Inside story: What St Kilda will get from Ross Lyon in his second stint at the club

Ross Lyon was known for his gruff nature and clash with a journalist during his last coaching stints. But insiders suggest he will return to St Kilda a very different man.

St Kilda will get a cuddlier version of the Ross Lyon who took it to three grand finals.

Stand by for Ross Lyon 3.0 to be a warmer and fuzzier version.

The man who was renowned for his prickly press conferences and gruff demeanour will present a different outlook in his anticipated second coming at St Kilda which is good news for 3AW’s Shane McInnes.

Lyon and McInnes famously clashed when he was Fremantle coach after a final in Geelong back in 2013 where he quipped: “You’re quite brilliant, Shane, terrific.”

There has been a considerable warming of Lyon throughout his two years in the media where he became must-listen radio on Triple M’s Sunday Rub and a revelation on Channel 9’s Footy Classified.

“You‘re going to see a different version for sure,” one insider said.

While the hard edge will remain behind the scenes because that’s what St Kilda is buying again, they want him to shake the place up, fix the culture and make the football team relevant again.

But the two years in the media has certainly helped Lyon come out of his shell so to speak according to colleagues.

St Kilda will get a cuddlier version of the Ross Lyon who took it to three grand finals.

“You will see more of the real Ross and I think that’s what you saw with the Triple M Ross,” another observer said.

“He was a lot more open, more embracing of people and even cuddly.

“He is very funny Ross, the actual opposite to the hard edge disciplinarian the public saw at St Kilda and Fremantle. He’s actually very humorous, he really can light up the room.”

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Lyon always joked he was a “part-timer” in the media and everyone who worked with him isn’t surprised he has gone back into coaching, although they were all aware of how bruised he was after the Carlton experience.

That ended up as a trainwreck after new Carlton president Luke Sayers virtually guarantee him the job following a four-hour meeting only to then have the board overturn his decision and go on to sign Michael Voss.

It made Lyon look silly and he retreated into his shell. Then when opportunities with Essendon and North Melbourne came up this year he politely declined to even engage, partly because he wasn’t a fan of both clubs and their proposed processes, and also the fact he was gun shy.

But St Kilda always held a special place in his heart.

He remained in contact with a lot of St Kilda people despite having done the dirty on them when he left abruptly at the end of 2011, not even telling his own manager about a multimillion-dollar deal he’d done with Fremantle.

As he said on Thursday after a third day of meetings with the Saints hierarchy: “I’m keen, like my heart’s been opened up.”

While Lyon also dabbled in commercial real estate when he returned home to Melbourne after he was sacked from Fremantle before the final round of the 2019 season, jumping into the media was his way of staying relevant.

For those who point to him being three years out of the game as a negative for a coach who was renowned for his tactical acumen, those who worked alongside him over the past two football seasons laugh that off.

“He has kept himself ready, no doubt about that,” a source inside the Lyon camp said.

“He’s on the phone constantly talking to people in footy all the time, he’s across all the trends.”

The timing of club great Lenny Hayes, who spent five years as an assistant coach at the GWS Giants, returning to the fold is also interesting given he’d only recently been spruiking to mates how much he was loving living in the Blue Mountains running beef cattle on a 100 acre farm.

Did Eddie McGuire’s trip on Lindsay Fox’s boat with Saints powerbrokers help his ‘bestie’ Ross Lyon with the coaching job?

With another of Lyon’s former players Jason Blake now on the Saints board and Justin Koschitzke also set to move back to the town in a role at the new Danny Frawley Centre, there is a sense of the old band being brought back together.

Geelong did that last year, bringing back a handful of favourite sons into the football operation and we saw what happened there.

The role of Eddie McGuire in the Lyon resurrection can’t be underestimated. The pair’s relationship blossomed on the Footy Classified set where they worked together on Wednesday nights.

McGuire helped Lyon get used to the world of television and they became “besties”, which puts weight to one conspiracy theory that the former Collingwood president had some fingerprints over the masterplan at St Kilda.

It was no coincidence that the timing of Ratten’s dismissal, just three months after he’d been handed a new two-year contract, came after St Kilda president Andrew Bassat had just returned from a luxury cruise from New York to Montreal to celebrate mad Saints’ fan and trucking magnate Lindsay Fox’s 85th birthday.

Another business heavyweight with a love for the Saints, Gerry Ryan, was also on the boat and you can imagine the sorry state of another wasted year at Moorabbin was discussed between the three.

And who else was on the boat? Lyon’s new best friend McGuire.

While we know Eddie would never put his nose into another club’s business, we’re sure if he was asked for his opinion he may have offered some positive vibes about Lyon 3.0.

Originally published as Inside story: What St Kilda will get from Ross Lyon in his second stint at the club