saint66au wrote:
Noone hands out flags for the best balance sheet. RB got us back in the bl;ck no doubt, but he took it a year or 2 too far imho. )
RB took us from no debt to big debt and then back to not much debt. Just for factual accuracy.
Butterss admits: We haven't delivered
February 25 2003
It's put-up or shut-up time at St Kilda, and Saints president Rod Butterss pulls no punches in his appraisal of the club to Stephen Rielly.
When Rod Butterss succeeded Andrew Plympton as president of St Kilda in August 2000,
he inherited a debt-free football club that, although in the last days of an ill-fated partnership with coach Tim Watson, had been a finalist two years earlier.
This, at least, was the popular view of Butterss' inheritance.
The president, who was reappointed by the St Kilda board last week for a further three years, has a different interpretation of affairs. It is one he believes partly explains why, under his guidance, the club has won only nine matches in two seasons and is
now burdened by $2.5 million of debt.
Much of the blame for the decline he has overseen is his own, Butterss agrees, and he will not question the Plympton legacy.
"How would I assess our performance? I would give ourselves a five out of 10," Butterss said. "On a range of fronts, I underestimated the complexities and demands of football. We've made mistakes."
"We were so passionate and enthusiastic about introducing change and seeing things happen that we enticed Malcolm out of retirement a year or two before he was ready and we both got burnt," Butterss concedes. "I don't look back on it often, but when I do, I think that we both erred."
As Butterss sees things, his inexperience, and that of his board in 2000, served to undermine the tremendous energy and the flow of ideas introduced to the boardroom at the time, which amounted to a belief that radical change was required.
"It took some time to understand that unlike in the traditional small business world, where changes of fortune and direction can be made in a matter of months through a range of initiatives, football doesn't allow quick turnarounds," he said.
"You live with your decisions in this game for a very long time."
"The truth is we haven't yet delivered a damn thing," Butterss concedes.