Ross Lyon should coach Saints for 10 years - Westaway

[markinUSA]

I just read the following story, and I am frankly dumbfounded by it.

Saints boss calls for Lyon to coach for next 10 years
Mark Robinson | May 28, 2008 12:00am

ST KILDA chairman Greg Westaway wants Ross Lyon to coach for the next 10 years. Citing continuity as the key to success, Westaway yesterday broke his silence to offer his unconditional support for the embattled coach and the much-discussed game style. "We'd like to see him there for 10 years because that's how you run clubs," Westaway said.
"We are 100 per cent behind him. If you change (coaches) every five minutes, you go nowhere. And I'm very adamant about it: he's there to stay."

You can read the whole story at the following link:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/ ... 42,00.html

I have to assume he meant the PROVERBIAL 10 years... Maybe he is just saying this because he 'has to'. But everyone knows that coaches have very little job security... surely its all about results, and its continually re-assessed? That -on field success - must be the thing that determines whether someone stays or goes.

For what it's worth, Ross Lyon only has a three year contract... where does this 10 year thing come from?

[karnak]

fantastic news and absolutely the correct approach. What job security enables is the ability to build a premiership team without the threat of hanging onto midtable in order to stay in a job. Lyon, and the St Kilda fans now know that he is here to stay and can go about building a list that wants in order to get us in grandfinals. After the comments from Ross after the game and then this from Westaway I would expect us to start playing younger players for 3 reasons.

Lyon now has the job security to do so and wants to see who in the young brigade will make his premiership team in 2-3 years.

Can send a message to the mentally and physically soft players by dropping quite a few.

Can inject enthusiasm and a nothing to lose mentality into the playing group which may actually have other benefits, (like us competing in finals this year).

I think it is absolutely the best move and as for anyone calling for Ross' head you should be ashamed. I have NO DOUBT that he will be a premiership coach however; he needs to build a team around his tactical game plan. We have seen the list change quite a bit in the last 2 trading seasons in terms of our starting 22 on paper. I'd expect more trading for youth in the next 2 seasons where we may float quite a number of names on the trade table. These names that will be floated will NOT include any of our underperforming gun players. They will be more of our fringe players the so called blockers.

I would like to commend Westaway and the board on their support of Ross the Boss for truly they have some vision which is something that 90% of the ravid posters on here clearly do not have.

I'm sure that some will disagree with my sentiments but I'm hoping Barks4Eva will come into to lend some of his insight and support on the boards decision. Because as much as he can be annoying I must admit that I tend to agree with 85% of what he goes on about

Carn the Saints!

[markinUSA]

Personally, I have NEVER called for his firing.

Nor have I bagged Ross Lyon... I've really made a concerted effort on this board to only ever post positive things.

But... in my opinion... that is very different from saying that he should definitely coach for the next 10 years. I just think you can't possibly make that kind of statement... think about how much the whole game has changed in the last 10 years... how could we possibly know what things wil be like in 2018?

[meher baba]

Well

He's tried as hard as he could to give lyon some public support and sound like he meant it (as opposed to "the coach has the full support of the board")

For mine it was a bit over the top and westaway might come to regret it later on (however he can always say it was just his own opinion and not that of the board as a whole)

The bomber thompson analogy was not correct imo. Thompson had already taken the cats to a PF and had just one disappointing season

Lyon is set to have two highly disappointing seasons out of two attempts: the second worse than the first

[St DAC]

"Wants to" is different from "has the job for". Essentially (my take anyway) he's saying if Lyon has the job for 10 years then we'll have had both stability and success; taking a leaf from the Geelong book I'd wager.

Much as I back the coach no-one in AFL should have 10 year tenure irrespective of results, and I doubt that's actually what Westaway meant. I agree he's providing public support for Lyon while the heat's on to defuse any rumours stirred up by the moron journo's like Sheahan and Robbo trying to milk a story.

[markinUSA]

Ok, thanks... I must have read it wong.
Cheers, Mark

[fingers]

OUr club old benefit from some real stability - I think the sentiment is correct.

