and their history) but the real problem is to get a Number 1 Draft Pick you have to be the worst side in the competition

So a talented 18 year old does not take the worst side in the competition to the best side in the competition

And each year there is a List roll over, whether you be the top side or the bottom side

To attract players out of Contract you need a stable, well respected administration and coaching set up

So it is the environment

Those being Drafted have no say on where they finish up

To me it appears St Kilda supporters are hero worshippers, from Lockett to Riewoldt

And savouring for the next hero

Except the heroes have not delivered

Why not?