Grant Thomas urges St Kilda to put a 10-year contract offer in front of Luke Beveridge

Before he was snapped up by the Western Bulldogs, Luke Beveridge was preparing to take over as coaching director at St Kilda. Grant Thomas says it’s time for the Saints to get him back, with an offer he can’t refuse.

Grant Thomas has urged St Kilda to make a last-ditch effort to coax premiership coach Luke Beveridge back to Moorabbin with a stunning 10-year contract offer following the departure of Alan Richardson on Tuesday morning.

Beveridge, who led the Western Bulldogs to a drought-breaking 2016 premiership, is contracted at the Whitten Oval until the end of next season.

Bulldogs president Peter Gordon told the Herald Sun recently the club had already begun talks with Beveridge to extend his arrangement with the club.

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But Thomas said the Saints would be derelict in not asking the question of Beveridge, who has had a strong connection to the club, having played 45 of his 118 AFL games with St Kilda and whose father, John, was a long-time club recruiting manager.

Beveridge had also been preparing to start as a coaching director at St Kilda in late 2014 when the Bulldogs made him the coach of the club.

“I tell you what, I would take Luke Beveridge (as Saints coach) for a decade,” Thomas told the Herald Sun after learning of Richardson’s exit.

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“I would do that … 100 per cent. (I’d say) ‘Here is a decade, Bevo, you are a St Kilda person, you understand the club. Your dad, Johnny, knows it back to front. You have grown up with it, you are the man, away you go’.”

“Then you can make the hard decisions. You are going to have to get rid of some guys, you are going to have to rebuild and maybe trade a few players out.

“Just get it right.

“If it (a contract extension with the Bulldogs) is not done, they (St Kilda) should make every post a winner to appoint him.”

Thomas said St Kilda had made another poor decision in not casting the net for the best available coach at the end of last season when the club slumped to 16th.

He conceded it was now too late to chase Alastair Clarkson, which he had urged in the recent Sacked podcast, or John Longmire, who has signed a new long-term deal with the Swans.

“Our timing is impeccably bad, it always is, unfortunately,” Thomas said.

“That’s what I was talking about on the (Sacked) podcast about making brave decisions.

“The time to make it was at the end of last year, or maybe a year earlier. Clarkson lives in Brighton, and he might have been in a different space then, and maybe (it could have been) Bevo who was under the pump then, or Longmire.

Luke Beveridge in action for the Saints during his playing days.

“They are probably the top three coaches in the competition and we might have missed out on them because we stalled and we waited.”

Thomas said he found it strange St Kilda chairman Andrew Bassat would chair the coaching selection committee instead of head of football Simon Lethlean.

“I find it interesting the director of football has relinquished his role to the president,” he said.

“I hope that doesn’t mean Brad Scott has already got the stamp of approval.”

He added: “I don’t have a lot of confidence in the St Kilda process. I went through one when I was told that I was the coach even before it started.”

Thomas said his recent comments on the Saints were not about him trying to be a provocateur, but simply because he wanted to see the club finally succeed.

“I am a 100 per cent invested St Kilda person,” he said. “To see them through to (being) a respected AFL club delivering sustainable success, I would do whatever was required.”