It was more like the coronation of a new king rather than the appointment of the coach charged with delivering St Kilda’s elusive second premiership.

As Malcolm Blight was ushered into a private room in a Gold Coast Chinese restaurant in late 2000, a handful of senior Saints had to stand and applaud.

St Kilda great Nathan Burke told the Sacked podcast this week that of all of the bizarre moments he lived through in his 323 games with the club, it’s hard to go past what happened when the Saints flew north in a bid to convince Blight he needed to take over as coach.

You could put it under the ‘It could only happen at St Kilda’ file.

“There would have been four or five of us … Peter Everitt, Robert Harvey, Max Hudghton and myself flew up there and sat in a room with our ties on,” Burke recalled of the meeting.

“In walks Malcolm and his manager (Ron Joseph), and we have to stand up and give him a round of applause.

“Malcolm and ego, yes … both rather large and we needed to appeal (to him).”

Blight was playing hard to get. St Kilda president Rod Butterss was ready to pay up big time.

“Every coach I had had before was a first-time coach, so we (St Kilda) thought ‘Hey, let’s get someone who’s done it before … (who has) gone to the top of the mountain’,” Burke said.

“Malcolm was pretty happy with it. The red wines were flowing and it got to the point where Rod Butterss was writing numbers on a napkin, sliding them across to Malcolm … he would look at it and slide it across to his manager Ron Joseph.

“Ron would look at it, sort of frown and slide it back, and the players were sitting at the other end of the table, watching it happen.

“I was thinking ‘I think it’s time for us to leave’.

“It was good timing because Peter Everitt had just gone to the toilet … he had emancipated a lobster from the fish tank that was running around on the floor of the Chinese restaurant.

“It was a good time for us to get out of there. As it turned out, they eventually settled on seven figures that got the great man to the club.”

Blight would become the AFL’s first $1m per season coach, even if he wouldn’t last before 15 games.

His unconventional ways, almost from the start, concerned Burke, including a decision to put away the footballs in the pre-season until the start of 2001.

“I know Malcolm rails at anyone who says he wasn’t fully committed,” Burke explained.

“But we didn’t touch a ball from the start of pre-season until Christmas … we just ran and ran and ran.

“He was living in Queensland and he’d come down two nights a week – at the most. Then (he said) ‘after Christmas, if you have got your time trial, you’re allowed to touch a football’.

“We were extremely fit. When you chuck a whole bunch of senior fit players a football and say ‘don’t go fast, though … go slow because your legs aren’t used to it’.

“It was almost like you could hear ‘ping’, ‘ping’, ping’ (with hamstrings and quads).”

SACKED AS SKIPPER

“New coach, new change and we need a new skipper”.

It wasn’t the message Burke was expecting when he was called to a meeting with footy boss Grant Thomas at the Dandy Deli in Brighton shortly after Blight was appointed.

But ever the clubman, he copped it on the chin … until Thomas told him who he wanted to replace him as captain.

“He (Thomas) said ‘I’m going to make Peter Everitt captain’,” Burke recounted. “I said: ‘No, I don’t think that’s the right decision’.”

“Peter was one of those guys who had natural leadership abilities in that if everyone was standing outside a room saying ‘should we go in the room, is the coach ready?’ Peter is the guy who would say ‘I’ll go and check … yeah he’s ready, come in’.

“(But) he led a lot of players in the wrong direction.”

Burke knew the Saints had the right man to be the next captain, and pushed his cause.

“Robert Harvey did everything right,” he said.

“I remember sitting there with Brian Waldron and Grant Thomas, and having the conversation for a good 45 minutes that ‘if I am going to step down, Harves has to be the one to take over’.

“Luckily, they did (listen) because the guy (Harvey) deserved it.”

‘THE FINAL STRAW’ ON BLIGHT’S SACKING

Blight lasted 15 games – three wins and 12 losses – before he was sacked in one of the biggest coaching bombshell decisions this century.

For Burke, the “final straw” was easy to pinpoint, even if Blight didn’t see the axe coming.

“We saw Malcolm after one game and then the following week we played in Brisbane,” Burke said.

