Articles in today's papers

[Sanctorum]

Following is what I've copy/pasted from today's papers, sorry it's too long to go through and format in original form, but you can work that out for yourself:

Three Articles published in Herald-Sun 25 October 2022
By Sam Landsberger
Ross Lyon says clubs plotting to run down premiers Geelong will have to run like the wind – and St Kilda’s returning coach says his list is already blessed with strong legs.
The Saints went running back to Lyon 11 years after he walked to Fremantle, with president Andrew Bassat admitting they were confident he would answer their SOS call before they sacked incumbent Brett Ratten.
“We knew from the conversations he’d had with Carlton and the conversations he’d had around Essendon that he was keen to coach again,” Bassat said on Monday as Lyon was unveiled as coach for the next four seasons.
Lyon and Bassat were adamant they did not speak until after Ratten had his recently-signed two-year contract extension terminated at a board meeting on October 13.
Lyon, who described his messy exit in 2011 as “unpalatable for all parties”, said he started at the Saints with a “blank canvas” as he takes the reins for the club’s 150th anniversary season in 2023.
Long billed as a defensive mastermind, the four-time grand final coach hinted he would install a game plan with attacking run-and-gun flair in line with recent premiership blueprints.
The Cats were transformed this season after loading up on outside runners including Bradley Close, Max Holmes and Norm Smith Medallist Isaac Smith.
The Saints best athletes include Bradley Hill, Mason Wood, Daniel McKenzie and sizzling teenager Jack Peris.
“One thing I do know these (St Kilda) boys can really run, so that gives us a capacity to play a brand that can go,” Lyon said.
“The game (in previous years) was stilted, the double guarding the mark. You had to go around and back and probe — now you can go, you can play an up tempo brand.
“We're all chasing Geelong. It’s not like I’ve been sitting with the lens and analysing, but I know we can run.
“So the running game‘s here, and it’s here to stay, and Geelong took advantage of that.
“They were really strategic and identified even a couple of years ago we need to get some run in and support our stars.”
But Lyon stressed he was appointed to drive a strong culture and didn't want to “be in the weeds” of coaching.
“You aim for Nirvana — top four in both (defence and attack) — I think I achieved that a couple of times,” he said.
“But other times it was No. 1 defence (and) No. 8 attack, which wasn't really good enough.
“You want to strike a balance. We‘ve got incredible development coaches in Damian Carroll with Jake Bachelor and we’ve got David Rath on board who’s a really good strategist.
“So the key is to really pick those guys up, work together.
HOW HE'S CHANGED
“I've been guilty of not bringing everyone on the journey. My players, yes, but I want to bring all of my football staff and make them emotionally connected to the journey and inspire them as much as you want to inspire your player group.”
NEXT YEAR'S EXPECTATIONS
“My model is possibility — anything’s possible. What do you want to be and what do you need to do to achieve it? And relentlessly apply that action until you do. So how long does it take? I don’t know. But I know it can be done. Get the right people in the right seats and away you go. The aim is to build something that’s sustainable, and a game plan that in the end, we can get to where we want. Because I don’t like the narrative around St Kilda, I haven’t enjoyed it at all.”
SCEPTICAL FANS AFTER HIS 2011 DEPARTURE
“I think they're entitled to (have reservations about me). I say just give me the opportunity to get into action and we’re all only as good as our next moment. So I want to stack a lot of good moments here so in the end they’ll say this was the right decision. But there’s no victory lap here. This is just the starting gun going off. I didn’t get to exit those champion players in the manner I believe they should have been. So there was lots of people that paid a price for (my move to Fremantle). But in saying that we’re all as good as our next moment.”
TALK HE WAS UNWILLING TO GO THROUGH A PROCESS AT OTHER CLUBS
“It‘s probably trusting that you’re not just blowing in the wind, to be honest. And if you look from afar from outside, I think I was vindicated in some of those decisions.”
THE NEW MOORABBIN FACILITIES
“When we were here (in 2009) it was a condemned building. This is like Disneyland at St Kilda. All kudos to (ex-CEO) Matt Finnis and the executive. It's incredible what they’ve done here so we need to take advantage of it and deliver. Fremantle had a $100 million facility, which was incredible. But you need an oval, you need a gym and you need players that are committed and can deliver on field. That’s all. So as good as this is, they don’t do the work for you.”
NEW FOOTBALL BOSS GEOFF WALSH
