By Tom Briglia
WINTER
What did it mean to be a St Kilda supporter in the depths of winter in 2025?
I spent the spare time in my final weeks of pre-parenthood working on my sad, dour, uninspiring dream pop (very lol) and also more seriously exploring my long-held ambitions to produce a 2005 season highlights video (very, very lol). For some strange reason one was never made by Sports Delivered (they then went on to decide to not produce a full-length one for 2009, with the club scrambling to arrange a half-arsed, poorly produced version that does a half-arsed, poor job documenting for what was all intents and purposes the club’s best-ever season), which prompted me to buy every 2005 game on DVD at the Sports Delivered closing-down sale. I have this silly ambition to produce a season highlights video perhaps for the same reason I write this long-winded garbage – we see our lives through the prism of St Kilda. The 2005 season was arguably a more remarkable journey than 2004 and some of the club’s best days took place in 2005, taking it all the way up to leading in the final quarter of a Preliminary Final (for the second year in a row). It was a formative year for me personally, 16 going on 17. A lot of life was happening to me. This year was the 20-year anniversary and I had succumbed to nostalgia. There wasn’t much to hold onto in the St Kilda present.
See, the late May Sunday night dinner following the West Coast game may have been the saddest meal consumed since the Zack’s Pizza I shared with Richie and Evan at Glen Orme Avenue after the 2010 Grand Final Replay (that was a reflection on what had happened during the day, not on Zack’s delicious woodfired pizza). But in the winter of 2025 there were just the fucking days and the fucking weeks of being a St Kilda supporter, just existing in the bitter Melbourne cold at some dumb time of the week like 10am on a Tuesday or 2.30pm on a Wednesday, nothing to really revel in from the weekend (maybe some Nas chat), not much to anticipate the weekend coming (probably just Nas bits), confronting the fact that you are living a rebuild. This is where you are. This is your St Kilda reality.
Ross and Nick Riewoldt have talked over the years (including in the current Ross stint) about committing to a goal – “a cause to die for” – without guarantee of success. It’s one thing for a single season to spin off its axis, it’s another entirely to step into an entire rebuild not knowing if you and the whole thing might be flung into deep space without getting your hands anywhere near the cup. The last tilt barely registered as a tilt; it yielded an official fifth place in the more heavily impinged COVID year. That was what Billings over Bont and Paddy McCartin over Petracca and Hugh Goddard and James Frawley amounted to. There are kids growing up with this as their identity as St Kilda supporters. I have been relatively fortunate (or unfortunate, but you know what I mean) in my St Kilda-supporting life. I have 1997 (some of my St Kilda-supporting peers have 1991 and 1992, and some Moorabbin memories). I have the 10-year span of back-to-back GT and Ross eras that included 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010. There were periods of optimism, from years to months to weeks to days to fleeting moments. I can still remember them (but they are long, long ago). What does the generation of Saints fans coming through now have? A couple of Jack Steven highlights and a weird Elimination Final win at the Gabba in front of 10,000 people?
Ultimately, I also have the weight of watching my Dad waiting to see his first St Kilda premiership (he was born in 1963 and thus has no recollection of 1966). That weight gets heavier by the year; it became heaviest in the icy Melbourne days in the middle of 2025. There is a critical mass of St Kilda fans who haven’t seen a premiership; there is a critical mass of St Kilda fans who have parents who haven’t seen a premiership. In the canyon of another rebuild, while we were questioning what this is all for and whether we’ll actually live to see It, my daughter Ivy was born on Sunday, June 15th at 9.52am, just a few days after the Saints copped another pantsing from her mother’s Bulldogs in the Round 14 opener. Ivy’s first game would be Collingwood vs St Kilda, the official ordering of the 1966 Grand Final. “Welcome to the Saints IVY” beamed her A4 membership card, purchased six weeks before her birth. What’s my legacy as a supporter to my newborn daughter? Maybe it’s not so much legacy as intergenerational footy trauma. My Mama – no follower of the game by any measure – had knitted her an all-time horizontal candy stripe outfit with a beanie. Ivy’s Mum may be a (very casual) Bulldogs supporter, and we have an intensely-loved Aussie bulldog Ralphies, which could sway her west, but I think St Kilda might be her footy fate if she follows the game.
I think about the experiences my father wishes he would have with me. We never saw a premiership together whilst his father was still alive, and we’ve shared many a harsh footy experience. Of course, I would love for Ivy to follow the Saints; I would love to see a premiership with my father and I would love to see a premiership with my daughter. The St Kilda Football Club has been a constant in Dad and I’s, and Dad and Matt and I’s relationship. Gracie and I actually chose Carlton vs St Kilda at Princes Park in Round 10 of the AFLW for Ivy’s first game – we have had friends at Carlton’s AFLW team for some time (and Darcy designed this year’s Pride Round Sherrins) and the Briglia family, which settled in Carlton in the 1900s, has historical links with the Blues, so it seemed the most appropriate setting. Ivy saw a fantastic St Kilda win by the girls.
What might Ivy see in her St Kilda-supporting lifetime?
