Moderators: Saintsational Administrators, Saintsational Moderators
The signs off-field are excellent.st.byron wrote: Not hanging any hats on anything just yet Rog. Agree that really solid results are yet to come. But it's true that fitness and list depth is better than at any time since before Thomas was in the driving seat. Lyon deserves commendation for that and I don't see why you and Babble-a-lot can't give credit where credit's due. Westaway and his team have given the management of the club a really sound structure, delivered a sponsorship coup and made a clear decision about our future home base. All with no bloody razzle-dazzle nonsense. Just like Lyon they're getting on with the job of making St.Kilda football club a professional and winning outfit.
No chocolates or flowers at this stage, agreed. But the signs are encouraging and that deserves some acknowledgment.
We're thinking the Marrara. They looked after the Geelong supporter group there for the second half of last year,went down for a couple of there games and the atmosphere was great,we were thinking it would be good to do a similar thing for the saints,as it's hard to find an exclusively AFL friendly pub up here. I know hardly anyone in Darwin,but I know of at least 10 mad sainters,so I reckon we'd get a decent turnout if it got up and going.lazy wrote:Off topic..
Good too see another Darwinite on the forum . I'm in a house of all recent ex pat's Victorians,and even better we're all Sainters. We're thinking about trying to organise a Stkilda supporters group to watch the games at a pub each week. Stay tuned if it go's ahead...
Jonesy
Not much of a pub goer but would certainly be interested from time to time. Any thoughts on which pub?
Lazy
Re GT i agree with you. probably would have been good in the 1990's was innovative, but as you say ran out of ideas. and could not change the game plan in crunch times.skeptic wrote:When GT took over as coach, the club had no money and no means to put in place what GT wanted...
times changed, we got a bit of $$$ and GT implemented what he wanted, the way he wanted and for a while it worked... we were top of the line
the problem with GT was that he ran out of ideas... he took us to a point and couldn't take us any further and as the game evolved he was unable to adapt hence we stagnated and the wheels began to fall off... make no mistake GT would have made an excellent coach in the 90s along with Pagan and a whole bunch of other coaches that had 1 great style for their eras but couldn't adjust with the times.
The fortune with Ross Lyon is that he worked/had influence at a club that is used to having the best of the best in terms of equipment, personel, resources etc
Coming to St.Kilda... a St.Kilda with $$$ for the 1st time in its history, he is able to bring a lot of this knowledge and invest it in key personel, equipment and resources.
He is truly in a unique position... no St.Kilda coach has ever had this before.
Whether or not he is a great coach will depend on if he has innovations or can find innovations to make/keep us with the elite teams or is he a 1 trick pony??? That's where the juries out.
On side note, personally I don't believe the coaching selection process was quite and "clean" as has been made out. I just don't believe that the board at the time sacked the coach of a team that had finished 4th, 4th and 8th over the previous few years without somebody in mind.
Thats not to say that the process was corrupted or applicants never really had a hope of toppling Ross, but personally I think the position wass Ross' to lose...
I remember that most of us hadn't even heard of him until the final four was announced... and the rumour mill had it that he was the last interviewee and that his interview took place in secret late the night b4. I suspect that at the very least, the board were very keen on some1 who had worked with the resources of an interstate club... might have swung the balance between him and the WB assistance coach Bond??? who was remarked to have performed slightly better in the interview