“The relationship between a senior coach and the GM of footy is a critical piece. He's my boss. He holds me to account. I need to know he can manage everybody else, but I’m the leader of football. It’s a role that can confuse people, they can get in and want to be the coach. They don’t manage or they’re not strong enough. His job is to allow me to coach and I’m confident he will do that. And he’s a straight shooter. We know that, so that’s what I like.”
PAYOUT CLAUSES IN HIS CONTRACT
“It's not really about the money. It’s almost a workplace contract, to be honest. It’s not far off what a typical worker would get. Which is fine. If you do the right thing and you produce you stay, right? I have got something I could put six months in (and leave). But that would be that would be I don’t think I’m delivering for you.”
LYON’S PRESENTATION TO THE BOARD
“I got very emotional. When I left (in 2011) I dropped an iron curtain and when I spoke about that moment and how I felt about St Kilda I did get very, very emotional. It sort of unleashed a lot of memories, a lot of highs and lows, but it really validated how I felt about the club. I'm really up for the fight. I feel like I’m ready to take the emotional risks to give everything without any guarantee, and that guarantees your best chance. And that’s exactly the message to my players. So I certainly needed to be in that headspace, which then drives your work ethic and your desire and your willpower to deliver and work hard.”
THE PHONE CALL FROM LEIGH MATTHEWS
“He rang me (last) week out of the blue, unsolicited, and he understands it. He didn't push me, he was just checking in. It’s nice to have someone that really understands.”
SAINTS CHIEF EXECUTIVE SIMON LETHLEAN ON...
THE PAYMENT MADE TO A FEMALE STAFF MEMBER OVER ALLEGED SEXUAL HARASSMENT WHEN LYON WAS AT FREMANTLE
“We've got full trust and faith in Ross. The AFL looked into that matter at the time and were quite comfortable as well. We go forward with strong faith and trust in Ross and look forward to working with him.”
“I don't want to be in the weeds as much. If we’re not scoring I’ll blame those guys.”
Lyon sad he didn't look at the list when deciding whether to accept the job.
“I see possibility in everyone, I give trust until it‘s broken then it’s hard,” he said.
“I didn't look at the list when I got the job here (in 2007), I didn’t look at it when I went to Fremantle and I didn’t look at it here.
“Because if you get the right people making the right decision it can turn around quickly.”
Lyon is expected to appoint Robert Harvey or Brendon Goddard to the vacant assistant coaching role, with club legend Lenny Hayes and Geelong champion Corey Enright already locked in.
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Jon Ralph:
Ross Lyon is back to reclaim his crown from Craig McRae as coaching’s most compelling media performer.
On Monday Lyon swept back into Moorabbin with the St Kilda football club in his thrall and it was impossible not to be captivated by every single word.
For all of Lyon’s promises to drop the “iron curtain” and let Saints fans in on the journey, his capacity to provide rich sound bites to the assembled media has always been unsurpassed.
Joh Bjelke-Petersen described it as feeding the chooks and at a venue Lyon described as “Disneyland” compared to its former decrepit state, the new Saints coach was in blistering form.
The late night TV hosts who once inhabited Lyon’s 10.30pm Footy Classified timeslot would have been happy with his comic timing, and Kevin Sheedy would have been ecstatic at his capacity to sell the vision of a mediocre list’s potential.
The correlation between a strong press conference as a new coach and on-field success is exactly three fifths of stuff-all.
And yet for a St Kilda football club desperate to explain the reasons why it sacked club favourite Brett Ratten so brutally, it was a command performance from Lyon.
Those who would underestimate his media-know how should remember his furious spray of 3AW’s Shane McInnes – “You’re quite brilliant, Shane”.
It had the perfect effect as a fierce rallying cry after a question about whether his team had targeted players off the ball.
If a journalist copped the brunt to galvanise a team, it was well worth the price.
St Kilda president Andrew Bassat admitted on Monday that by the end of the club’s 10-week review, its full intention was to hire Lyon.
So it was Lyon’s task to navigate the tricky path of admitting his close St Kilda friends had months ago attempted to lure him back while stating emphatically he hadn’t knifed Brett Ratten by agreeing to the job before the contracted coach was turfed out.
Said Lyon of those delicate negotiations: “It was very clear I would enter no discussions – and the words were a bit stronger than that – while (St Kilda) had a senior coach. You (in the media) can probe and all those things, but that should make it really clear from my end where I sat.”
