St Kilda’s season derailed on and off field after Good Friday loss to North Melbourne
ST KILDA says it will look at ways to support embattled coach Alan Richardson as the Saints reveal their Good Friday loss to North Melbourne have driven fans away and will hurt the club’s bottom line.
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ST KILDA has flagged a remodelled coaching structure to support embattled leader Alan Richardson, with the Saints determined to land a big fish through trade or free agency.
Speaking at an exclusive membership forum at Moorabbin on Monday, Saints football boss Simon Lethean foreshadowed a revised coaching panel for 2019 with a focus on development.
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“The one thing outside of just the on-field stuff, for me, is to really challenge a few of our structures — challenge what our coaching structure should look like,” Lethean told the members.
“I see a hardworking footy club and a hardworking football program, but there’s areas that we can improve in.
“You will have seen a recent change (the exit of recruiting and list manager Tony Elshaug this month). I think we can get better at list management and our processes and strategy around that. We’re working on a new strategy for football for the next three to four years.
“I see a playing list and a coaching staff that needs more support, more insights and a few more smart, hardworking people in our football program to actually give the tools … that can help our players and coaches be better.
“The guys work really hard, but can we work better with some new people and some new systems and processes? Yeah, we can I reckon.
“And I think discover more about our list too, there’s some players that we haven’t seen much of yet … how we can better develop them, it’s not all about recruiting, it’s about development.”
Coach Alan Richardson, who is contracted until the end of 2020, told the forum that while the Saints would look to this year’s draft to bolster their list, he said free agency and trade was crucial.
The Saints have a first-round pick in the draft, but nothing in the second or third rounds.
“It won’t necessarily be draft picks, while we’ll do a bit — this is a strong draft — we just need to bring in good players,” Richardson said when asked about the club’s draft strategy.
“Whether that be Simon, all of us, doing a really good job with respect to free agency or trade … we’re already working strongly in that space.
“It’s no secret we’ve tried for a couple of years now, but haven’t been able to get what we’re after.
“Josh Kelly … it wasn’t just that particular player last year, but that’s the area that we need to support the program and support the playing group.”
Richardson revealed how the Round 2 loss to North Melbourne derailed St Kilda’s season.
St Kilda entered the highly-anticipated Good Friday clash as firm favourite but was torched by a seven-goals-to-none final term by the Kangaroos and humbled by 52 points.
The defeat triggered an 11-match sequence without a win, a stretch that sunk any finals ambitions and poured heat on players and those in charge at the club.
“The Kangaroos game, in hindsight it probably wasn’t a disastrous performance, the margin in the end was really poor, that really dented our belief,” Richardson said.
“And that took a while to recover, to be able to get the guys back playing really bold, aggressive footy.
“The first thing to go was our offence. We became a really conservative, boring footy team. We couldn’t kick a score.
“Then as our form started to come back it coincided with injuries, now I don’t want to make excuses, that’s just reality.
“The positive in that is we’ve been able to expose a lot of young players to senior footy.”
The Saints have introduced four debutants this season — Hunter Clark, Nick Coffield, Ed Phillips and Bailey Rice — while other youngsters in Josh Battle, Ben Long, Rowan Marshall, and Logan Austin have also been thrust into senior action.
St Kilda has used 36 players, equal with Essendon, Geelong and the Western Bulldogs. Only Gold Coast (38) has used more.
ROOS LOSS WILL HURT BOTTOM LINE
Eliza Sewell
ST KILDA’S woeful 2018 is having a significant affect on the club’s finances with attendances and membership retention taking a hit.
While the Saints trumpeted a new Etihad Stadium deal at the start of the season, which was expected to bring in about $2 million extra to the club each year, attendances are down 15 per cent.
St Kilda chief executive Matt Finnis told a membership forum while membership was at a record level, 17 per cent of last year’s members had not renewed.
“We try to be a footy club that is resilient to downturns in on-field performance, but the reality is it hurts us,’ Finnis said.
“There’d been a lot of momentum that we’d been building over the last few years, we hit a membership record of 42,500 last year, we had all of our sponsorship major assets filled and we were moving back to Moorabbin into a $30 million redevelopment … and then the wind really got taken out of our sails on Good Friday (in the loss to North Melbourne).
“That’s hurt us since because while we’ve been able to keep membership ticking along, and we’re north of 43,000, which is terrific, our attendances are down 15 per cent. That hurts us.
“In an average year, we should be a couple of million bucks better off every year than we used to be (because of the new Etihad Stadium deal) but when our crowds are off 15 per cent, that hurts that.
“We won’t achieve the financial objectives that we had at the start of the year.”
Finnis said he was concerned the club’s retention rate for members had dropped from 90 per cent in each of the previous three years to 83 per cent this season.
“The most concerning thing for me is that a number of those have been members for more than 10 years, 15 years,” Finnis said.
“I know from talking to them … there’s a sense of frustration out there and that’s real.”
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