[meher baba]

"Wants to" is different from "has the job for". Essentially (my take anyway) he's saying if Lyon has the job for 10 years then we'll have had both stability and success; taking a leaf from the Geelong book I'd wager.

Much as I back the coach no-one in AFL should have 10 year tenure irrespective of results, and I doubt that's actually what Westaway meant. I agree he's providing public support for Lyon while the heat's on to defuse any rumours stirred up by the moron journo's like Sheahan and Robbo trying to milk a story.

I agree with your interpretation of "wants to see" not meaning "I guarantee he will" and was a clever bit of phrasing

But westaway then went on to say "make no mistake, he's there to stay". That's the bit that was a bit over the top IMO. Journos file those sort of things away and bring them back later when you don't want them to

Anyway, it seems to mean lyon will be there for at least the rest of the season and any players who are unhappy about that need to put up or shut up

[JeffDunne]

I really wish he'd said nothing.

[Hurricane]

I totally support stability for the club and giving the coach the sack now would be mad. Dont forget that while the list he took over was full of talent every coach goes about his buisness differant and Ross is obviously hitting a roadblock because he wants to play a style that doesnt fully suit some of our current players

I keep thinking of Terry Wallace at Richmond and his much talked about "5 year plan" at the time we all thaught he was stupid and laughed at him (I pesonally remember posting he would need a 25 year plan at minimum) but now that he has the list the way he wants it and has Richo playing the best foty of his life the Tigers dont look so bad and IMHO will be right up there in a couple of years. Ditto Laidley at the Roos and even Thompson at Geelong (they were going to sack him at the end of 06)

I might be a dreamer about this but I firmly belive that once Ross has the list the way he wants it and the players playing and being confidant in the style he is obviously cultavaiting we will be back up again.

BANG BANG

[spert]

Costa didn't make a similar statement at Geelong-he put a rocket under Thommo, and I hope Westaway has done similar to RL.

[Stephen Theodore]

I think i need a bex and a lie down after that statement.

[rodgerfox]

Frankly, we have to keep Lyon for a long term. We have to.

Thanks to our previous Board and in particular President, we have no choice. Fair dinkum, civil action should be taken against them for severe negligence.

It might not work out after 10 years. We might blow it. And even if we don't, we won't be any good for another 3 years at least now.

Apart from having McEvoy and Armitage on the list, we are much worse off now than we were in R1 2007.

Our good players don't respond to Lyon. Nor do our average ones. This group, particularly this core will not win a flag under Lyon.

Here you go Teflon - if we do keep Lyon long term (ie. beyond 2009) we need to rebuild now from scratch. I've called for it.

He needs to trade heavily at years end and get rid of anyone of value who he can't get the best out of. That's half the list at least.

Get kids in, who (fingers crossed) may listen to him as fresh kids straight out of the draft. We need to start again if we keep Lyon.


I completely agree with Westaway, continuity is the key. We had that. We blew it. We panicked. The loser supporters applauded it - it was the easy way out. Loser Saints fans love that. Our Board were loser Saints fans. I knew one of them, and believe me - he was as 'Saints loser fan' as you could ever get. Die hard fan, never played the game and didn't understand it. Loved the club but had that ingrained loser mentality that alot of Saints fans have when it comes to footy.

When that Board came in, they were different. Or so I thought. Our years of heartache and mismanagement was due to the fact our Board was always made up of Saints tragics who carried the same baggage as the average Saints fan. Their decisions always reflected this.

On a side note ironically, Thomas who appeared to be a genuine die-hard Saint on arrival, then tended to treat the club as a business, was probably the exception. He treated it like a business - not like a footy tragic with all the 'Saints fan baggage' that comes with the territory. The more this saga of the sacking lingers on (looks like 10 years now) the more I realise he was very, very good for our club. Not surprising that he clashed with the board at all.


We have to keep Lyon and start again from scratch. When Thomas was sacked, I said it set us back 3-4 years. I said at the time that when a new coach comes in, it takes 2-3 years to learn their game plan. By the time that happened, we'd also have mostly rebuilt as a new coach would bring in players and get rid of others. By that time, key players would have either retired or be over the hill.