***
Winter began with a funny, fortunate win against Melbourne in Alice Springs. Ross had said during the week they want to be “the best Saints ever”. These would-be best Saints ever got out to a 38-7 lead. They took just 17 seconds to go end-to-end. Hill to Boxshall to Sharman to Mitchito to Max Hall. It was fast and it was daring and it was working. I actually missed most of the first quarter scrambling to get everything home from Gracie’s baby shower. Butler on return (four majors close to goal) hit 2020 areas. I managed to get home, get everything sorted, and get settled on the couch with a bag of Proper Crisps just in time for things to get tight. St Kilda should have gone end-to-end again but Mitchito ran in and missed. Isaac Keeler, for the first time, looked like he belonged, but then dropped an easy ball on the goal line. Jack Carroll bobbled the Sherrin 20 metres out in front and got snagged holding the ball. Nas was doing his best to pull apart the field and bend the game to his will, and Cal Wilkie was doing everything he could to get in the way of everything at the other end, but Melbourne went on a run of scoring 4.7 from 15 inside 50s. Inaccuracy was the only thing denting the Dees’ momentum, and therein was the kicker: by game’s end, St Kilda had weathered a remarkable peppering of the goals from Melbourne that yielded the Demons 7.21, including 0.8 in the last quarter (and 1.12 for the entire second half). Isaac Keeler kicked the sealer and finished with a fun novelty mini-bag of three (three qualifies as “fun novelty mini-bag” in 2025).
It was the bye week, into the Bulldogs on a Thursday night – just in time for possibly most valuable player in the game Sam Darcy to return to football against, of course, the St Kilda Football Club. Jack Sinclair was the highest-rated half-back in the game on some metrics, and was playing his 200th, but all the noise and Saintsational speculation was about Nas’s (non-)signature. Daisy Thomas floated on The Agenda Setters that he might be St Kilda’s best player since Nick Riewoldt. Roo awkwardly responded that Jack Steven had won four best and fairests.
But…you know. You know.
It was that kind of year in which every week is a last chance to keep the pulse of your season going, but the missed targets and shanked shots at goal are really all just part of an inevitable march towards somewhere between 12th to 15th (and deep down, you know that, too). On the Thursday night, the Bulldogs mauled us, again. It was just the whole 2021/2022/2024/eight weeks earlier regurgitated (the 2025 margins were 71 and 72 points respectively). Bevo had done us over again. Nas – trying to make something happen – pulled the trigger a few times, and a few times it just didn’t come off (specifically, was turned over). One of those games with not much to take out from. The faint silver lining was that at least we’d got the inevitable 12-goal loss over and done with so we could make the most of our precious weekend (i.e. become a parent).
There were just 20,508 there to see the game. Caro questioned why St Kilda crowd numbers were so terrible. Gerard asked if Saints fans had lost the faith. We were the club so small and so insignificant that we were the ones Collingwood was playing a home game at Marvel against.
All told, by this time I’d felt disconnected from the club, the accumulation of now a 14th season post-Ross 1.0 wandering around on the Road to 2018 Nowhere Specific. Where was any of this going? The social media team are usually fantastic but have never really indulged my Fable Singers and jumper chat (Morrissey sigh). I felt bored with St Kilda. Like an important part of my life that had been there for a long time wasn’t really there anymore. Wheeling out a whole lot of senior guys to play uninspiring, slapstick footy when another season’s effectively over was wearing thin. Ball movement between the arcs was sometimes ok I guess? Find a forward at the end of it if you like.
Matt was so optimistic still that he texted Gerard on the Monday. Gerard read it out on air: “I do see the hope as a Saints fan. I’m hard-pressed to believe that Owens, Phillipou, Nasiah, King, Tauru, Travaglia, Wilson, Garcia, Keeler and Windhager don’t provide a nice base to launch off over the next few years. If Wilkie, Sinclair and Marshall can keep supporting them nicely they might even see some success before their time comes.” I thought Matt was being way too kind to this horrible, cursed timeline, but I did appreciate that he could see anything at all. Kane was still being rude about keeping receipts on St Kilda finishing bottom four.
***
It was time for the Flying Viking.
Collingwood vs St Kilda at Docklands did end up being a fight worthy of higher billing than 1st vs 14th. Alixzander Tauru on debut took one fun mark and gave away a fun 50 metre penalty when the game was done. Windhager doggedly tagged Nick Daicos but Daicos had his moment, kicking a class snap goal under heat in the last quarter that broke the game open. The Collingwood fans had just moments earlier begun the “CO-LLING-WOOD” chant: it was as if they had willed the goal into existence. St Kilda has rarely had a truly intimidating or at least raucous home crowd in the post-Moorabbin era: Aisle 29 is important. The eventual percentage hit saw St Kilda fall to 15th, below Melbourne in 14th, who weren’t even playing that weekend. Before the game, Pou was borderline in tears, head in hands, with a flare-up of his calf issue in the final moments of the warm-up. Why. Why was he out there in the first place.
