The Club Is Right For Once

[damienc]

I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately as you do when we've just had the season from hell.

And the hits keep coming. I am not going to bore you with the details. Everyone on this forum knows. This footy club is pretty good at attracting headlines. It's just that almost always it is for the wrong reason.

So I woke up this morning to read that Scott Watters won't be getting a contract extension beyond 2014.

There are a couple of ways of lookiing at this.

One way would be to say that this is a massive vote of no confidence in the coach. Especially when some key people had been saying that his extension was a certainty.

Reading between the lines there has been a power struggle going on between Pelchen and Watters and, at this point in time, Pelchen seems to have emerged the victor.

I note with interest that Bains and Pelchen having been doing most of the talking during this crucial trade period. There has not been a peep out of Watters especially when Ben was traded to Hawthorn.

Again, reading between the lines, it was probably something that he was opposed to. The Ben trade I mean.

Then we have Pelchen writing an open letter to all of the football club members. I would have thought that would be the kind of letter the coach would write. Afterall he is the one responsible for the team and its on field performance. The fact that he didn't says quite a bit in my view.

Then there is the other way of observing all of this and that is to say while Watters might have been defeated in a battle it doesn't mean that he has lost the war.

I thought what the new President had to say this morning was interesting.

Peter Summers says the failure to grant a contract extension to the coach should not be seen as uncertainty.

The challenge has been thrown down to Watters to show the board that he means business. In other words get the footy team to start winning games and make the coach accountable for this.

If Watters can show in 2014 that the Saints are on the improve then he will get his extension. But if he doesn't then he will be shown the door. That is the way successful people do business.

If nothing changes, nothing changes. Clearly the board is tired of our non success. So are the supporters and it is time that the playing list and the coaches were made accountable.

Summers says St Kilda is an anxious club and anxious people act in a negative way. They hide, get scared and go to ground. He is saying we need to lift ourselves out of that and I think he is right.

And as for tension between Watters and Pelchen. Not only did Summers not to deny it he says it is a good thing. Tension is an indication of active, successful people. Again I think he is on the money.

All I am saying is that I am glad that the club is starting to take accountability seriously. To make tough decisions about our playing list. That is is determined to turn things around sooner rather than later and give us that premiership we badly need and richly deserve.

[bigcarl]

Reading between the lines there has been a power struggle going on between Pelchen and Watters and, at this point in time, Pelchen seems to have emerged the victor.

Maybe he should be senior coach.

[starsign]

Why start a new thread on the same topic?

[mullet]

So an employee needs to prove themselves before being granted an extension to their contract.

Front page news.

Seriously, we must sell newspapers, because everything that we are doing and not doing (montagna trade) is making news. Every rumor is about us. Nothing else going on at any other club. Even Buddy wasnt enough to stop the inuendo about stkilda, and apparantly we are trading everyone.

The reason, people believe anything written about stkilda, but not about other clubs.

I'm over it. Have signed up for next year, so have done my bit.

Bring on the Essendon infraction notices, perhaps that is enough to push us out of the papers.
Perhaps we should just lay down like melbourne and become the AFL's bitch. What are they doing????? What is their messiah Roos doing.????

[howlinwolf]

I'm not sure this is right ? Is this your opinion ?

"The challenge has been thrown down to Watters to show the board that he means business. In other words get the footy team to start winning games and make the coach accountable for this."

I'd find that a hard pill to swallow from a coach's perspective. The Football dept is choosing to make hard decisions on senior players to pick up more draft choices.

That's not exactly making the task of winning games easier.
Surely they have more realistic KPIs to measure than games won ?

[Dr Spaceman]

Regardless of any of that, I'm liking the new Prez

[fugazi]

Dunno about this....we seem to have once again an aversion to stability.
Surely the Pelchen/ Watters situation could have been sorted out earlier and easier.
Now every loss (and there will be plenty) the media will be asking if Watters will be there next week.
Why call that sort of pressure on the club?

