Identity, Leadership, Teamwork - all challenges

[cwrcyn]

I agree about Phillips. Reminds me a bit of Montagna. Remember, in his few games for us Phillips has averaged close to 20 possessions. That's an impressive start. The guy has great endurance and knows where to position himself on the ground. He'll be a good player for us

[saintspremiers]

We were going nowhere in a hurry so all this change is brilliant.

Hopefully cloggers like Newnes, Rice, White, McCartin, McKenzie etc will be delisted and maybe Phillips also.

Our list was garbage and it showed.

9 wins with one third of the list missing a lot of the year is not a garbage list. Our list has holes, some of which hopefully were filled with the 5 ins.
We now only need one thing - team confidence, (and a decent year injury wise), to really push for the top 8.

Please don’t spout the 9 wins thing. It’s fake news and Ratts has said that - many of the wins were only just and two of those were against the pathetic Suns!

Our percentage was garbage. That’s a FACT - again mentioned by Ratts

[Secret Kiel]

We were going nowhere in a hurry so all this change is brilliant.

Hopefully cloggers like Newnes, Rice, White, McCartin, McKenzie etc will be delisted and maybe Phillips also.

Our list was garbage and it showed.

9 wins with one third of the list missing a lot of the year is not a garbage list. Our list has holes, some of which hopefully were filled with the 5 ins.
We now only need one thing - team confidence, (and a decent year injury wise), to really push for the top 8.

Please don’t spout the 9 wins thing. It’s fake news and Ratts has said that - many of the wins were only just and two of those were against the pathetic Suns!

Our percentage was garbage. That’s a FACT - again mentioned by Ratts

So how many wins do you think we will get in 2020, will we be better or worse?

[takeaway]

We were going nowhere in a hurry so all this change is brilliant.

Hopefully cloggers like Newnes, Rice, White, McCartin, McKenzie etc will be delisted and maybe Phillips also.

Our list was garbage and it showed.

9 wins with one third of the list missing a lot of the year is not a garbage list. Our list has holes, some of which hopefully were filled with the 5 ins.
We now only need one thing - team confidence, (and a decent year injury wise), to really push for the top 8.

Please don’t spout the 9 wins thing. It’s fake news and Ratts has said that - many of the wins were only just and two of those were against the pathetic Suns!

Our percentage was garbage. That’s a FACT - again mentioned by Ratts

I'll say it again, 9 wins is 9 wins, so the list is not "garbage" as you state. "JUST" wins are still wins, and in some of those wins (and losses) we showed we can fight back and hit the lead.

Ratts said the 9 wins were "fake news"? ---- when? We seem to have at least improved the list this year, so how would you rate the list this year? Not garbage, say Op shoppish?

[carn_sainter]

That's one of the more bizarre statements that's ever been posted on this forum. Ratten a mercenary? Really? He played at Carlton for 13 years; Coached there for 6 years (left not of his own choosing). Then he went to Hawthorn for 6 years before us. So - in total - he's been at 3 clubs in 25 years. Ratten is as far from a mercenary as you can get. Compare him to say, Ross Lyon. FFS - bizarre statement.

OP needs to put down the glass bbq for a bit

So that's a fair point - he has been loyal. I didn't mean it so much to paint him as disloyal or flippant. But the fact is that he came to the club for the job and the prospect of being senior coach. He didn't come here because of St.Kilda. And the fact is that if he had missed out on our senior coach position but been offered the Adelaide, North or Carlton job, he would have left.

Which is fair enough. As pointed out here, it's the norm

I think pretty much everyone involved in the AFL nowadays could be classified as mercenary to some extent. Ratten is no different to all the others who have had a playing career with one club and gone on to coaching, admin or other roles in the industry. If Ratts is a mercenary so are Harves, Lenny and Roo.

And clubs can, of course, still work with this. But we lack a backbone. The last two years, everyone is new. We don't have a Hardwick, or Buckley, or Simpson, or administrative staff acting as strong enough roots to pull the whole thing together.

My concern is that too many people are new. They're not St.Kilda people. Compare the current list to the last decent list we had, starting 2003 onwards...they all came through together, pulled together by a strong culture of St.Kilda people.

We completely lack this at the moment, which is why I feel like identity, leadership and teamwork are such urgent challenges for us at the moment.

Not insurmountable, but really bloody important

[skeptic]

Get what you’re CS...

But given what the last few years looked like... me thinks a clean out was necessary

[Secret Kiel]

That's one of the more bizarre statements that's ever been posted on this forum. Ratten a mercenary? Really? He played at Carlton for 13 years; Coached there for 6 years (left not of his own choosing). Then he went to Hawthorn for 6 years before us. So - in total - he's been at 3 clubs in 25 years. Ratten is as far from a mercenary as you can get. Compare him to say, Ross Lyon. FFS - bizarre statement.

OP needs to put down the glass bbq for a bit

So that's a fair point - he has been loyal. I didn't mean it so much to paint him as disloyal or flippant. But the fact is that he came to the club for the job and the prospect of being senior coach. He didn't come here because of St.Kilda. And the fact is that if he had missed out on our senior coach position but been offered the Adelaide, North or Carlton job, he would have left.

Which is fair enough. As pointed out here, it's the norm

I think pretty much everyone involved in the AFL nowadays could be classified as mercenary to some extent. Ratten is no different to all the others who have had a playing career with one club and gone on to coaching, admin or other roles in the industry. If Ratts is a mercenary so are Harves, Lenny and Roo.

And clubs can, of course, still work with this. But we lack a backbone. The last two years, everyone is new. We don't have a Hardwick, or Buckley, or Simpson, or administrative staff acting as strong enough roots to pull the whole thing together.

My concern is that too many people are new. They're not St.Kilda people. Compare the current list to the last decent list we had, starting 2003 onwards...they all came through together, pulled together by a strong culture of St.Kilda people.

We completely lack this at the moment, which is why I feel like identity, leadership and teamwork are such urgent challenges for us at the moment.

Not insurmountable, but really bloody important

The last decent list you refer to (2003), was a rebuild that started in 1999. The 2004 and 2005 team was dramatically different to the 2009 & 2010, the point about what happened between the start of the rebuild phase (1999) right through to the end phase (2011), was lots of new people coming and going, admin, coaches and players. The common factor during this time were a small group of players who the team was and could be build around, especially key position/structural players. All of the change we are having now is not significantly different in magnitude and with comparison to what you refer as our last decent list, which really is also known as our last premiership window (1999 to 2011).

Arguably our current premiership window opened up in 2014, with 2012 and 2013 being years that should be considered wasted years, and since 2014 we have been diligently probing the market for a core of players that you could build a premiership team around. I'd even say, though we traded 5 in and 3 out on Wednesday, and will complete further changes to have a list between 38 and 40 players, if you apply some metrics in the way of percentage of change against 38-40 and then compare this to your so-called last decent list and the changes that happened year-in and year-out from 1999 to 2011, I'd hazard a guess you'd conclude it's not as bad situation as you are so concerned about.

Moreover, Ratten was sneakily planted a year before exiting Richo as a very well planned succession plan, he had 12 months to get his feet under the desk, make observations, build relationships and I'm dead certain he and Simon Lethlean spent many a moment planning list change long before Richo finaly left the building. My point to you is the the identity, leadership and teamwork was being well taken care of long before all of the changes that have taken place since Richo left. Remember Lethlean put himself on the record in 2018 as saying he'd identified the lack of leadership being problematic and something that was a priority for him to fix. Who could argue hasn't been working hard on that front since mid 2018.