We had the Freo game in Perth a week later looking how we wanted it at three-quarter time – 39-16 at clearances, doing another number on their highly-rated midfield. A 16-point lead early in the last when Snags saluted from the pocket, and the Saints players celebrated like we were the ones who had just broken the game open, but this would be one of those rebuild games that you let slip; a two-steps-back in developing the trust with the supporters. One of those rebuild games where you shit directly into your St Kilda away shorts as the home crowd bears down on you in the last. St Kilda made its own chances; it blew its own chances, from the leaders (Mason Wood hit the post twice from his two shots) down to the younger guys (hard to pot Garcia and Hall too hard for this – both played very promising games, and Hall kicked a great long goal on the run from outside 50, the most non in-a-St Kilda jumper thing since Paddy Ryder).
The takeaway, however, was that we finally got to see the Alix Tauru that some said in the lead-up to last year’s draft was being considered by North for the number two pick. He confirmed his place as the most exciting high-flying St Kilda blonde since the last one – an equal club record-high 14 spoils, flying locks and a catapulting, cartwheeling body that was the light you seek in dark days of rebuilds (Max Hall isn’t a high-flying blonde but over the past six weeks, he had moved to the ninth-highest rated player in the competition, according to Champion Data).
While Nas was starting to throw up some proper stats (and not sign a contract), it was Tauru Season. Someone at marketing worked hard and fast and RSEA Viking hats were everywhere in the crowd the following Saturday night for the Hawthorn game. The newfound Scandi enthusiasts saw Alix execute a huge holding-the-ball tackle early, as well as Windhager straight-lining everything and gaining territory the way he would have in juniors, as Matt said. They also sampled some of The Agenda Setters-christened “Bayside Butchers”’ finest cuts: efficiency going into forward of just 50.9%, and that’s before the inaccuracy at goal. In the best moment of the night (and really, one of the best moments of the year), Tauru channelled Michael Gardiner (same spot, different direction) with a flying mark across an unsuspecting pack in the forward pocket, before missing from close range. After getting within a point of the Hawks in time-on in the second, misses from Hall and Nas and Cooper, a dud kick from Wood, and a miskick from Marshall amounted to the ball going straight up the other end to Ramsden for a goal that took the score to 3.10 to 7.6. A pressure rating of 246 (I don’t know what that means exactly) for fuck all; Hawthorn shat out a couple of goals and comfortably held the Saints at arm’s length for the rest of the game. A Marshall set shot goal after the siren was a tease for what could have been.
Tauru’s single mark set off a small storm of goodwill.
“Lose the Battle, win the war”, trumpeted The Age. Michael Gleeson was sold after 12 quarters of football:
“St Kilda lost the Battle but might win the war. Losing Josh Battle to free agency they gained Alix Tauru with the pick. Alix Tauru gives every indication he will end up a better player than Battle, but that is only the icing on a list management cake. For where St Kilda were at losing a regular key back in the short term to bring in an elite tall for the long term was the crucial thing. For where Hawthorn were at, Battle was a good free pick up.”
Dan Gorringe would take a bullet for him. Garry Lyon said he’d never been as taken by a young player before (and made rippling positive sounds about St Kilda’s youth core). An “excitement machine”, Roo called him on The Agenda Setters. The Agenda Setters suggested he might be the next “NRoo” (but if we’re talking St Kilda blondes then Tauru flies more like Barker). (Meanwhile, quietly, Max Hall was the AFL Players Association’s Unsung Hero; and statistically, he was the highest-rated player over a four-week block.)
People were scratching together a week of living and trying, barely making it through Monday-to-Friday battling a cost-of-living crisis and trying to stay on top of their taxes, in a tinderbox of social tensions while multiple wars and the threat of the world falling into autocracy hovered above, just in the hope they would see an explosion of blonde locks from The Flying Viking (side quest: Max Hall CBAs). Alix won the mark of the year nomination for the round. He was already a Stock AFL Photo for a Broader Article Guy. “I can’t remember a player coming in and captivating the imagination of a fan base like this guy has done,” Roo said live on Channel 7 before the Sydney game wearing a viking hat.
***
We’d started compiling a small pile of games that we could have/should have won in 2025. A five-point loss to the in-form Swans, who were looking to swoop on a top eight spot, was a really good effort from a Saints team whose season was done in May. Some senior guys didn’t take their moments (again), while there were lessons for Tauru, Hastie, Boxshall, Moose – all the 23 and unders, really (except Nas and Hall, who were Already Good). In the space of three minutes in the first quarter, Tauru tried his chances going across goal and turned over the ball to Heeney, he had a goal kicked on him by Buller, and then he gave away a free kick and another shot on goal. It was those early GT-era vibes of trying to get attached to guys and a team that just don’t know how to win (circa 2002, i.e. giving up seven of the last eight goals in Perth against Freo; the Daniel Wulf game; an inability to kick a goal in the last quarter in the face of the Magpie Army). Learning to trust. Trying to trust, wanting to trust. We’ve been doing all that for 59 years. We’d bottled leads of 16 points in the last quarter and 19 points late in the third in the space of three weeks, while kicking ourselves out of the other. Ideally, we’re winning these games in September in a few years’ time, but to learn how to do that you need to execute your kicks on a cold July afternoon when you’ve been out of contention for eight weeks. I had flashbacks to Daniel Archer in 2011 as the ball headed towards Moose in the final seconds. If there was one player the game hinged on, though, it was Brodie Grundy. He taught Marshall a lesson or few; completely bossed him when it counted, including at the stoppage just inside their 50 where he created Gulden’s match-deciding goal. We weren’t offering a guy at Carlton one of the biggest contracts in AFL history based on the outcome of this game, but…we might have been.
