St Kilda calling on fans to help complete move home to Moorabbin
AFTER seven years at Seaford, St Kilda is ready to return home to Moorabbin but needs its fans to help complete the move. Take a look at the Saints’ proposed new elite training facility.
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ST KILDA has asked its fan base to provide the final $2.4 million required to complete the Saints’ move back home to Moorabbin.
After seven years at Seaford, the Saints want to move players and staff into an elite training facility at Moorabbin by the start of next season.
The club has already secured $27.6 million in funds to build the new home base and has revealed RSEA Safety had joined as new naming rights sponsor.
The world-class headquarters will include new recovery pools, a gym, change rooms as well as a theatrette and, when the second phase is complete later in 2018, a cafe, museum and community facilities.
Chief executive Matt Finnis said the $30 million move was also pivotal to help reconnect the Saints players and supporters with its spiritual home.
Finnis said the club had outgrown its Linen House setup in Seaford and wanted a new centre which “everyone is really proud of”.
“We spoke to a lot of Saints people when I first came to the club and this sense of homelessness came up a bit,” Finnis said.
“We have always had a place where players would go to train but when you say to people, ‘If and when we win our second premiership where would we go to celebrate?’ People would consistently say Moorabbin.
“So we want to bring that back and proudly display it at Moorabbin.”
St Kilda 1966 premiership hero Barry Breen urged fans to donate.
“The members now have a chance, no matter how small, to contribute to securing the future of the football cub, whether it is $2, $10 or $100,” Breen said.
“People can be part of it and they can be very proud of what is going to be there at the beginning of 2018.”
Breen, who kicked the point that broke the deadlock against Collingwood in their only Grand Final triumph, believed the club “should probably never have left” Moorabbin in 2010 despite its depilated training facilities.
Breen said Moorabbin occupied a huge place in the club’s history.
“It was always a fortress in many ways and opposition teams didn’t like playing there,” he said.
“The ground was different, the mud was different, the crowd was different and it was really a true home ground.”
Generous benefactors have already helped the Saints raise $5.2 million but the Saints have launched the Reimagine Moorabbin campaign to make up the $2.4 million shortfall.
Donors who contribute more than $500 will have their name featured on a commemorative guernsey which will be worn by players in the opening round for the 2018 season.
Donors who contribute over $1500 will also have their name displayed on a recognition wall to be constructed at the new Moorabbin building.
Finnis said the club was confident the first phase of the redevelopment would be complete by February next year.
“We have had tremendous support up until now from wonderful major donors which have allowed us to get to the point where we have raised nearly $28 million of the $30 million project,” he said.
“That also includes wonderful support from state and local government and the AFL.
“But we just know surveying our members and the phone calls we receive, people want to be part of this (move) and to have that ownership (of the Moorabbin redevelopment).
“It is a wonderful, unifying project where people can really own the journey we are on.”
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