It is one of the most famous points in AFL history.

Certainly, the most important in the chronicles of the St Kilda Football Club.

And it is one Saints’ legend Barry Breen gets asked about – a lot.

Breen has lost count of the number of times he has recalled the passage of play that led to his celebrated “wobbly punt” in the 1966 Grand Final, which allowed the Saints to scrape home by the narrowest of margins to claim the club’s first – and only – premiership win, against Collingwood at the MCG.

“It gets regurgitated a lot as time has gone by because we haven’t won one (since) and every time we are in a Grand Final it is spoken of and resurrected again,” Breen said.

“So the actual moment is fairly indelible in my mind because it gets repeated so many times.

“Other parts of the game are not so clear. But it was obviously a pretty big day for me at 18 years of age and on that stage in front of 100,000-odd people.

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“It was a pretty frenetic part of the game obviously because the clock was ticking and the ball had been going backwards and forwards for a fair while.

“I saw the goals and I had time, in my mind I had time to set it up, but didn’t execute it as well as I would have liked.

“Everybody said it was a wobbly punt but it was off-centre and it just missed and rolled over the line.

“There was another piece of play and it went out the other side and ‘Tuddy’ (Des Tuddenham) took off and kicked the ball to centre half-forward and Bob Murray marked the ball and kicked it out and then the siren sounded and we won by a point.”

The Saints’ one-point victory over the Magpies in 1966 ended what was – at the time – the longest premiership drought in the VFL.

It was silverware 68 years in the making.

But, 55 years later, that solitary premiership cup in the Saints’ trophy cabinet at Moorabbin is still screaming out for a mate.

St Kilda has again been left with the unfortunate honour of owning the league’s longest wait for a flag following Melbourne’s drought-breaking premiership win after 57 years last season.

The heroes of the club’s only flag never imagined they would still be waiting for a new group of Saints to join them in the premiership club 55 years later.

“Not in a million years,” Breen said.

“We had a pretty good side and we contended for probably the next seven or eight years.

“We missed (finals in) ’67, there in ‘68, missed ‘69, ‘70 we were in the finals, ‘71 we were 20 points up at three-quarter time and lost.

“We still thought we had a chance in the next few years but beyond ‘75 we folded and lost players and took a while to get back into contention after that.

“Now we are now the longest serving team (without a flag). But Melbourne had been in a similar position to us.

“Although we have probably contested more than they had over those 50 years.”

The Saints’ flag drought has not come without its chances.

In all, the Saints have secured four tickets to the big dance since then – plus one to a Grand Final replay.

Five years after the 1966 win, the Saints lost to Hawthorn by seven points in the 1971 Grand Final in front of 118,192 people at the MCG.

The next Grand Final appearance didn’t come until 1997 when Nathan Burke’s men suffered a 31-point loss to Adelaide.

In 2009, the Nick Riewoldt-led Saints went down by 12 points against Geelong but the ultimate heartache was to follow the next year.

The Saints played out a thrilling draw against Collingwood only to return the following week and get belted by 56 points in the GF replay.

Since the 1966 flag, the Saints have played in 38 finals in total, including nine preliminary final appearances.

Former St Kilda midfielder-turned commentator Leigh Montagna, a member of the Saints’ 2009 and 2010 Grand Final teams, said his biggest anguish to this day remained not being able to deliver a flag for the club’s long-suffering supporters.

“It was heartbreaking. Thinking of the fans that were so desperate and craved success. We wanted to win one for them,” Montagna said.

“We knew the opportunity presented to be only the second group of St Kilda players to hold that premiership cup.

“You just feel for the fans, St Kilda are some of the most loyal and best supporters in the competition and every St Kilda fan that comes up and chats to me they always start off by saying ‘I am a long suffering Saints supporter’ and I nod and I say ‘Every Saints supporter is in the same boat’.

“You would just love for them to finally get to experience what the Melbourne supporters were able to experience last year.