It was July and the season was done eight weeks ago. Were we past really caring – really past feeling it in our heart – that we’ve let another game slip? Yes, and a higher draft pick beckoned, but hell’s bells it would have been nice to see the young guys orchestrate a win like that. Alas. A long, quiet Sunday night Route 58 tram trip home. Sheeting rain began as I stepped off the tram, forcing me to dash down Hope Street in the dark towards home. I was drenched by the time I got to the front door.
One of those nights in one of those eras.
***
Any encouragement from the young guys coming through on the Sunday afternoon was dismissed by the breakfast shift on Monday morning. Kane was back on our case (“the lack of talent coming through is glaring”). Tuesday’s edition of The Agenda Setters took Ross to task, suggesting that the media was kinder to Ross but on their weird, demonstrably untrue proviso, as per Luke Hodge, that “Ratten had the same list”. Suey Tuey is the worst day of the week and Tuesdays are by far the weakest for footy media, but that was pretty weird. The AFL Daily round table pondered, “Is St Kilda getting too comfortable with losing?”
I decided to host friends and family the following Sunday, so I could share the experience of watching fourth-place Geelong brutalise us.
Down at the Cattery, Nas was our goddamn best player again and pulled off the best St Kilda centre clearance since the era of Hayes/Dal/Montagna(/maybe Harvey too). Nas became just the second St Kilda player to finish with at least 35 disposals, 10 clearances and two goals in a game in Champion Data’s time (pay him what he wants). Only Harvey could claim that before. St Kilda otherwise didn’t get anywhere close to breaking a Kardinia Park hoodoo extending back to last millennium. The Tackle asked when the pressure might begin to be put on Ross Lyon. Roo openly called this all a rebuild on The Agenda Setters after having no choice but to represent the club and its fans and dismiss as “complete rubbish” Hodge’s suggestion the previous week that Ratten and Ross had the same list. Jonathan Brown said the media was “shit scared” of critiquing Ross due to the “Ross Lyon aura”.
I was learning (slowly) how to take care of a newborn baby. I wasn’t enjoying footy. It’s about this time you lose contact with the day-to-day rigmarole of the mid-2020s footy media crunch. Sam McClure saying the start time of the Grand Final was “embarrassing” might have done it for me in 2025. I’m out for a walk in the streets of Brunswick West with Ralphies on a modest mid-winter Melbourne lunchtime and I audibly exclaimed “FUCK OFF” when I received a push notification from the AFL app (“BLUES’ HUGE CONUNDRUM” on July 17 set me off). See, the thing is, I don’t. Care. That doesn’t make me insightful or special, it’s just that following St Kilda in the Boring ‘20s – and the game more broadly – had become a fucking grind and a nuisance. A fucking grind, and a nuisance.
Ivy was born into a St Kilda recession. St Kilda had lost 12 out of 14.
The Miracle on the Roof of a Docklands Car Park
On a Sunday morning in July – July 27th – we found a lump on the roof of Ralphies’ mouth. We’d had a brief scare a few months earlier with other lumps, which turned out ok, but this lump was bigger. More sinister. And in a spot that doesn’t give you many options.
My best friend.
I work from home – I have essentially for all my professional life – and Ralpies is close to me nearly every minute of the day. I have walked nearly every street of Brunswick West with him several times over (and a fair lot of Brunswick too). He was approaching his eighth birthday. He’s an Australian Bulldog (essentially an English Bulldog, with minute tweaks to handle this country’s climate) so health and life expectancy, unfortunately, can be very fickle. That day, I had again been given the opportunity thanks to extended family and a (very) tolerating wife to go to the footy. Maybe it would shake things up in my mind? I’d hardly left the house over the past six weeks. In hindsight, I’m not sure what I was thinking – I don’t think I was thinking at all – but feeling a bit sick and a bit terrified, I left Ralphies and my new family and the house to go see a late-season dead rubber at the Concrete Dome.
***
“We want to excite our fans and let them see a way forward to get to where we want to be,” Ross said during the week.
At 46 points down at three-quarter time in perhaps our most unexciting, uninspiring performance of the year (in the candy stripe WITH BLACK SHORTS/Alix had kicked a goal), I entertained the idea of going home. I don’t need to be here! I don’t need this! I have a beautiful new child and a wonderful wife at home! I need to make dinner! I need to live my life!
Instead, Matt, Dad and Richie and I decided to watch the last quarter from the bar that looks out over the field from directly behind our level two seats (I can never remember the name, because really it’s three interconnected bars running along the wing; Richie has christened it as The Doorman). I bought a Coke Zero Sugar, not drinking alcohol for the time being. Matt decided to see out his Sunday with a Shiraz (his first ever red wine at the footy), Dad went the Shiraz as well (finest choice of one) and Richie had a Great Northern. The crowd had thinned and the atmosphere had dulled (half of the top level was closed off to begin with), enough that you could clearly hear the audio from the Channel 7 broadcast on the bar screens with a one-second lag from what we were seeing out on the ground in real time. Three quick goals to begin the last quarter to bring the margin to 28 felt a bit cute. At some point in there, the commentary team, led by Jason Bennett and Alistair Nicholson, with Roo and Joel Selwood in special comments, brought up the seemingly comical feat that the greatest three-quarter time comeback in history was 45 points – the Brisbane Bears overrunning Hawthorn at the Gabba in 1995 – and that it might be in danger.