I reckon Watters has done pretty well with the list he inherited, in that he has blooded lots of kids and held his nerve to keep playing them.
He should be given clear boundaries, but also at least a 1 year extension so he keeps making decisions for the long term plan, not for survival.

[lloyd21]

Where is the problem ?

They have a new president ,the club is being methodical about their football department , recruiting , list build.

Saints are always going to get bad media , look at the media 90% of the media follow the big clubs Ralph/McFarlane /Lane /Connolly/Whateley/Robinson/ Smith/Wilson/Hutchison/
Barrett/Barlett to name but a few ,we are soft easy target the only one who follows Saints is "Fine" and he really likes the big clubs ethos anyway.

Move on , but if we want to support the club stuff these blokes and become a paid up member" its us against them"

Have renewed both my memberships and will do so going forward.

[SemperFidelis]

I thought the Summers interview with Robbo was great. Not sure how that sits with Ralph's article, though. Have we actually said publicly that we won't extend the contract until well into mid season?

If that is right, after this supposed board meeting I'd like another letter from the club telling me how they're going to measure our performance next year, because clearly it can't be on win-loss ratio. That will simply generate a media storm every week we lose. Which we will. History tells us that coaches under that sort of pressure almost never survive the media warfare (e.g. Ratten, Neeld, Eade, Harvey, Primus, the list goes on and on). Clear KPIs for the club - and the coach - need to be communicated to stop a festering wound.

If that is wrong, I am hoping that once trade/draft time is over, we've all gone to Boulder and learned to play nicely together again, we've got a new CEO on board and everyone's singing from the same hymnbook, we might think about extending Watters' contract for at least a year before the season starts.

Bought my bloody raffle tickets, will renew the family memberships, just want the club to keep communicating, to do so with consistency, and to do what is possible to keep the journos (and the "commentators") at bay.

[kp83]

A thought.

Watters' contract expires end of this year.

So does Al Clarkson from Hawthorn.

Pelchen & Clarkson have worked together in the past successfully (& I'm assuming cordially)......

[joffaboy]

Pelchen & Clarkson have worked together in the past successfully (& I'm assuming cordially)......

Dont assume that.

[spert]

One thing I have learned, and that's not to believe anything anyone says from an AFL football club

[Zed]

I read it a different way. I thought it was the presidents way of saying that he is not going to sit back and accept that 2014 has to be a lean season even if we are in a rebuilding phase. He is not lowering the bar for a year or 2. Not a bad message to sponsors and supporters alike - And any club that thinks they can pick over our list because we are having a fire sale had better think again.

Showing some teeth is our new pres. Will be interesting to watch.

[Eastern]

My take on all of this;

The review has JUST finished. The next step is to put the processes in place in order to move forward. The next step after that is to get the "Buy IN" from all the stakeholders (this would be the area where decisions are made regarding the coach). We are NOT up to the stage where any of these type of decisions are made YET. This is something that Jon Ralph, Kevin Bartlett etc fail to grasp the concept of.

The media too is a very competitive environment. They all want the "scoop" and speculation has become part of their every day lives. Because of this, accuracy & fairness suffer to the point that they are thrown out the window. I think we are all finding out that our demands for instant access to news means that we cannot rely on the accuracy and fairness of that news !!

[mr six o'clock]

The club needs to be ruthless to know they've got the right coach !

Hypothetically , if we were to have a bad run with injuries next year and don't win many games . Would the club give watters an extension because of this , only to find out a year or two later his coaching is not good enough and where back to square one .
I like watters but next year he needs to sharpen his act .
This year in most games , teams in one particular quarter were able to score with ease . This was the reason we lost so many .
This is the first thing Watters needs to change next year , if he's successful it will help him keep his job .

[WinnersOnly]

The club/board & executive are committed to Pelchen's plan - seems they are giving Watters time to buy into it !

[fugazi]

The club/board & executive are committed to Pelchen's plan - seems they are giving Watters time to buy into it !

well that might be the best analysis i suppose. Hopefully he does and then gets the extension before the season starts.

