The Footy Boss: An in-depth look at all aspects of St Kilda
St Kilda shook up the market with some massive deals this off-season, but they weren’t solely additions. Brad Lloyd unpacks the balancing act of trading a respected player like Jack Steele.
St Kilda shook up the market with some massive deals and big trades to shift into a different phase in their list build.
Big money offers may have been necessary to get players in but it can be hard to pull salaries back so the Saints will have an interesting tightrope to walk in coming years.
THE SAINTS SHAKE-UP
St Kilda president Andrew Bassat declared at the best-and-fairest before the trade period that “there is no risk-free way to a flag, doing nothing is the greatest risk of all” and that his club wanted to be “aggressive”.
The Saints backed that talk up with a very aggressive approach this off-season.
They had a lot of deals to get done.
There are different levels of currency in the trade period, one is picks and one is finances and they have gone heavy on both fronts.
Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera was clearly a really important signing for the club and they described it as a game-changer.
The Saints have mentioned the performance of the club will decide what his long-term tenure is.
The positive of this deal, while everyone was talking about that $2m price tag, it is a very short term contract.
The risk with big contracts is usually the term because you are left with it hanging over your head but I see this two year deal at $2m per season as very different to if you were offering a $2m for seven years.
It is a retention-based contract to pay him to continue on and then you have to back in that he will see some real growth and contribute to that growth and be more settled in two years’ time.
Clearly the Saints have given out a big contract to Nasiah and may have to look at reducing that salary if the club continues to bring in talent and rise up the ladder.
The most traditional approach I have seen in planning salaries as a club rose up the ladder was back through Hawthorn’s golden era when they brought in players like Jordan Lewis, Lance Franklin and Jarryd Roughead in one draft, along with a lot of other high-end picks.
Right from the start with Mark Evans and the Hawks administration, there was plenty of communicating with their players that they had taken a lot of high picks, were going to be a good team in years to come and needed to keep the place together by having players take less.
That was done from a very young age and right from the rebuilding stage.
Getting players to pull salaries backwards down the track is hard but it may be other players that have to do that and that is based off wanting to be part of success, so there may be some logic to the approach.
St Kilda have gone hard with their offers for a couple of their recruits but it might be a momentum changer for them that makes the club a more attractive proposition.
When you are up against a team like Collingwood in the market for a player, choosing St Kilda can be a big call so they may have had to go down this path as salary disrupters.
Sam Flanders came from Gold Coast. He had a number of offers from clubs and was on the move and they traded fairly aggressively by giving up pick seven for him.
The Saints obviously like what he can do for them really quickly.
Jack Silvagni had some challenges in the last few years with his body but he played some great footy in the first half of this year off half-back. I like his football smarts, his ability to take contested marks and use of the ball aggressively by foot.
I thought he had a super start to this year and full credit to him, he gave himself the opportunity to entertain a number offers – with clubs like Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs showing interest – as a free agent.
He got a strong offer from St Kilda and jumped at it.
The Silvagni surname was loved at Carlton by the supporter base but it is a professional sport and if there is an opportunity there you have to know when to take it and he has done that.
Tom De Koning is a very talented player as a big jumping ruck who has shown a lot in the air.
He received an enormous offer from St Kilda and there wasn’t even a push at Carlton to match it, it was something he had to accept.
His contract was talked about all year and the figures have been well reported, so he will have a big expectation on him externally.
It is a lot of pressure but I think he handled himself very well this year, the way he carried himself as someone who was talked about for a big chunk of the year as a free agent was very impressive.
He has other interests outside of footy and loves to surf so has the ability to get a release from football.
He was probably one the first of those types of contracts as a free agent but there is more to come in the market and he will cope OK with it.
Jack Steele was the biggest name to leave St Kilda this off-season.
It looks like it ended up as a salary dumping situation, he signed a long-term deal back in 2021.
It is a big call, given he was the captain, a big performer and a heart and soul player.
He has been an All-Australian and multiple best-and-fairest winner so to essentially dump his salary and get a future third round pick for him, it is a dramatic change. It just shows the new direction the club is going in.
It’s great for him he gets to a new club in Melbourne with St Kilda going in a different direction.
It’s a professional game and decisions are made for the club but you do know every move you make, the playing group is watching.
You are trying to build a tight-knit culture where players want to remain and stick with something they believe in.
Moving on senior players like Steele are decisions you need to make really carefully to preserve what you have got at the club.
Jack is someone who would have been well respected and his teammates would have loved him. As a club, these decisions are sometimes required and you just need to make sure you handle it really well internally. Getting the key leaders involved and explaining the club’s direction is always a good idea so all are on the same page with it.
The senior players will help you communicate this message back through the rest of the playing group.
Leek Aleer appeared all set to be traded to St Kilda but that fell through.
It was interesting how late it all came, at the start of the trade period you could see GWS talking like it was going to happen and there was a lot of talk of a 4-year, $750,000 offer.
It was life changing money if that was the offer.
I think it was a total shock when the Saints backed away and Leek’s manager Dylan Smith came out with some really strong comments when it happened.
Although its far from an ideal situation, it is never too late to change your mind.
Obviously St Kilda had opportunities present that made them go in a different direction but there is no doubt it left Leek and his management in a tricky situation. Fortunately they were able to rectify this quickly with a contract extension at the Giants, although well short of the reported St Kilda offer.
