Sacked Podcast: Steven Baker and Stephen Milne open up on the biggest moments of their AFL careers
In an explosive moment, Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse Malthouse was fined for a vulgar remark directed at Stephen in a match in early 2010. And Milne has revealed for the first time that Malthouse sought to reconcile years later.
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Steven Baker was naked and confused when he woke up in a strange house on the morning of his first training session with St Kilda in late 1998. He was almost four hours late.
The kid from Barongarook – a blip on the edge of Otway Forest Park – had only just been drafted and feared he would be sacked without playing a game.
Coach Tim Watson was seeking retribution which centred on Baker’s distinctive ponytail.
“It was a 7am training session and I went out with Barry Hall and Aussie Jones (the night before),” Baker told the Herald Sun’s SACKED podcast alongside his former teammate Stephen Milne.
“I think they were feeding me shots, all those troublemakers.
“I woke up and I was naked in some weird house. I was wet and it was like, ‘Oh, I (must have) peed the bed and walked into this house’.
“There was this lady screaming and I was like ‘Sorry’. She said she was Barry Hall’s girlfriend.
“I said ‘Where am I?’
“I looked at the clock. I was supposed to be there at 7am (on Saturday). There were like 58 missed calls (on his phone) and Lenny (Hayes) has called me 100 times.”
Baker finally made it to Moorabbin by 11am.
His reception was almost as hostile as what the infamous ‘Animal Enclosure’ used to give visitors in its prime.
“Timmy Watson nearly kicked me out of the club after missing the first training session because I was hung over,” he said.
“They made me do a four-hour gym circuit. I was throwing up in the gym and he (Watson) didn’t want to talk to me until Monday.”
To make matters worse, Baker got into a fight on the weekend.
“I remember being scared s---less on the Monday,” he said.
“(Watson) didn’t even look at me until the end of the session.
“I had a ponytail undercut at the time and I was a rude looking young man.
“At the end of the training session, he said ‘F------ Baker, if you do that again, you will be on the first train back to Colac and cut that f------ stupid hair off’.
“I cut it off that night and came in the next day and sat at the front of the room the next training session.
“I saw a video (of the little ponytail high at the back of his head) about a year back and was disgusted.
“I went from missing the first training session to (playing 203 games), so I was pretty happy.”
STEPHEN AND STEVEN SHOW
They share a first name (with a different spelling), were born 75 days apart, and rode the collective highs and lows of a club that at times seemed almost like a reality TV show.
If it hadn’t been so serious at times, it would have been funny.
But Stephen Milne, 40, and Steven Baker, 39, have come through it all with smiles and a thousand laughs – plus a few scars – but with no recriminations.
Two heartbreaking Grand Final losses – against Geelong in 2009 and against Collingwood in 2010 following a dramatic draw – still hurt, though they concede the Saints never left anything in the tank.
Milne started at Essendon, but couldn’t get a look in given the array of Bombers’ talent.
“They had an absolute belter of a team with (Mark) Mercuri, (Chris) Heffernan, (Justin) Blumfield, and all kinds of small forwards,” Milne recounted.
“I was probably not ready to play AFL … I was just a skinny kid from Hampton Park.
“Essendon was going to take me in the rookie draft, but (St Kilda recruiter) Johnny Beveridge swooped in a bit earlier (pick 23 in the 2000 rookie draft).”
His first game in 2001 was Baker’s 13th. They have been mates ever since, even if they take the mickey out of each other.
Milne’s long-time mirth centres on Baker’s role in the infamous ‘Sirengate’ match against Fremantle in Tasmania in 2006.
The siren sounded with the Dockers in front by a point, but the umpires failed to hear it.
As Freo players tried to tell the umpires what had happened, Baker scored a behind that tied the scores.
He was infringed and chose to take another kick.
“I was worried he wasn’t going to make the distance from 25 metres out,” Milne said.
As Lenny Hayes remonstrated with Dockers coach Chris Connolly, Baker went back to take his kick – and missed again.
It was a draw – again … for the time being.
“I wanted to be the hero … but sadly I am not a very good bloody kick,” Baker joked.
As Fremantle launched an AFL appeal that would ultimately see the result overturned, Baker’s miss cost the Saints group a big night out in Melbourne.
“We were very sombre in the rooms … even the bus trip to the airport and the trip back to Melbourne was quiet,” Milne said.
“We just got into our cars and started talking and carrying on about Bakes missing. It just stuffed up our night.”
THE BOUNCE
It’s one of the most talked-about Grand Final moments, but Milne insists he isn’t haunted by that bounce of the ball in the dying stages of the 2010 playoff.
A Hayes kick forward saw Ben Johnson lose his footing, leaving Milne free, with the ball tantalisingly close.
If he had grasped it, it surely would have resulted in a goal that would have ended St Kilda’s long flag drought.
But inexplicably the ball bounced at right angles, out of Milne’s reach. It trickled through for a point that tied the scores in the last Grand Final draw.
“I don’t lose any sleep over it, it was from here from the other end of the table (away),” he said.
