The Juggernaut Era

In a special mid-season bye retrospective, we’re delving into the last time we were this good through the first-hand experiences of Rory Sackville.

For full disclosure, this is a first-hand account of the St Kilda Football Club 2007ish to 2011ish (aka the Ross Lyon era and – according to Lethal – from here on in known as The Juggernaut Era). I worked at the club in various middle management role during this time including sponsorship, community and fan engagement. Overall, I held various positions between 2004 and 2015. This is my account – to quote the reality TV quote de jour, “I’m speaking my truth”. Others who worked, played, were involved in the club during this time will have their versions of events and why things played out the way they did – that’s cool, I’m not trying to debunk anyone else and their version of events. These are my stories … dun dun …

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2007 – New coach, who dis?

2007 brought Ross Lyon to the club in the battle of the 2005/06 Sydney assistant coaches. John Longmire was a frontrunner to win the top job after Grant Thomas’ departure but Rossy snared the top job. In my mind, this appointment was one of the first “just hire assistant coaches from successful teams” appointments – this approach carries on today. 2007 was a middling year where we hovered low-to-mid table for most of the season. The highlight of the year was the appointment of Nick Riewoldt as sole captain moving away from GT’s captain rotation policy – this was a wise move.  A late season draw to the equally low-to-mid-tabled Western Bulldogs and close losses to Collingwood and West Coast ultimately cost us a spot in the finals when Adelaide upset Collingwood in the final round at the now-known-as Concrete Disney Store to clinch eighth. In hindsight, whilst you want to make finals every year, this wasn’t a bad thing as Geelong were always going to win this one.

2008 – Can you smell what the Ross is cooking?

Something changed. The ninth-place finish spurred the team on. I’ve always believed a team needs a good year to settle into a new coach (and I’d seen GT into Ross into Watters into Richo), the 2011 Cats aside where C. Scott inherited a premiership team in waiting. 2007 was learning Rossy’s new game style – defensive, accountable, next man in – epitomised by the Rob Eddys, Andrew McQualters et al – getting to learn the ropes. 2008 showed us what they had learnt. The tone was set from Round 1 with a 6.15 to 6.13 win against Sydney – the apprentice defeats the master at his own game. Some of the old, pre-Rossy traits were still there though and by mid-season we were exactly where we were at 2007 season’s end – ninth. It looked like we were in for another middling season but we came home with the wet sail with a 7-2 run after Round 12 leading into the last game of the year against Essendon in seventh position. As per usual, the live ladder and its computations were in full swing in Round 22 as fourth to eighth spots were all up for grabs with the ridiculous “if North lose by more than 70 but Port score more than 140 and North score less than 70, Adelaide win and Saints win by 100-plus and Mercury is in retrograde … Saints will finish fourth” scenario being thrown around. By the last game of the round – the cursed 4:40pm Sunday slot – all the computations and live ladder scenarios had played out (not sure about Mercury in retrograde). If the Saints won by more than 100, we’d snag fourth spot and the double chance. Well, that happened too. The Saints won by 108 points kicking 7.6 to 0.1 in the last quarter in an absolute procession – Milney with seven including three in the last.  This was a sign of a team that was starting to believe … the additions of Sean Dempster (who did his knee very early in the Round 22 game and missed the finals and first half of 2009) and Adam Schneider – both Swans premiership players – brought experience and polish to a very talented side that had that delicate mix of youth, experience, talent and hard workers.

Geelong again looked unstoppable (which ultimately wasn’t true, all thanks to Stewie Dew) but easily accounted for us in the Qualifying Final – which totally made sense seeing we were in seventh place one week before the finals. Knocking off the Pies in the Semi-Final set up a Preliminary Final against the Hawks. This ultimately became Robert Harvey’s final game; he’d announced his retirement late in the season and was chaired off with two Brownlows, 380-plus games, umpteen accolades, but no flag. But – being completely honest and transparent – the players and certainly the club was nowhere near ready to play in a Grand Final. The murmurs went around the admin team after the game with words to the effect of “lucky we didn’t win that – we would have been nowhere near prepared to play in the big dance…”. No one remembers Preliminary Final losers anyway … all this did was set us up for quite literally the greatest home and away season put together by a side in the AFL era. A side note here – it’s been statistically proven (Footballistics) that the 2004 St Kilda side was the most accurate and potent side ever – I often reflect on 2004 as the one that really did get away but onto …

2009 – The Greatest Show, that wasn’t, man

I could spend countless words on 2009 – this whole retro could be on 2009 – 2009 made The Winning Streak DVD (2004) look like The Midday Movie. A club-unprecedented 19 wins in a row to start the season, the greatest home and away game ever, another McClelland Trophy for the cabinet and again accolades galore … but no flag. Off the back of the 2008 form and seeing Rossy’s game plan and style gelling with the team, the club knew it was in for a big year. 