Changing direction like that is not something you want to be doing too often but these things can happen in the trade period.
When it does happen, you have to jump on the phone to the player’s manager really quickly and explain the situation.
It is a hard conversation but that is professional sport.
It is just communication and courtesy and everyone moves forward, player managers are generally quite experienced these days and will move on quickly also.
St Kilda was clear from the start of the trade period that they valued Rowan Marshall and wanted to retain him despite his trade request to Geelong.
Rowan may have seen the ruck dynamics shifting with Tom coming in and Geelong would have seen that as well.
The trade never really seemed to get strong enough momentum.
Seeing recent photographs of Rowan and Tom together, looks like they will hit it off pretty well and move forward.
The fact is St Kilda have valued him too much to trade him so he and the club should be able to move forward.
LIST OVERVIEW
IN:Tom De Koning (Carlton), Jack Silvagni (Carlton), Sam Flanders (Gold Coast), Liam Ryan (West Coast), Kobe McDonald (Ireland)
OUT:Jack Steele (St Kilda), Max Heath (Melbourne), Jimmy Webster (retired), Zaine Cordy, Zak Jones, Harry Boyd, Angus McLennan, Arie Schoenmaker (delisted)
LIST GAPS
The Saints have certainly improved their list with four senior acquisitions.
But I don’t think they are the superstar recruits like you do get at some clubs like Lachie Neale or Jeremy Cameron, who can be club-shaping acquisitions.
They are really good pieces that they have added to their team but those players aren’t going to be able to do it on their own.
The growth is going to come from across their whole list with their early draft picks and development and the cohesion of the whole group.
LIST STRENGTHS
Ross Lyon has mentioned that he likes the two ruck model and wants to play with that mode going forward.
Rowan Marshall and Tom De Koning will now need to share that role after both played the majority of 2025 as the solo ruck.
Moving players around in positions takes constant conversations between the coaches and players.
It is always trickier one with rucks depending on how much gametime they get and what other roles they can play.
It is a continuous discussion in every footy department and now the Saints have the luxury of having two good rucks.
They are going to have to communicate well and part of that is going to be the relationship between Tom and Rowan and building that themselves outside of the coaching so they can work together well.
I think De Koning is at his best when he is the No.1.
He has played with a lot more authority and energy as the solo ruck, he seemed to thrive on the responsibility, so he will need to work in with another ruckman and play his role when he is not the No.1 ruck.
He will need to impact as a forward, giving the team a strong presence in that area of the ground when it’s his turn.
DRAFT HAND – 50, 65
We saw a number of trades involving multiple picks this off-season but the Sam Flanders deal was a straightforward swap for pick seven, which obviously left a dent in St Kilda’s draft hand.
When you approach deals that have a clear cost like that one, you are working really closely with the national recruiting manager and having a through discussion on what you expect to get with pick seven.
If it is comparable or better to bring the player in rather than keep the pick, that is a path you will go down.
They are conversations you are having internally. A pick that high, St Kilda would have had a pretty clear idea on who they would have got in the draft.
The Saints effectively brought in an extra draftee by signing Irish youngster Kobe McDonald, the son of Ciaran McDonald who dominated a game against Australia when they played international rules.
Kobe won’t come out to Australia until midway through next year but given he is 17 years old now, he is a bonus young addition to the list.
SALARY CAP
St Kilda has remarked that it struggled to get to 95 per cent of the cap and that means they have had a gap for a while.
They are spending some of that money that was available now and are in different circumstances to some other teams.
For clubs, you need to spend at least 95 per cent of the cap each year but if a club like St Kilda weren’t able to get to 95 per cent, you can get player’s contracts and front-end them.
That means the players in contract get extra and their money is brought forward to get to the 95 per cent, with the club then owing the players less in the remaining years of their deals.
If you use less than 100 per cent of the gap, that money can be ‘banked’ and used a year later, so you can actually go over the 100 per cent.
Clubs that are in more of a build phase should have room to bank like that and have space for when they want to get into a sustained success period.
We will see in coming years how the recruiting this off-season has impacted their TPP (total player payments) going forward.
HIGH PERFORMANCE CHECK-IN
The Saints have brought in four senior players they will want to get going straight away.
The high performance and medical fraternity is a pretty connected group across the league. The teams that players move between would be communicating and doing a clear handover of their medical history.
It is a high risk period when players come in from another club. They want to impress their new coaches but the club also needs to get across what their body looks like.
Players will be getting in to the club early so the new club can get a good line of sight on them.
THE COACH’S BOX
St Kilda has been clear in its praise for assistant coach Corey Enright, who is really well regarded internally and is pushed quite heavily. Ross Lyon even labelled him the “top of the pops” in footy IQ at the end of the trade period.
He appears earmarked as a future St Kilda senior coach at some point.
The Saints lost Jared Rivers from their coaching panel this off-season, who returned to Melbourne, where he played 150 games.
FRONT OFFICE
Since Dave Misson left his role as St Kilda’s football GM, just before the trade period, Ross Lyon has stepped in to take some of those duties and he has said it is an interim situation.
While Ross has largely assumed the role at the moment, I see the GM of football position as a critical leadership role to support the coach but also lead the rest of the department.
It is going to be one of the most important appointments for the club in the coming months.
Originally published as The Footy Boss: An in-depth look at all aspects of St Kilda
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