I scoffed to Matt when we heard that. Nice try, Channel 7 producers in the ear of the commentators trying to get the few people at home whiling away what was left of their weekend watching a late-season dead rubber to stay stuck to their TV and generate ad revenue rather than do anything, simply anything, anything else.
Anything else.
Ring them out one-by-one. Snags with a drop punt (lol) from the pocket after good work from Sharman (overhead handball?) and Hall at a disputed ball at 50. Then Tauru got down lowest for a knock-on to Mason Wood, who gave quick hands to Brad Hill against the boundary line for a perfectly executed dribbling goal, which brought the first titillation from the crowd (and from Jason Bennett). Straight out of the centre bounce via Hall to Nas for Cooper Sharman’s first of two very underrated goals in the quarter: a deft pick up and turn and snap on his left from the other pocket. Oliver and Melksham missed shots at the other end (the latter just clipping the post), and Jack Steele stepped up with a strong contested mark with his left arm at near range and calmly slotted the captain’s goal. Mason Wood floated across bodies at near range (Max Hall inside 50) and went back for a sure finish. Sharman’s second for the quarter: a strong overhead mark on the arc, the wheel-around and blast from 50. Snags took a (what was most likely touched) mark from a sharp Nas entry and was dumped, got the 50-metre penalty, and motored all the way into goal.
Five points.
Melbourne forced the ball forward. A rushed behind put things in hard mode, then Oliver got the fortunate bounce but couldn’t score at all to put the margin beyond one goal.
Six points.
And then, one minute and three seconds of play that may have changed the course of the St Kilda Football Club.
A centre wing throw-in, Windhager got his hands on the ball and handed to Mason Wood, who took the space and launched long into the forward line, to an airborne Nas, rising between Fritsch and McVee, and reaching, reaching, reaching and taking the ball at full height in front of the members. He quickly rose to his feet and turned his back on everything (goddamn took his time about it btw), and on a near 45-degree angle, so, so calmly nailed the set shot (straight through). Alister Nicholson used up all his good lines because it was scores level – sort-of close enough to match-defining – and there was only eight seconds of play left, so not enough time left for anything else to happen. Either side of the kick he pulled out a stilted “he is utterly unbelievable” and then yelled “Nasiah, the Messiah”.
By this time we had come back out into the crowd proper and into the seats (but it was hard to sit down). The noises of celebration for Nas’s goal quickly turned to murmuring about how much time there was left, and then for the quirks and quarks whirring around in the middle of the ground: the comical, calamitous happenstance of Melbourne giving up a free kick for a second 6-6-6 infringement, and the entire ground running into St Kilda’s forward line only to be told to reset for play to proceed, and having to run all the way back.
Nas, at the centre circle, took control of the moment.
He quietly, quickly hatched a plan with Rowan Marshall and told one-third of the field to move over and get out of his way once play restarted. The free kick was formally given, Nas was off, and Marshall perfectly executed a pass just inside 50 to the space where Nas had sprinted – the space that had been left open as one-third of the field followed his orders and moved to the left.
The single frame of Nas taking what was a very, very, very good mark going back into the unknown perhaps encapsulates more about the game, about the moment and about Nas more so than the frame capturing his incredible leap just a few moments earlier.
Ross was laughing in the box. The siren sounded. Any score was needed to pull off the greatest three-quarter time comeback in the history of the VFL/AFL football.
From 48 metres Nas so, so calmly, calmly, calmly kicked the goal of his life.
An entire St Kilda team, in the candy stripe with black shorts, celebrating as one in front of the members, jumping up and down, to the sounds of The Fable Singers.
***
The football world celebrated St Kilda through the deeds of Nas.
“He established himself as a St Kilda legend today” said Roo, who had gone full nuffie in the Channel 7 commentary box in the final minute of the game. (Never mind the new rights agreement set-up allowing Fox to have their own coverage for Channel 7 games: the Channel 7 broadcast is the definitive historical document of what transpired. Jason Bennett signalling to the commentary box to remain silent after the siren, let The Fable Singers play and let the broadcast breathe was brilliant.)
The 7 account posted a large graphic that night simply declaring, “Him.”
The deeds dominated the front and back pages of the Herald Sun: “the 55 second fuck it plan now etched in footy folklore”. “What Nasiah did may be the greatest minute of football ever played in terms of clutch ability,” Kane said. The Age broke down the entire last quarter. “Let him write his own cheque,” Nick said. Nas got three votes in the GVP. AFL360 went all out with a fantastic montage and discussion leading the Monday night edition. Nas got the 10 Coaches votes. THE YOUNG MAN DID NOT GET THE THREE BROWNLOW VOTES. HE DID NOT GET THREE BROWNLOW VOTES. He won a Lexus from Footy Classified for individual performance of the year. Nas had told Seven after the game he just told the forwards to get out of his way. “He’s got that dog in him,” Joey said. “We knew he had the talent, but I think we’ve now seen the development that he wants to be ‘the man’ – that special X-factor and quality that all the champions have in them”. Nas was “surging” up the ranks of the Herald Sun’s Brownlow predictor. Nas was in Mick’s Multi. On the way in to the game, arriving at Southern Cross Matt’s train driver had fortuitously signed off with “Good luck to the Saints fans. Hope Nas re-signs cause we are effed without him”. Some – specifically, Dan – would fantastically tell you Nas was the chosen one; the chosen one to break the curse over this cursed club in this cursed timeline.