I’ll spend a bit of time on the Round 14 v Geelong game – both teams undefeated by Round 13 (an AFL-era unprecedented feat) – in the years before the floating fixture, the AFL had got this one wrong at the start of the season scheduling the game on a Sunday afternoon. It didn’t deter anyone with a still-AFL, now-known-as-the-Concrete-Disney-Store-record 54,444 crowd. It was a TRUE sell-out by every stretch of the imagination. Every single person attending had to have a reserved seat and the club, the AFL and the stadium went out of their way to ensure every patron sat in their seat. This makes sense, but typically people just sit wherever they want (even in reserved seat areas) so the club had staff members patrolling the aisles to ensure that everyone was sitting in their allocated seats – including staff. The game itself was truly pulsating, right down to Gardy killing ironing out Harry Taylor taking the mark that ultimately led to a six-point win.

After the win the club was on the highest of highs. The show kept going until Round 20, after sneaking a one-point win in Sydney in Round 18 and accounting for the Hawks in Tassie whilst resting some key players in Round 19. Momentum is real, and we lost it. Close losses to Essendon and then North, and then a lacklustre 47-point win to the bottom-placed Melbourne leading into finals. There was never any doubt we were going to make the Grand Final but an unconvincing Qualifying Final win v Collingwood and a sneaky seven-point Preliminary Final win against the Bulldogs – we’d been behind all game, and snuck in front with seven minutes left, and a Nick Riewoldt toe-poke put the game out of reach with a minute or so to go.

Onto the Big Dance for the first time since 1997.

This time, the club – players, admin, members and fans – were all ready for it. Planning had started months earlier (mainly as no team that had been 13-0 had ever missed the Grand Final – so effectively we could have planned to play Geelong – no doubt the footy department were planning for this too!) – everything was falling into place to snare our first flag since 1966. We all know about Scarlett’s toe-poke (cringe), Hawkins goal hitting the post (double cringe – leading the rules being changed and goal reviews being introduced) but what hurt me the most was Max Rooke tumbling a goal in after the siren had sounded. We fell away so badly in the last quarter against a team that had our measure. I genuinely believe the wet weather did not help our game style and neither did not playing at the ‘G often enough (our first game of the year there was Round 22).

I’m of the view that every club restructures approximately every nine months or so, on and off the field. You don’t win the premiership? You’ve failed. Something has to give. The industry is brutal at best. Players go and more go, staff churn (at 11.5 years when I left I was the longest-serving administration staff member at the time – most come and go within one to two years), coaches’ contracts expire, and out the door they go. The club knew they were in the window, clock hands closest to the premiership, so they threw their first draft pick at a player who absolutely fit the bill of what we needed – outside run and some polish to support the defensive, in and under style of play. There are some brutal things I could say about Andrew Lovett (who was at the club for all of five minutes but somehow stuffed it up) but I’ll let a quick Google search cover that off for me. So let’s go to…

2010 – Bounce baby bounce

When you look back at the 2010 season there were some weird results and our performance throughout the year put us in a strong but never dominant position. I put this all down to losing Nick Riewoldt for half the season to a terrible hamstring injury in Round 3. Adding players such Adam Pattinson (a great bloke who I later met again outside of footy, but a solid, foot solider by his own admission) and Jesse Smith (who never, ever, ever got on the park but touted by many as the greatest ever half-back flanker that never was) and the aforementioned Lovett didn’t eventuate to the additional polish we needed to win a flag. A seven-game winning streak (six without Riewoldt) set the season up well finishing in third place – a game and half behind Geelong. That half a game? A draw against Hawthorn in the annual Blue Ribbon Cup. This game was a see-sawing affair. Usually when you are presenting a cup for the game the result is known as you make your way down to the field but we had no plan for if it was a draw. I watched the end of the game from the bowels of Docklands with the Chief Commissioner of Police Simon Overland, the CEO of the Blue Ribbon Foundation and other guests from the Silk and Miller families. I recall turning to the Chief Commissioner after the siren and saying, “Well, you’re the most senior person here – you make the call on who gets the cup!” – it made sense to give it back to the team that held it anyway (which was the Saints after the Max Hudghton-led 2009 win in Tassie).

