Ten months after wooing Malcolm Blight with a $1 million offer on the back of a napkin at a Chinese restaurant in late 2000, Grant Thomas got the phone call.

The St Kilda director of coaching had been summoned to Melbourne’s ritzy Flower Drum restaurant by the club’s heavyweights.

Blight’s tenure had been troubled from the start, marred by what some considered a part-time attitude and quirky methods in an increasingly modern game.

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As Thomas walked up the Market Lane stairs, just 15 rounds into Blight’s tenure, he had heard the rumblings and knew Blight’s introduction had been rocky.

Yet as he tells the Sacked podcast in a revelation that goes against 18 years of accepted wisdom, the decision to sack an AFL coaching legend blindsided him.

Painted all this time as a ruthless hatchet-man who chopped down Blight for his own self-promotion, Thomas didn’t even get a say in the biggest sacking in modern football.

“I was officially the director of football and I was officially the last person to find out,” Thomas tells the Herald Sun.

“I was invested in him and wanted it to work out and wasn’t interested in the short term. I knew it would take him a while to get his feet under the desk but I knew he would click into gear and when he did I was very comfortable it would be a good outcome.

“But we didn’t get there in the end. I was called to a meeting at the Flower Drum with the hierarchy at the time and that’s where it all came about.

“I knew there was an issue and said, “Listen, it’s Round 15, let’s get through this year. We are no good anyway, what is this year anyway?”

“But they had already made the decision at the Flower Drum. The press conference had been arranged.

Thomas is well aware he has been painted as a modern-day Macbeth, consumed by ambition and sacrificing others around him to rise to power.

He says he was Blight’s great supporter, aware from the start some like chief executive Jim Watts felt the premiership coach should never have been lured from retirement.

“I was the last to find out. At the time it suited their cause because to be perfectly frank they are weak, spineless people who don’t have the courage or conviction to stand up for their own circumstances.

“Because I didn’t care about the situation from my own perspective I was ostensibly the fall guy. But I didn’t run around trying to convince people of the true story.

“I said if they want me to be the guy who knifed him I couldn’t care less. It’s not true but it’s like the facade they went through with my appointment.

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“They called me the interim coach and as I said to them you should be painting the elected coach in the right way rather than making me out to be the knife man. It doesn’t augur well for my relationship with the players, but that’s what they did.“

So why didn’t he break ranks?

“I am a team player. Why would I go and do that? Malcolm is still shitty with me to this day. I was part of the regime and I was director of football so it is what it is.”

THOMAS AND HIS INTERNAL BATTLES

Grant Thomas was St Kilda coach for 123 games, his tenure juxtaposed by extraordinary on-field success and total chaos off the field.

He was an innovator - community camps, overseas training camps, co-captaincy, wellbeing surveys - and a winner.

He was beloved by his players, who would have died for him on-field given his motivational feats.

He became only the second coach behind Allan Jeans to play finals in three successive years, including successive preliminary finals in 2004-5.

He held it together until the 2006 elimination final against Melbourne, when he lost Raph and Xavier Clarke, Justin Koschitzke, Robert Harvey and Fraser Gehrig to injury.

He isn’t keen to give Butterss any publicity, saying their relationship was non-existent after he called out his issues in a meeting three years before his sacking.

“I knew somewhere between the 50m of his front gate and my gate I was dead man walking from that point on but I wasn’t prepared to compromise the potential success of our club.”

He still shakes his head at the events of that night after the elimination final.

“I didn’t have any relationship with him for the preceding three years. I was trying to keep it together - rotating CEO, rotating head of football, rotating directors. It was complete mayhem.

“I remember the game vividly.

“I did the press conference and went down to the rooms and (assistant coaches) Matty Rendell and Mick McGuane were there. I said pick up your heads boys, it’s as good a coaching performance ever.

“We had another four or five guys as well (as well as his injured stars) out on their feet with injuries and they said, ‘Thommo, you don’t realise what we have been hearing. The president is in there smiling and seems quite happy’. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and they said, ‘Something is wrong’, and we found out the next day.”