We'd not only be learning a new game plan under the new coach, but learning to play with new players too. If we kept Thomas, we'd have had a mini-rebuild anyway post 2007, but that would mean our core would only have had to adjust to having new players in the team - not learning a new game plan at the same time.

But Thomas is gone. We've moved on.

It was a big mistake, and has set us back years - potentially decades now. A big mistake, made for the wrong reasons.
But, it's happened. We can't sack another coach now.

We need to start again, get some credibility back from the coaching world and build from the ground up.

Westaway is right. It might not mean success, infact probably won't - but we have no choice but to get some continuity. We need to start now.


See you 10 years folks.

Adios.

[chook23]

we were a lot worse off in 2006 compared to 2004 too.

get kids in who may listen to him???

what sort of comment is that.

[rodgerfox]

we were a lot worse off in 2006 compared to 2004 too.

get kids in who may listen to him???

what sort of comment is that.

What option do we have? Sack a coach when there are not other candidates out there?

Cross our fingers and hope that another rookie will do better?

We need an established, employed coach - who would leave their club to come to ours when we've just sacked 2 coaches in 2 years?


Lyon, unfortunately needs to stay.

The current players do not respond to him. We need to cross our fingers and hope that young guys coming into the club might.

What choice is there? We've been hamstrung horribly by severe mismanagement and imcompetence.

[chook23]

we were a lot worse off in 2006 compared to 2004 too.

get kids in who may listen to him???

what sort of comment is that.

What option do we have? Sack a coach when there are not other candidates out there?

Cross our fingers and hope that another rookie will do better?

We need an established, employed coach - who would leave their club to come to ours when we've just sacked 2 coaches in 2 years?


Lyon, unfortunately needs to stay.

The current players do not respond to him. We need to cross our fingers and hope that young guys coming into the club might.

What choice is there? We've been hamstrung horribly by severe mismanagement and imcompetence.

In which GT played a big part.

[rodgerfox]

In which GT played a big part.

He did't sack himself.

[Stephen Theodore]

rodgerfox wrote:
What option do we have? Sack a coach when there are not other candidates out there?

I agree with you Rodger, but 10 years. That comment reeks of inexperience from the pres.

[Dan Warna]

I dont think I can live through another rebuilding process.

Hopefully we can turn it around the rest of the season, otherwise its not worth my blood pressure any more.

[vantheman]

I agree with Westaway's sentiments except for the obvious - the success of such a strategy is surely based on having selected the right person for the job in the first instance!

I would have thought that at this stage the jury is still very much "out" on whether Ross is that man or not

[St DAC]

But westaway then went on to say "make no mistake, he's there to stay". That's the bit that was a bit over the top IMO. Journos file those sort of things away and bring them back later when you don't want them to

Anyway, it seems to mean lyon will be there for at least the rest of the season and any players who are unhappy about that need to put up or shut up

I wouldn't read too much into that comment. We've all read the "He has our full support" motherhood statements just before the knife enters the back!

I'd expect until season's end at least. I reckon he'll see out his contract. Which IMO gives him a fair period to be evaluated on.

[Behind Play]

Obviously stability is what you need at a club, we all know that. What I want to know is why the players are not playing for him and how is he going to fix it.

[Saints Premiers 2008]

2 years of quality drafting and getting 2 kids per draft playing constant senior footy

thats 4 plus the obvious armo, gilbo, big mac and stevens...and say two extra ones that have come good

so around half the 22 could be youngens introduced yearly if they perform plus our stars that should (hopefully) play better without the excess baggage of the blake's, fiora's, l fisher's etc

[saintsrus]

This is not too unfamiliar

It was Butters that gave Gt an open contract and had the job as long a he wanted it and we all know what happened

[sainters man]

to all the rossy lyon baggers--- He is staying for a while! so stop bitching and whinging about him and support your team!

I think half you supporters lose you way half the time! your supposed to barrack for st kilda, not bag them