“In saying that, we were proud that we gave it everything we had as a group, we had no regrets, we left it all out there.”

The next year, the Saints bowed out in an elimination final loss in 2011 and it then took the team nine years to get back to the finals.

But it was short lived.

After finally getting back among the finals action with a semi-final run in 2020 to give the club’s faithful hope, the Saints missed the top eight again last season.

So 55 years on, how close – or far away – are the Saints from breaking their premiership drought?

CLOCK TICKING

Former St Kilda coach Grant Thomas is not convinced the Saints can win a flag in the next five years and need to make some big changes to enter the premiership frame.

“I’ve been quite vocal in recent history, over the last few years especially, I think we have had a pretty poor decade and we need to do dramatic things to enter the premiership race,” said Thomas, who coached the Saints from 2001 to 2006.

“I’m not certain that our leadership at the moment is able to deliver that. I’m happy to be called stupid or be proven wrong on it.

“Can they (win a flag in the next five years)? Of course they can, teams have proven that.

“Will they? No. They just won’t. I don’t think they have the competence, I don’t think they’ve got the solidarity, I don’t think they’ve got the connection and I don’t think they’ve got the ethic to pull that off.

“Hopefully this year proves me wrong and they use this year as a platform to roll the sleeves up and just do what they need to do.

“Then we can all say ‘Hang on a minute, the Saints really are on the march’ …. but I don’t have any confidence around that.”

Others have more confidence, pointing to Melbourne’s breakthrough win as evidence the wheels can turn quickly.

“They are not going to win the flag this year, but, hey, Melbourne came from nowhere virtually, so it can be done,” Breen said.

“It certainly can be done in five years. That’s a pretty long time in footy.

“It’s a very big ask, but it’s possible. Sides have come from nowhere to be successful and win flags – Richmond before they went on their run, Western Bulldogs and Melbourne.

“They all came from back in the pack so it can be done.”

CULTURE SHOCK

Why hasn’t St Kilda been able to get over the line in its quest for a breakthrough flag?

Thomas believes culture has been a big part in the club’s lack of success.

“I have question marks around our culture at the club and when I say that, one thinks about being a good boy or a bad boy,” Thomas said.

“It’s nothing to do with that, it’s all about eating, drinking and sleeping premiership football and being a pro’s pro and doing anything and everything you can to take the next step and making every single decision within the environment of the football club being based on winning a premiership, nothing else.

“I think you have got several AFL clubs that are in that space, that are in the premiership business and they absolutely are locked onto it …. and do not compromise.

“And you have a lot of other clubs that are happy playing AFL footy, happy going along on the AFL journey, hopeful of playing in AFL finals …. and if we do, well, that’s a success.

“Well, frankly it’s not. Playing finals isn’t a success. If you are in the shoe game, you are selling shoes, we are in the premiership game and that’s what it’s about, it’s about premierships.

“When you look at the Bulldogs, when you look at Richmond, when you look at Melbourne last year, they have all gone past us. The Western Bulldogs and Melbourne in particular had somewhat chequered pasts (similar) to St Kilda and they have made decisions and got the right people in place and delivered success.

St Kilda premiership player and former captain Ross Smith addressed the Saints’ playing group at the end of last year to reflect on the club’s sole flag win.

Smith said a combination of off and on-field stability, which the Saints had not always possessed, was a key to delivering a premiership.

“If you look at the clubs that are successful today, they are very well-managed, they have got a good strong administration, they have got a very good coach who manages the team very well and you have obviously got to have the right set of players,” Smith said.

“A club has got to be very stable from an administrative point of view and has got to be well-managed.

“If you look back on the history of St Kilda, administration and finance was a problem.

“I think now they are well administered with the past presidents that they’ve had and the current president (Andrew Bassat) they have got.”

Smith believed the Saints had also gone some way to resetting their on-field culture.

“Over the last couple of years their … disposal skills are so much better than they have been in the past,” Smith said.

