Scott Watters says Saints were in ‘receivership’ and $220,000 over salary cap after 2011 flag tilt

Scott Watters walked into St Kilda and a list management “fiasco” after Ross Lyon departed. But the former Pies assistant revealed one man tried to give him a heads-up about what he was facing.

Scott Watters says he inherited a basket-case at the Saints.

Scott Watters inherited a list management disaster with St Kilda $220,000 over the salary cap and effectively in “receivership” only days after he took over from Ross Lyon in late 2011.

In the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast series, Watters reveals the list management fiasco he and football boss Chris Pelchen attempted to fix after Lyon moved to Fremantle.

Then-Pies assistant Watters took on the role despite being warned by Collingwood list manager Derek Hine it had secured the least top-10 picks in a decade and retained the fewest of them.

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They were told by the AFL they were legally unable to spend an extra cent on retaining players, after a set of bizarre contracts that saw one-off $50,000 All Australian bonuses then added to the ongoing base of contracts in subsequent years.

St Kilda eventually moved on Brendon Goddard, Nick Dal Santo and Ben McEvoy in a list fire-sale.

Scott Watters, with his captain Nick Riewoldt, was named St Kilda coach in October 2011.

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Watters admitted the decision to offer Goddard only a three-year deal, which saw him leave for Essendon, was the right policy but was “really destabilising for the club”.

But despite being warned by Hine as he left the Pies, he was still shocked by the mess left by previous administrations.

“I spoke to Derek Hine, saying ‘I am thinking of putting my hand up’ and said ‘What are you thinking about the list?’ and the term he used I couldn’t use here on the podcast.

“Something I didn’t know walking into that role is that three days after walking in, we were $220,000 over the salary cap.

“I was driving to a meeting with Chris Pelchen and we were trying to re-sign (full back) Zac Dawson.

“At the time he was the only thing that resembled a key defender on our list. Zac wanted $35,000 more a season and we were basically in receivership. Under jurisdiction from the AFL, not one more player on the list could be offered one dollar more.

“Looking at the balance of a list, you would like to keep a key defender. The last thing I want to do is sit here and bash St Kilda, but good clubs make good decisions at all levels and ultimately it flows through to a winning performance. It gives the players a chance and the coach a chance. There is no mystery to how that happens.

The Saints couldn’t afford Zac Dawson.

Former St Kilda football and list manager Chris Pelchen. Picture: Michael Klein

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“One of the phenomenal things you learn when you are three days into the job and you are thinking about that salary cap issue is that players were actually getting … if you finished top five in the fairest and best, you would get a $50,000 bonus, but then that bonus would actually become part of your base package the following year, so over a five-year to 10-year period that is what caused (the issues) … that is mismanagement, that is blatant mismanagement and it takes a long time to backtrack from that.”

Watters was sacked at the end of 2013 by St Kilda, but his prophecy came true.

Despite a series of inventive trades the Saints have not played finals since 2011 and have enjoyed only one winning season in the past six years.

Lyon left the club at the end of 2012 for Fremantle, saying the club was failing to commit to recontracting him and citing his own financial issues for the need to secure a long-term deal.

Watters believed the club failed to communicate its list management issues adequately, which only shocked the fan base more when the club moved on McEvoy and Goddard to revamp the list.

St Kilda fans weren’t happy after Ross Lyon left Moorabbin for Freo.

“We won 12 games in the first year but we were winning those games with a list that was declining,” he said.

“It had been declining since 2009 in reality, even though St Kilda nearly pinched the Grand Final. It’s easy to analyse the demographics of a list and see where it’s trending.

“So we won 12 games, but you could see the cliff was coming. I remember having a conversation with Chris Pelchen and (chief executive) Michael Nettlefold saying, ‘Here is what is coming. It might be in six or 16 games but it’s impossible to avoid and we need to articulate that clearly’.

“Michael’s statement was that we can’t tell the members that, we will lose members. My response was ‘That’s fine, but it’s coming anyway’.”

Scott Watters: “We won 12 games in the first year but we were winning those games with a list that was declining.”