This week has been a very interesting one and may well go down in history as the time the St Kilda F.C. finally started down the road to earning the respect of the other Clubs in the competition.
We were confronted this week with circumstances that could have caused us all sort of problems.
A former Captain, Club Champion and well respected player dropped a 'bombshell' on us by quitting us and requesting to be traded to one of our major competitors for the Premiership - Colingwood.
For whatever the reasons that Luke Ball has become disgruntled, the facts are he put our Club under enormous pressure this week.
The easy option was to accede to his wishes and do a deal with Collingwood.
But no, the Saints decided to stick by their principles and demanded what they believe Ball was worth.
The fact that Collingwood were unable to browbeat us into accepting less than we deemed was a fair and equitable trade may cause us some short term pain (the loss of Ball for no compensation in the PSD).
But I believe the long term benefits will be enormous.
The AFL and the other Clubs now know that we as a Club will stand up for ourselves.
No longer will we be seen as the soft target or doormat to be pillaged at will or ridden roughshod over. We have shown we are prepared to fight for ourselves.
Everybody now knows that we won't take the soft easy option unless it's part of our overall aim.
We'll cop the pain because we have a big prize to aim for and nothing will sidetrack us from it.
And the proof of our new maturity as a Club came in the handling of Xavier CLarke's trade to Brisbane.
Our Club obviously decided that Xavier will not be a part of our march towards glory and did everything within it's power to ensure that X was 'looked after'. I believe we learned an awful lot from Geelong after 2007 when they traded King and Gardiner to us for virtually nothing. We've just witnessed the Saints do something similar with Xavier.
A fortnight after a very disappointing loss in the 2009 Grand Final I've finished this week with a great feeling that our Club is in great hands. It is my opinion that the people in charge, from the Board down, know what they are doing.
Even more importantly they seem to know the correct path to take to get to the ultimate prize we crave.
Respect
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bigcarl
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