“If I’d dived, it would have bounced over the top of me or if I had touched it, it might not have been a point.
“There was another minute and a half to go after that.
“It wasn’t like I dropped a mark … it wasn’t like I let it go through to the keeper … I just couldn’t get there.”
Baker thought the Saints had the game won when Brendon Goddard took a towering mark and kicked a goal to put the Saints six points up 19 minutes into the last term.
“I was running back and I looked back at Kosi (Justin Koschitzke) … he had this big grin on his face and I got goosebumps, thinking ‘We’ve got this’.
“To get that one ripped away as well (as 2009), it’s gut wrenching.
“The pain of those two (Grand Final) losses meant we bonded together.”
A week later, Collingwood easily accounted for St Kilda in the replay.
Milne said: “It’s no regrets … we couldn’t have done any more, except probably kick straighter.
“To be sitting here as a premiership player would be surreal. We probably wouldn’t be sitting here. We’d still be celebrating.
“I’m proud of each other in the way we handled ourselves and how we are still handling ourselves when we get asked those tricky questions.”
‘I DIDN’T RETIRE, I GOT THE A---’
Baker knew he had played his last game for St Kilda when he sat in the stands watching the club lose to Sydney in the 2011 elimination final.
It’s just he didn’t know he was about to be “retired” by his coach Ross Lyon.
Lyon caused a sensation in the Docklands rooms when he announced Baker as one of four players who had chosen to retire. He hadn’t.
“I remember being in the rooms and he (Lyon) announced I had retired from the game,” he said.
“I was like ‘What the …? I got on Instagram or something and said ‘I didn’t retire, I got the a---’
“Then I had all the media people from St Kilda saying ‘You can do that’. P--- off, I’m not even playing there anymore, so you can’t tell me what to do.”
Lyon informed Baker months earlier he wouldn’t be at St Kilda in 2012, but he expected to find a new AFL home.
“Rossy called me in and I was a bit shocked, it was half way through the season,” he said.
“I had just towelled up three opponents in a row, playing great and he said ‘Bakes, we are not going to go with you next year’.
“(He said it was) restructuring … I remember laughing, and then he said, ‘No, we are’.
“I walked out a shell of a human and went home and didn’t tell my mates.” The biggest shock was yet to come.
Within a week of that elimination loss, Lyon not only walked out on St Kilda, but was appointed coach of Fremantle.
“It hit us between the ears … no one saw it coming,” Milne said.
“For some reason the Saints didn’t give him a contract and Freo came knocking … and said ‘Write your own cheque’.
“There was a clause in his contract that he could go.
“As a player nearly at the end of his career … you want to finish your career under him and all of a sudden he has gone for silly reasons.”
‘THEY MADE THE DECISION ON ME’
Milne kicked two goals in his 275th – and last – match in Round 23, 2013, then told the footy world he was retiring. The reality was very different.
He had been sacked. “I was the same (as Baker),” Milne said.
“I got called in to (coach) Scotty Watters’ office and the (St Kilda) board had kind of made a decision.
Obviously I had a couple of things hanging over my head and they made a decision on me.
“I definitely had one more year left.
“I still had a pretty good year in 2013 (28 goals from 17 games), but there were a lot more higher guys upstairs than me.
“So I went out with a bang, beating Freo.
“The issues hanging over Milne were three rape charges dating back to an incident in 2004.
“It was pretty full on,” Milne said of several off-field issues that the Saints confronted during that time, which included a nude photo scandal that had nothing to do with him or Baker.
“All the time we had cameras near your cars and microphones near your face, but that was part of the business,” he said.
In an explosive moment, Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse and Milne exchanged expletives at quarter-time in a match in early 2010.
Malthouse was fined $7500 for calling Milne a ‘f------ rapist’, while the Saints player copped a $3000 fine for derogatory comments about the Magpie coach’s age.
Milne revealed to Sacked for the first time that Malthouse sought a rapprochement of sorts years later.
“ (Malthouse) did try to reach out through Brian Royal and try to get a coffee, but I declined,” Milne said.
“(It was) four years after the fact.
“A grown man of Mick’s stature getting involved in a heated argument … It was pretty immature.
MORE SACKED
Stephen Milne was set to be traded to Essendon or Port Adelaide until Grant Thomas was sacked
“He did a talk (years later) and just walked straight past me. I might have put the shoulder into him, but no … Mick is Mick, let it go.”
Fourteen months after the club showed him the door, the rape charges were dropped when Milne pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent assault.
He was fined $15,000, but avoided a conviction.
Milne has partly returned to the St Kilda fold. He was inducted into the Saints’ Hall of Fame last year, and hosts some coterie functions with David Armitage.
“It was a disappointing kind of end to it but I’ve got no regrets,” he said.
“I’m very proud of what I achieved from the rookie list and (proud to be) sitting here now talking about it.”
Originally published as Sacked Podcast: Steven Baker and Stephen Milne open up on the biggest moments of their AFL careers
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