“They have obviously looked at some of their deficiencies in comparison to other teams. Two years ago they would have been one of the poorest in terms of retaining possession of the ball.

“But now they have enhanced that, they are still not at the top level but they certainly keep the ball longer and so that gives players more confidence that they can lead or move with greater confidence that the ball is going to get delivered to them.

“Culture is helped by being successful because it is a self-reinforcing process.”

THE LIST

Thomas has concerns about St Kilda’s list and said the club needed to make some hard decisions on players who were not going to take it to its next premiership.

And he said a tough call might need to be made on one of the club’s favourites.

“I haven’t met anyone in AFL football that’s said St Kilda’s list is in the top four premiership lists,” Thomas said.

“You can pretty quickly evaluate whether a player is going to be playing in your next premiership or not and if the answer to that is no, well then you need to move on.

“What they are doing is blocking up opportunities for players to come through and you are blocking up the progress of the club as a whole.

“You either make decisions to win a premiership or you don’t … I just think we need to be making some decisions about our list and who plays and who doesn’t.

“I don’t believe it’s serving our club in the best interests to be playing someone like ‘Gears’, without causing any aspersions on him because he has got the most out of himself and he has had a wonderful AFL career.

“But that’s a glaring example to me. I don’t care whether the guy that fills his post is half as good at the moment, it doesn’t matter but he needs to be playing in that position so that we are able to progress ourselves.”

Montagna felt the list was in good health but the Saints were lacking match winners.

“You could probably continue to add more elite talent,” Montagna said.

“I think their group is pretty good, they have got some young players that could be anything – (Max) King and (Jade) Gresham and Hunter Clark are all absolutely capable of being All Australian and they are well-lead by (Jack) Steele.

“They’ve got a lot of good players, it’s just a matter of whether they’ve got matchwinners that can turn a game like Melbourne and the Bulldogs.

“They have got players that are absolute matchwinners. It’s just a matter if St Kilda is able to develop and find them.”

THE COACH

Brett Ratten is entering his third full season as St Kilda coach and the final year of his contract.

But is he the right man to take the club forward?

Montagna was confident the former Blues champion was the best man for the job.

“At the moment he is. There is no reason why he is not right at this stage. They played finals only 12 months ago and they had a shocking run with injury last year,” Montagna said.

“He is really well respected and liked amongst the group.

“I think the way that they play is a pretty good style. It’s not like their game plan is way off the mark, they just need players to jump on board, they need to show a bit of resilience and fight when things aren’t going their way, they need a bit of luck and give themselves a chance.”

Thomas acknowledged Ratten was an “excellent” and “genuine” person but questioned if that was enough.

“I can’t comment as to whether he is the right person or the wrong person because I just don’t know him well enough and I don’t know what goes on,” Thomas said.

“What I do know is he is an excellent person, I hear that if premierships were built on personalities and genuineness and all the rest of it, well, Ratts would be fantastic.

“As we saw with Cricket Australia, sometimes you need to have a hardened edge to drive success and the recent Australian coach (Justin Langer) saw his demise on the back of that.

“All I can go on is the exposed form … like our footy fans go on, the rest of the media and there are concerns. The jury is still out on a whole host of areas.”

TIME TO PASS THE BATON

The surviving members of the 1966 premiership team have enjoyed regular catch-ups and stayed connected with emails.

As the club’s only premiership players, Smith said they shared a special bond.

But the 1966 flag heroes are more than ready to hand the mantle over to a new generation of St Kilda premiership stars.

“We have been willing to hand it over for 55 years,” Smith said.

“We don’t want to be the exclusive ones.

“There are only 20 of us who have got a premiership medallion, we would like to share that experience with other St Kilda players.”

A sentiment Breen echoed.

“I would be delighted. Some of my friends say to me ‘No, you wouldn’t’ but I am and I would be and I know that all of my teammates that are still with us feel exactly the same way.

“We want the club to be successful and we want them to win a premiership and take the mantle away from us.

“It’s 55 years, it’s been too long.”