He bristled at talk about his defensive record – bringing the statistics to prove his case – and spoke of the wonderful possibilities of St Kilda’s list.
“I don’t work on a probability mindset,” he said. “My mindset is possible. Everything is possible.”
He dropped inspirational sentences that could have been printed in a self-help manual: “We always dream. Anything is possible, but if you don’t do the work you are just a daydreamer. We are going to put our work boots on”.
He warned the players of the job ahead: “There is no victory lap. I have heard that term before and I don’t like it. This is just the starting gun going off”.
And at his most honest he spoke of how he had broken down explaining to the St Kilda board why he had left for Fremantle.
“I cry a lot …. I don’t really want to open up because I might break down here, but it did change the course of my life and my family. It was a very difficult thing to do and I had a reputation about what I was for a long time and it did change that. There was a huge price to pay.”
Amid it all came a single glimpse of Lyon’s ruthless approach to football that took up just 10 words of a 30-minute press conference.
“I give trust until it’s broken and then it’s hard,” he said of his relationship with players.
For all the romance of his return to St Kilda after 11 years, the most intriguing aspect of his new tenure might be whether he is capable of softening in a changing football world.
Can he blend some of the old ruthless Ross with the new-age mantras of Chris Scott and McRae in a world where Millennials don’t want to be shouted at or punished?
Lyon has always been in the execution business – executing one to educate a thousand.
He famously dropped Garrick Ibbotson for months for his failure to pick up Tom Lynch as he rebounded from defensive 50 in a meaningless scratch match.
On Monday, Lyon made clear the “Ross the Tyrant” reputation was overblown, citing the influence of his children Nikita, Annecy and Jai as his evolution as a coach in a new-age world.
“My kids are 14, 15 and a half and 17 because I started late so they are as challenging as any teenager,” he said.
“So I understand the different world now. How they need to be handled. The young guys at Fremantle, I am as close to a lot of them as I am to the senior guys here.
“So if you treat them like they are your sons and that’s how you want your sons to be treated. Have I been perfect? No, but you establish a framework.
“Everywhere I have been they ask for honesty. Just tell us straight and if they know it’s coming from the right place, they are fine.”
Lyon knows his honeymoon period this time around could be vanishingly brief, so there is barely a day to lose.
And yet if bringing the fans with him this time around is a clear goal, day one at least ticked the box on that score.
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Mark Robinson:
If the backstory of how the Saints landed Ross Lyon was a movie, it would be plotted with subterfuge.
For Brett Ratten, it would be a much a simpler narrative: A murder mystery.
Despite St Kilda’s hand-on-heart declarations on Monday, does anyone truly believe St Kilda sacked Ratten on Thursday night and THEN spoke to new coach Lyon?
Nothing before that?
A sniff he might be interested? A text maybe? A little inquiry from a friend or former player?
It’s understandable why Lyon would distance himself from Ratten’s sacking because he doesn’t want to get blamed for his knifing.
No, Lyon is not to blame.
The architects, chief executive Simon Lethlean and chairman Andrew Bassat, they’re responsible.
After 10 days of discussions post-Ratten, on Monday the Saints made it official.
Ratten is gone and Rossy’s back, with a heart aching so hard he almost sounded emotional when he spoke to the TVs last week.
It will be an historically memorable decision, if not monumental.
If the Saints win the flag under Lyon, the ends will justify the means, and the Saints hierarchy led by Bassat and Lethlean will be lauded for their courage, adventure and foresight.
If the Saints fail under Lyon, the decision will be recorded in red ink in St Kilda’s litany of coaching blunders.
Remember when the Saints sacked Ratten for Lyon? It’s a similar dialogue which Carlton will never shake: Remember when they sacked Ratten for Malthouse? That one certainly didn’t work.
For what it’s worth, I like that Lyon is coaching again.
He has an aura, like a gunslinger, and first time round at St Kilda, when the Saints “bubble” was a thing, you never quite knew if he’d shoot you or have a whisky with you.
Then, the rugged northern suburbs product developed and almost perfected the age-old sporting culture: Us against the world.
With it came a fearsome work ethic and reputation, like, we take no prisoners on and off the field.
It’s a culture which can breed an army, but at the same time it can create cultural toxicity.
Is that what St Kilda wants? Or needs?
It is said Lyon 3.0 will be different to the two previous versions — at the Saints and then at Fremantle.