[Con Gorozidis]

Not heard a peep out of most coaches.
October to December coaches should be on holiday.

[QuestionOfAccuracy]

If Watters can show in 2014 that the Saints are on the improve then he will get his extension. But if he doesn't then he will be shown the door. That is the way successful people do business.

Right here, right now, how can anyone expect that the team will be more successful next year regardless of who is the coach? The list will be considerably younger than 2013 and more responsibility will be heaped on the incoming youngsters as well as the ones already at the club.

Watters has been there for two years now. I think that should be long enough for the club to determine whether he has what it takes or not. I think it's pretty dodgy to let him go into his final contract year and expect him to make long-term based decisions despite only being contracted for the rest of the year.

[plugger66]

What happened to all those people on here who said SW had to have his contract extended. There seemed to be many more in that camp and now i cant hardly see a post on it. Stand your ground. if you thought that then you are allowed to say you think the club is wrong. To me it was the only decision but thats easy in hindsight. I doubt he will be coaching in 2015 unless the clubn surprise most of us.

[magnifisaint]

I doubt he will be coaching in 2015 unless the clubn surprise most of us.

That's a bit of a negative comment. You don't rate Watters?

[plugger66]

I doubt he will be coaching in 2015 unless the clubn surprise most of us.

That's a bit of a negative comment. You don't rate Watters?

I was being honest. Nothing to do with negative. I have no opinion on SW yet. he made a fair few errors IMO this year but maybe we dont know what he was told to do. Im unsure the club are 100% certain they want to go on with him otherwise they would have given him the extention he asked for.

[maverick]

What happened to all those people on here who said SW had to have his contract extended. There seemed to be many more in that camp and now i cant hardly see a post on it. Stand your ground. if you thought that then you are allowed to say you think the club is wrong. To me it was the only decision but thats easy in hindsight. I doubt he will be coaching in 2015 unless the clubn surprise most of us.

To be fair, i think most of the SW stuff was reacting to the "sack the coach calls"
I for one don't want him extended until the list has been finalised and we have attracted "the right" players to the club...like it or not confidence in coaches is a major factor in getting players to the club, and if players don't want to come its a knock on him as well...
I would extend him early next year if they do though...before round 3-4

[oldie60]

A coach is really only ever going to be as good as the cattle that he has to work with. Were all resigned to the fact that we are going to rebuild and the next two seasons will be about improvement and consistency and supporters should not get carried away with whatever happens so i would like to know if the board don't wish to extend his contract now what kind of KPI's are they setting to measure his performance and if he does fail, to use all the business cliches of ticking boxes, continous improvement,performance and all the other jargon thats been used by our forums i hope these people on the board have a contingency and criteria for a new coach at short notice if they were to terminate his services. They also should be aware that if they want to be professional and expect good performances they also need to provide him with all the tools to perform his job to the best of his ability which i think he is already behind the 8 ball as our list will be younger the bodies will not be hardened. The consistency factor goes out the window once the coach is changed as it usually takes a year or so to get the game plan right and then of course you have the players that can't get a game with one coach start getting games and guys that were picked each week with the previous coach start getting dropped so then the two year window becomes great big folding doors onto a sun deck.They should extend his contract and support him the same way they are supporting the decisions being made by Pelchen and Bains.

[Moods]

I wouldn't have a clue whether he's the right person for the job or not. We have an ordinary list in rebuild mode. He inherited an ordinary list. Bloody hard to get young kids who aren't world beaters to win AFL games of footy. Them's the facts whether we like it or not. Our draft picks have been considerably low in the past few years, and to be honest, any low pick we've had we've pretty much wasted on the likes of Lovett (dumbest move ever. Ever!)

So can Watters coach? He's into his 3rd year next year, but I'm still not sure. I know he's made mistakes, and I know he's done the right thing by the club by blooding as many players as possible. I can't see the point of turning over another coach at this point in time, even if we do have another year like this year. I don't see why we need to extend his contract (who would be headhunting him?) but I'd like to see him get a 2 year extension at the end of the year.