Moving to Seaford ‘ripped soul out of St Kilda’, says Nick Riewoldt

FORMER St Kilda skipper Nick Riewoldt has slammed the club for “crushing” the playing group when the Saints left their spiritual home for Seaford.

FORMER St Kilda skipper Nick Riewoldt has slammed the club’s move to Seaford in 2011, saying it “crushed” the playing group to leave its traditional heartland in Moorabbin.

The Saints won just one of their first eight games in 2011 after the shift, which followed a falling out with Kingston City Council.

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“I’ve heard the last couple of days now that we’re out of Seaford, everyone saying what a great facility it was for us along the journey,” Riewoldt said on Fox Footy’s AFL360 last night.

“I mean, that’s rubbish. That’s spin.

“Because it wasn’t a world-class facility and geographically it was tough for the players.”

Asked whether the move had “ripped the soul out of the club”, Riewoldt said there was “no doubt”.

Nick Riewoldt says Saints players weren’t happy moving to Seafood. Picture: Michael Klein

“For the group at the time, on the back of a grand final in 2009 and 2010, arguably the best list that we’d accumulated in the club’s history, and then to go down to Seaford, away from the spiritual home — yeah, it crushed the group at the time,” he said.

Former Saints coach Scott Watters echoed Riewoldt’s sentiment, saying the move

compounded a series of problems that led to the club’s decline.

Watters, who took over from Ross Lyon after the 2011 season - St Kilda’s first at Seaford - said he inherited a club also feeling the effects of poor drafting and the emotional toll of consecutive Grand Final losses in 2009 and 2010.

Saints forward Paddy McCartin training at Moorabbin last month. Picture: Michael Klein

But Watters said the Saints’ elder statesmen despised their place of work.

“Seaford certainly wasn’t a place where the senior players wanted to be,” Watters told SEN.

“For the senior players who had been through the Moorabbin experience and been through some Grand Finals, I think in the end, Seaford became a symbol for what they missed.

“The lost Grand Finals took a toll mentally on a lot of the players,” he said.

“It was taking them a while to come out of that. I think Seaford on top of that, it felt quite soulless for that group, who had such a strong attachment to Moorabbin.

“Whilst they were at Moorabbin, they were in their premiership window. Seaford symbolised everything they had lost, so it was pretty tough for them.”

The Saints this week returned to their spiritual home, reopening a newly renovated Linton St training base.