And all of this over a dead rubber.
This game was categorically a dead rubber, featuring one has-been and one might-not-ever-be-in-the-first-place. It was a glimpse of what the Saints could become, maybe. All the best of what we’d seen since Ross came back, all that had made us believe there was talent on this list and good foundations in place across the club that could make it successful, that could make it challenge for that second premiership, packaged and presented in 32 minutes and 41 seconds. The 2025 season didn’t need to have a moment like that. Footy doesn’t work that way. Sometimes a season is just generally fucking humdrum. Up until then, the season’s signature moment was set to be the loss to West Coast. Nas’s heroics – and the support in that last quarter from Hall (again, quietly: he’d had the most goal assists by a Saint in eight years), Hastie, Wood, Windhager and Sharman – made for a generational night in which you’re just scrolling your way through it all on Twitter and replying to messages from and sending messages to people across a bunch of different platforms and you’re still getting back to all the messages the next day and maybe the day after. It meant nothing, this game. Maybe a swap of who gets what pick in a heavily compromised and weak draft, and we were keen to give up whatever that was anyway for a certain Gold Coast midfielder anyway.
But this is now part of St Kilda folklore. As the Herald Sun said, this is now part of footy folklore. It belongs to the game as a whole.
St Kilda saw itself differently. We saw St Kilda differently. The football world saw St Kilda differently. St Kilda – in the candy stripe, with black shorts! – were winners. St Kilda was capable of doing something that had never happened before. St Kilda, once the owners of the very unwanted record for biggest lead ever given up, now claimed ownership of the greatest three-quarter time comeback. St Kilda had the most electric player in the game. Fuck it, in that minute of football, St Kilda maybe had the best player in the game. For a few days, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and this team did what hadn’t been done for 15 years – St Kilda was fashionable.
This was something real you can daydream about. Something that brings you into the now and makes you look forward, rather than lose more time to thinking about alternate endings to the 2009 and 2010 Grand Finals. Is it healing? Is it something to open the portal and take you into a better timeline?
I had the crowd noise of those final plays ringing in my ears all the way home on the 58. I got into the house and as I immediately tried to find the words to explain to Gracie what the hell had just happened, she told me Ralph was okay. He was absolutely fine – the lump on the roof of his mouth was just an incisive papilla, a very naturally occurring part of the canine anatomy (and yes, we’ve had it checked out since to be sure!). I had had the thought of losing my best friend whirring in my head all day. My entire head had been whirring all day. All day.
We watched the last quarter. I took in everything I could on the timeline, I sent messages and received messages and sent replies. I went to sleep with Folk Bitch Trio’s new album-closing lullaby “Mary’s Playing the Harp” in my ears. Ivy’s first win. Ralph was ok. And next time you go to the footy and watch St Kilda, something – something great – might happen.
***
Nas was dancing atop Ross’s shoulders at Hotel Brighton for fuck’s sake. He had become the player to build a generation around, in a game to build a generation from. “This is now his team,” Hutchy said. “Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera is the hottest name in football right now” said Tom Morris. Nas was being talked about in the same air as fellow 2021 super draft draftees Nick Daicos and Sam Darcy, and then just generally as a top-five player in the game. “Inside 2025’s hottest trade race” Fox Footy beckoned readers. He was “King Nasiah”, he was the Messiah. Who’s Messiah was he, exactly? “I wonder if he sees the legend he could be at this club and think ‘I can’t leave now’,” Kane surmised. “How beloved he is, could he leave now? Why would he go to Port? I hope he stays.” Emlyn Breese, in their eulogy for the tenure of Simon Goodwin, wrote, “Nick Riewoldt provides commentary as Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera annoints himself as the heir to St Nick in the St Kilda mythos with two last quarter goals”. He was, in that moment, the next in line at Moorabbin.
But we needed him to, you know, actually sign a contract with the St Kilda Football Club.
***
St Kilda has had some great wins in games when finals were out of reach, or simply not realistic. Plugger’s 11 goals in the 1994 comeback game against the Swans at the SCG perhaps had sat atop that pantheon; with bottom-of-the-ladder St Kilda’s 56-point demolition of top-of-the-ladder Carlton in Round 9 of 1995 – keeping the Blues goalless until well into the third quarter, and to the lowest score of the entire season – probably next (knocking off both second-place Geelong and then second-place Richmond two weeks later in Rounds 15 and 17 respectively weren’t bad). There is also the Barry Hall after-the-siren win in the last game of 2001 over the Hawks (a very underrated comeback in its own right), which formalised the union of GT and the Riewoldt generation. A stirring win in Robert Harvey’s 350th against the high-flying Eagles at Subiaco in 2007, on the back of a four-game losing streak was a remarkable way to pay tribute to one of the club’s greatest. Honourable mentions go to the final round of 2013, when Grand Final-bound Freo Ross rested everyone the Saints farewelled Kosi, Milne and Blake with a 71-point win, the 18th-topping-second trouncing of Freo a year later, the 2016 three-point win over ladder leaders Geelong, last year’s wins over the ladder-leading Swans and the parting gift of 2024, Snags’ hooking, hooking winner (also in the candy stripe) in the final seconds of the season.