He has to be. Fifteen years on from the start of his first coaching stint, Lyon clearly is wiser, older and probably calmer, and having three teenagers clearly gives him a grasp on the workings of a young man’s mind.
Life has changed, too. The pandemic has come and gone, the workforce is less fervent and more balanced, and footy is catching up with all of it.
Geelong leads the way in that regard, as noted by Lyon on Monday.
The days of the coach being the absolutely dominating figure, maybe even menacingly, are also over.
“It’s not the way to manage a modern-day workforce if you want to get the best out of your workforce,’’ one senior club figure said.
“They want to be respected, supported.’’
That’s not saying that the first time round Lyon was the absolute dictator, who pushed and probed and pricked his players, and absolutely shaped the Saints “bubble’’. But in saying that, he didn’t coach by consensus either.
That’s about to change, Lyon said. He didn’t want to be “in the weeds’’ as much, which means he’s up to delegating more.
It’s an intriguing decision by the Saints, to go back rather than go different.
Collingwood went new and fresh with Craig McRae and he brought an attitude — friendly and open — of which perhaps Collingwood had not seen before.
McRae led a team of Leppitsch, Bolton and Skipworth, and as the face of that group, he helped manoeuvre the club out of the Buckley-McGuire stranglehold, which at the end was wound so tight, it felt like Collingwood was about to explode.
McRae, and the way his team played and the way he spoke, changed Collingwood and our perception of Collingwood. The club had a serious makeover, transforming itself from being combative and acidic to being genial with promises to be better.
McRae’s unique no doubt. Just little things he does, like he would arrive at the AFL360 studio and say hello to every cameraman and shake hands with the floor manager. Every time. With a smile and a banter.
The new Damien Hardwick is the same. He once was regarded as a scowler at press conferences and now he’s a bit of a media scallywag.
It’s been a cultural shift for him and the Tigers.
Lyon’s personas have been documented. When coaching, he’s supposedly the hard a--- who demands “dog hungry’’ and “flinch hard’’ commitment to the cause.
But when he isn’t coaching, he is a knockabout who laughs hard and often.
We like Triple M Rossy. But will he allow himself to be bit-parts Triple M Rossy and most-part St Kilda Lyon?
Leigh Matthews — who spoke to Lyon during last week — has acknowledged that he was a different person when coaching. The walls go up, he says. Who you are gets lost because of the job you do.
Matthews is old-school. One of his players, McRae, is the complete opposite.
Lyon might find himself someone more like McRae than Matthews, and let’s hope so. Because with Geoff Walsh as the head football — and Walsh just might be the grumpiest man in the game — the Saints can’t have a half-grumpy combative coach as well.
Surely, that’s culturally stale and unwelcome in any sport.
Lyon lauded Walsh on Monday. The veteran footy man has been at Carlton, North Melbourne and Collingwood over three decades and brings high-level knowledge to assist Lyon. Despite his PR skills needing more warmth, his CV drips with success.
In sacking Ratten, the Saints said they wanted new leadership and a new voice.
No, they didn’t. The review said they wanted Lyon’s leadership and Lyon’s voice.
In a nutshell, they want a footy team which will play hard constantly. They want respect. They want to be feared and they want to be relevant. But most of all they want to compete
They won’t say it, but they should want to play footy like Collingwood: Defend to the death and attack to the hilt.
Or like the Swans, who play tough, exciting and attacking footy.
Or like the Cats, the premiers, who everyone thought couldn’t win big finals with their game plan, yet kicked 18 and 20 goals in the two most important games of the season, and topped 100 points in six of their last eight games, while giving up an average of 60 points a game.
We’re all chasing Geelong,’’ Lyon sad.
Clearly, the Saints are not bringing Lyon back to play 2010 footy, which was largely defensive strangulation. Those days are gone and Lyon knows that.
The Saints will play with a level of adventure because it has to, because the game now demands it, and Lyon’s job is to lead a team of assistants and helpers to ensure that.
The new era begins with an old world line-up and Saints fans really can’t know what to expect next season.
Lyon is a gun coach, in that he tends to get the most out of his players, but we’re not sure that automatically means the list he has and the mechanics and mindset he brings will deliver the Saints a top-four finish in 2023.
Whatever happens, the Saints have ensured one thing by appointing Lyon. They will be relevant come the first bounce

[st.byron]

Thanks for posting. Good read.

[avid]

Yes.. Great news service Sanctorum.