“The next time we saw him … was when he walked into the Gabba and he was putting the magnets on the wall.

“We didn’t see him in that period (between the games). He went back to the Gold Coast during the week and let his assistant coaches, Kenny Hinkley and those guys, run the ship. That was the final straw.”

Asked if he thought Blight could have turned the club around if he had been afforded more time, Burke said: “I don’t think so … It was definitely the right move (to sack him). You have got to be all in as a coach.

“I think he just thought it was going to happen. He probably didn’t pay enough respect to the mess that we were in. The mess of ‘99, coming last on the ladder, the fracturedness of the group, the selfishness of the group.

“You can’t go from being a really selfish team on the bottom of the ladder … to a “I’m here now, it’s going to be fine’ (attitude). You have to work on that mess to get it right.

“That’s the bit he missed out on.”

THOMMO’S PLAN TO BE CEO AND COACH

Thomas took over as St Kilda coach after Blight’s sacking, and while Burke says he wasn’t a tactical genius, he in part brought the fractured group together.

“It was a very simple game plan, but he got the group wanting to be together,” he said of Thomas. “The exact thing that Malcolm didn’t do.”

St Kilda played in the 2004 and 2005 preliminary finals, but while the fractured nature of the playing group was improved, Thomas’ own relationship with Butterss collapsed in a fallout that Burke said hijacked any hope of team success.

“There was a lot going on behind the scenes in that the coach and the president couldn’t be in the same room,” said Burke, who was an assistant coach to Thomas for two seasons.

“Both were happy to be the smartest person in the room.

“Thommo genuinely wanted to be CEO and coach at the same time. He said: ‘I can do it’, but I had my doubts.

“He was doing every contract. The marketing department would come and run things by him. The communications department would come and run things by him.

“He said: ‘I’m doing it anyway … make me the CEO and I can be the coach. As a coach, I’ll delegate more to you guys’ … He saw himself more as an English football manager.

“He wanted to reshape the way coaching was, but Rod Butterss and those guys were on a completely different page.

“They literally couldn’t be in the same room. I was the mediator quite often.”

Thomas was sacked by Butterss after the Saints lost the 2006 elimination final to Melbourne.

WHY KENNY AND STAN WERE SACKED

Burke was used to the coach being the fall guy for a lack of success, and as a player, he saw a common theme for Ken Sheldon and Stan Alves.

They didn’t ‘manage up’

“Kenny made the fatal mistake of saying ‘hey board members, you’re not allowed to come in the rooms before the game, and you’ve got to keep at hand’s length’.

“Bad move. That never works out well for coaches when they keep the board members out.”

Alves was an assistant coach under Sheldon at the time but took over and provided the players with plenty of ownership.

It worked for a period and helped to sweep St Kilda through to the 1997 grand final but he tried to wrest back control when the team started losing.

He was also hard on the senior players at times.

One of those sprays came at halftime of the 1997 grand final – when the Saints led by 13 points – which Burke says deflated the group.

“We came into the rooms and we got sort of barrelled at halftime, and we were thinking ‘hang on, aren’t we in front?’

“It just took a bit of an edge off and if you are playing in a grand final, you take five per cent off the group and you are going to get run over.”

The Saints lost by 31 points after conceding 14 goals to six in the second half.

St Kilda lost in straight sets the next season, and the coach had also banned the board from the rooms, like his predecessor.

“Stan didn’t manage up well,” Burke said. “He banned the board from coming into the rooms.

“A group of our senior players met with Gary Colling, who was the football manager. We met him down at a restaurant in Beaumaris and gave some observations.

“Then I got a phone call from (president) Andrew Plympton the next day, saying ‘Yep, we’ve done it, Burkey, we’ve pulled the pin (on Alves). I have let him know’.

“I said ‘What are you talking about? I don’t know what ‘Cat’ (Colling) told you but the message wasn’t ‘Stan has to go’. He had a lot of great qualities, he just needed boundaries.

“I said: ‘Why have you done it?’ He (Plympton) said: ‘We need a good bloke’.

“And the good bloke we got was Tim Watson.

“He was a good bloke … (but) within two years we were last on the ladder.”