Thomas was called by a board director he won’t name the next morning to come to Butterss’ Brighton mansion.

“I was turning into his street and saw a director drive in before me and thought, ‘What is going on here?’

“He didn’t think I saw him and slid down in his seat and hid behind the door.

“I beeped my horn and his head came up and I said, ‘What are you doing here?’.

“He said, ‘let’s get down there and get it done’.

Thomas was offered $100,000 in his payout not to lay bare the facts.

“Very generous of them to give me club money to keep my mouth shut,” Thomas quips.

“I said I will just tell the truth, how about we start doing that?

“They said you can’t be derogatory to us and I said, I can’t tell the truth and not be derogatory’’.

“At some point everything will come out what we had to go through. I have not witnessed or heard anything like it. It was just extraordinary.”

THOMAS v DEMETRIOU

While Thomas was battling his own internal issues, he publicly waged war with AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou.

Many AFL figures cowed to the powerful Demetriou - seen as bullying to clubs who refused to bend to his will - but not Thomas.

They had sparred in their time together as players at North Melbourne, with the situation worsening after Demetriou and Thomas fell out as CEO and coach.

“I invited him down in 2001 or 2002 and said we are going to have to take some very brave decisions in the next year or two and we have to talk to the AFL as a stakeholder and let them know our strategy.

“He was less than respectful of what our strategy was and quite dismissive of St Kilda. ‘You guys are this and that, you are hopeless’.

“I pretty much told him to go forth and multiply and he left not in a very good mood and from then on it was sleeves up, gloves off and we deteriorated from there.

“Anything I did was amplified and we had a lot of problems with the AFL from that point on.

“After that meeting one of the directors said,”My god, Thommo, what have you just done.

“I just said, I have drawn a line in the sand and taken a stance for the St Kilda footy club.”

Asked what it is like to tell Demetriou to “f*** off”, Thomas replies quick-fire: “It’s not hard. It wasn’t the first time.”

Their emnity goes back to their days playing at North Melbourne where Thomas would stand up for players he felt Demetriou was belittling.

“Everyone used to say to me, (the AFL) are absolutely nailing us. The players even said, can you back off, they are smashing us, and I said, ‘don’t be weak as piss, we will get there eventually.’

“We could have taken the party line but I would have been weaker in other areas and once you are weak once you are weak twice and three times.”

HOW ST KILDA LURED MALCOLM BLIGHT TO ST KILDA

It is football folklore that a delegation of Saints flew to the Gold Coast to lure Blight out of retirement.

In actual fact Thomas says Blight had already agreed he would coach the club.

“I was on the coach appointment committee back then, which was no one. Me on my own.

“I spoke to every single coach and none of them wanted it. It’s when I got Blighty involved. I said, ‘I need your help, we need someone great for this place’. We would go through all the skills and assets and abilities we needed and the more I walked the more Malcolm confirmed he was the person to do it.

“And one day he said to me, ‘I only know of one person who can do all the things you are after Thommo’, and I said, ‘Who is it?’, and he said, ‘Me’.

“The rest is history. We signed him up on the back of a napkin and paid the million upfront so he would be a million dollar coach. I love Malcolm, he is an incredibly gifted footy person and I was convinced he could lead us into the light.

“We knew if we got Fraser Gehrig and Harves (Robert Harvey) and Lowey (Stuart Loewe) in front of him he would cave in and he has already caved in in reality. It was a bit of theatre but it worked.”

COMING UP NEXT WEEK....GUY MCKENNA

* The game that cost him his career?

* The sacking … without a completed review

READ MORE

>> ONBOARD THE FLIGHT THAT SPARKED CHEATING SCANDAL

>> UMPIRE DECISIONS THAT HAUNT SAINTS

>> TIMELINE: HOW ‘WHISPERS IN THE SKY SAGA’ UNFOLDED