We won’t know until we know, but this might be the best – and most consequential – of the lot.
***
St Kilda reverted to being a frowned-upon club by…winning four games in a row.
For three quarters against Melbourne, and for most of all of the quarters against North Melbourne, Richmond and Essendon, the Saints Footy of the Boring ‘20s was back.
Only the clock running out saved our blushes in the spluttering win against North (in front of just short of 32,000 people – Nas was worth 10,000 on the week before). Max Hall’s goal after the final siren from a 50-metre penalty was our only goal of the last quarter. Another (very) dead rubber, but a percentage of the football world’s attention was on St Kilda. And we needed to prove to ourselves that what happened the week before wasn’t a total one-off, an incredible sequence of freak occurrences contained entirely to that quarter of footy. That what happened the week before meant something. That it did mean a shift. It was important we won all of those four games. It minted a vibe shift on the field, it minted a vibe shift off the field as noise about TDK and Liam Ryan and Leek Aleer wanting to come to the Saints became louder.
“The Saints won the match but football lost a bit of its soul,” said a dismayed Gerard Healy after the win the following week over the Tigers. Not one team had challenged the opposition less with direct footy in a game as the Saints had in the MCG Saturday afternoon scrap, Hoyney said. Short, non-threatening kicks to the left, short, non-threatening kicks to the right, anywhere and everywhere but somewhere dangerous. Just eight goals to seven for the entire game. A Ross 1.0-type slog. On the day that Jack Steele played his 200th game, Cal Wilkie shored up his numbers to be the next captain.
And then shit kind of hit the fan?
Originally, it was via Michelangelo Rucci doing Port Adelaide’s bidding for Nas, saying on SEN SA that Cal Wilkie wanted out of the Saints, TDK’s mega-offer was shunting out Rowan Marshall, and Windhager and Steele were looking elsewhere. Then Sam Edmund took over The Agenda Setters set and declared Wilkie “disillusioned” with the list management of the football club. “The easiest way to get Nas out of that football club is [playing] football like that,” Luke Hodge offered. People were back on Ross’s case: “How he has gotten away with this, and how all the Saints fans and the mafia are buying into this and drinking the Kool Aid is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Kane said. “I thought he let his club and his fans down today,” he said after Ross cracked the shits with journos who had in the mid-week presser asked about player movement rather than anything to do with the on-field business.
We sought reassurance and the inside running from our St Kilda fanbase general The Saint. When your on-field season’s done by the end of May, apparently the fate of an entire rebuild could be played out through misinformation carefully placed by SEN SA and the cursed everything app timeline as much as on the field. Stavr04 could also reliably provide some lucidity.
St Kilda was out of fashion again. St Kilda was on the nose. Andy and JJ asked Saints fans what they wanted to see from the comedically scheduled Friday night game against the Bombers. JJ suggested it shouldn’t be bothered being played. “they should just cancel it tbh” Matt texted me. GA tickets were $7 under dynamic pricing. Gerard opened his show with a monologue about the precariousness of St Kilda’s list position. Hodgey then ran the ruler over the list. Nas still hadn’t signed. The Midday Madness chat on the Friday turned to Brownlow medallists who had left their club immediately after (Graeme Moss left Essendon for Claremont at the end of 1976, but no one had leapt to a rival club in the VFL/AFL in the same year). Gerard Healy said he’d gone from 98% sure Nas was staying to 60% in the space of an hour. “The pressure is clearly mounting,” Damo said. Mark Bickley wondered if the week would have a galvanising effect.
Not quite. On the Friday night, St Kilda stumbled to a two-point win over a lowly, wounded Essendon, in a game that came all the way down to Mason Redman’s long drive just fading to the left. Ross had been feeling good enough about things before the game to post on Twitter for the second time in 10 years. St Kilda had now won four in a row, by six, nine, four and two points. But everyone was fretting over Nas’s choice of words – specifically referring to St Kilda as “this club” – on 7 in the post-match. Bad vibes or maybe he’s just not that polished a media performer? He’d provided what was probably the sole highlight of the match – a centre bounce takeaway that turned into two bounces over a sprint and a goal from 50 – and there was now simply nothing else to talk about. Mitch Cleary was barracking for the story. The Espy was barracking for Nas to stay. From fifth in the Trevor Barker to top five in the competition, Joey reckoned. Tony Shaw suggested, “If they lose him now, it will go down in history as one of the worst things to have ever happened in the history of that club.”
***
For St Kilda supporters, Mondays in mid-August have become something of a day of reflection. The final round of the season beckons, and it’s time to think about the year that was. Barring just two years since 2011 (the end of Ross 1.0), St Kilda’s season has been done by that final round.