Outside of the Qualifying Final win in Adelaide in 2005 (where the entire club was flown over to watch the game) – I think the 2010 Qualifying Final result was my favourite finals win, beating Geelong by four points in a thriller (this is in the back any day of the week). Another classic game between the two sides, and some personal glory with my wife and her entire family being Geelong supporters. Seeing off the Bulldogs again in the Preliminary Final (by now you’re starting to feel sorry for the Bulldogs and their run in prelims 1997/98 and 2008/09/10 but then win one out of their-you-know-what in 2016), this sets us up for a Grand Final against … well, every team’s nemesis … Collingwood. This is officially the fourth-best Grand Final of all-time, epitomised by Brendon Goddard’s mark of the year and subsequent goal to put us a goal up with just under seven minutes to play. Lenny Hayes’ forgotten Norm Smith Medal performance of 32 touches, 12 tackle and a goal (and one lost voice) showed everyone the type of big-game player he was. Don’t forget he kicked it into the 50 for BJ’s huge mark and it was his kick that led to the game equalling point … that bounce … that f^%$ing bounce. It was widely viewed that we had spent our tickets in that game and the 56-point loss the next week proved it. Again, the AFL changed the rules not long after and a drawn Grand Final will never happen again.

And for the third time in three years, we beat the eventual premiers during the season all to no avail. And we all thought that not winning three Grand Finals in two years was the worst thing that could happen to the club.

Welcome to 2011.

2011 – Schoolgirls and Seaford and Dockers (oh my!)

Three major things occurred in 2011 (well, late 2010 and 2011). The “St Kilda Schoolgirl”, Seaford and Rossy leaving to go to the Dockers are all well reported. The worst thing was a combo of the first two with the “St Kilda Schoolgirl” turning up to the first training session at Seaford handing out provocative flyers. It wasn’t pretty stuff. The club’s response? Hide, hide and hide some more. In hindsight, this was the worst thing they did. They had just moved to the Frankston LGA and this was supposed to be an opportunity to open up the Bayside that we claimed we owned … but we hid. Hid from the media, hid from fans and members and hid from the community we were supposed to be embracing. I’d just taken over the club’s community engagement programs including things such as school visits and I recall a conversation with a senior club official who told me, in no uncertain terms, that we’d be doing the absolute bare minimum community engagement. This was not the way to engage with the local community and our fan base, certainly not a way to grow the club. This was all before the season had even started.

It was clear we had run out of petrol by 2011, the hangovers from the highs of 2009/10 and the offseason troubles including the NZ drug scandal (which I’d forgotten also happened in early 2011 such was the onslaught of off-field issues). The start to the season was disastrous – losing Lenny Hayes to an ACL in the Round 2 draw versus Richmond. By the mid-season bye we were 4-1-7 sitting in 12^th position. The bye was a godsend – wet sail again – and we finished off the season 8-2, finishing in sixth. The oddity of finals and game locations meant not only did we have a home final against the Swans but it was an ACTUAL home final at the soon-to-be-known as the Concrete Disney Store. We couldn’t lose this one – we had momentum – but we did, and easily, thanks to an Adam Goodes and Ryan O’Keefe double act.

Four days later, Rossy was gone. Some say he double-crossed us, some say he walked out for money due to some issues, but we didn’t sign him when we had the chance. Negotiations went on and on but we didn’t get the signature. I happened to still be at the Linen House Centre in Seaford the night he walked out in a purple haze of bluff and bluster. It wasn’t a pretty start to the season; it wasn’t a pretty ending either.      

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You look back at this era and it was the era of Victorian teams – 2007 to 2011 – Geelong, Hawthorn, Geelong, Collingwood and Geelong with Geelong, St Kilda twice, and Collingwood runners up (Port Adelaide being the outlier in 2007). We had our chances, but just couldn’t take them. It just wasn’t meant to be.

On this era you could easily script a mini-series apt for (insert one of the countless streaming services here) and have enough content focusing on the off-field components only. Maybe I’ll write a screenplay next?

After all this I’m but one a small handful of people who can proudly say they’ve worked at three Grand Finals in two years (and an even smaller handful of people who can say this AND worked at the first-ever AFL game played overseas for premiership points). It truly was The Juggernaut Era – let’s hope this is The Juggernaut Era Mk II.