On an early afternoon in mid-August, it happened.
Just after 1pm. Perhaps the most important off-field moment of this generation of Saints happened at just after 1pm on a Monday in mid-August. One of those dry, matter-of-fact AFL app push notifications simply stating that Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera had made a decision on his contract. Cal Twomey was the journo who broke it, a day after Will Poulter suggested Adelaide was the front-runner, six days after SEN suggested a significant fallout was threatening a mass St Kilda exodus.
Two years.
Nas had signed for two years.
A reprieve.
See you all soon for another dance, really.
The St Kilda membership site crashed after the club made available a special Nas-themed membership for 2026. The Espy hosted a party – 6pm at the public bar for anyone who really wanted to make something of their Monday night.
By Ross’s own effective admission, this was the most important day of St Kilda’s year. “Catastrophic”, he told The Agenda Setters, would have been the result of Nas leaving, and the rebuild would need to have been recalibrated around his departure.
Fuckin’ hell.
There was another vibe shift for the Saints in 2025. Another day of something going our way. And not just that – not just some fluke. The club had drafted and developed this player and built an environment in which he wanted to stay (however briefly). Ross told The Agenda Setters, “We’re not a club that’s going to be walked over.” “Nas deal proves the gloves are off for unapologetic Saints,” the Herald Sun trumpeted. Andrew Bassat told News: “There is no risk-free way to win a flag and there is no way to win a flag without offending people.”
“If we are going to die, we are going to die with our boots on and not be scared to have a go. That is what we are about as a football club.”
It was a day for Nas, the quietly-spoken smooth mover, to be narrating pump-up videos (unconvincingly and awkwardly and modestly). “I felt like I had unfinished business at the Saints,” he said on accepting an All-Australian blazer a month later. The club itself called him the Messiah. Eddie said his signature saved the season. No journos bothered turning up to Ross’s Friday press conference (literally).
People were happy for St Kilda again.
But it’s only two years. All the while, St Kilda was coaxing chronically injured Jack Silvagnis and possibly-past-their-best Liam Ryans to Moorabbin in the hope of going up the ladder ASAP to entice Nas for a longer stay, perhaps at the expense of putting in the sturdier building blocks for sustained success. This is the stuff that got me worried. Are we fast-tracking a rebuild after one freak quarter of footy and three tepid wins against bottom-four teams? We need, like, four or five guys that are Nas-tier. Not just one. Do we have those guys on our list? We have one (Nas, obviously). Do we have the guys who will become that tier of player on our list right now? Right now, we’re building an accelerated tilt around one person who can quite easily, quite soon create a “catastrophic” – Ross’s term – outcome purely for the very possible and very understandable wish of wanting to be closer to family, friends and home.
Then the fuck what?
***
All that was left of the season proper was for Darcy Wilson to kick five goals and have 23 disposals in a gutsy 11-point loss to GWS. It wasn’t quite the jubilant trip down Champs-Élysées on the final day of the Tour, but Darcy made a welcome jump back onto the world line we thought he’d be on through 2025, which had turned out to be a real second-year blues escapade. Nas cramped in the last quarter and it looked like he’d done his knee and my god, the beer garden at the Victoria Hotel was a tense, bordering-on-sad place to be for a few moments. I’d even worn my HoMie jumper and dressed up Ivy in Mama’s outfit to celebrate the end of the season.
SPRING / SUN / WINTER / DREAD
“St Kilda fallout explodes,” boomed Channel 7.
Rowan Marshall had spoken with the Cats, it was reported in early September. Maybe this exodus from Moorabbin could materialise, maybe clickbait rules the world.
A whole year’s worth of scuttlebutt and rumour and daily episodes of Gettable and breathless non-stories on the Tuesday night editions of The Agenda Setters and voyeuristic tweets and BigFooty posts and the Magpies cheer squad singing the Saints song at a Collingwood-Carlton game converged on the Friday following the Grand Final.
All on the same day, our list manager’s son joined the club; so did Ross’s Dan Does Footy couch buddy TDK; Ro formally requested a trade to the Cats and our captain was told to welcome opportunities elsewhere. St Kilda had brought “absolute spice” to the trade period, supposedly. Gubby Allan touted that the club had “plenty of money” and “we’ll go hunting again next year”. Kane said we were relevant again, Scott Lucas compared us to the famous North Melbourne raids of the 1970s when the 10-year rule was briefly in play. There was no short supply of media coverage and analysis of what the club was doing, or trying to do, or might be at risk of doing (there still isn’t). Gubby said it again: this all wouldn’t have been happening without Nas re-signing.
Sam Flanders, who can only be associated with one cultural reference forever, joined the midfield after being wined and dined at Scopri, with Marcus Windhager elevated to Pitch Dinner Attendee Guy as he himself signed a four-year deal. The club is confident enough to back its coaches and its systems to be able to pry out the best of a player’s previous form and more, and Flanders had an excellent 2024. Injuries kept him behind an A-list midfield in 2025, and he gets the chance to become an A-lister himself. Now, Kane liked the look of our midfield. Josh Jenkins said the Saints should get more prime-time slots. Ed Bourke suggested that if Max King was in 2022 shape we could give the top four a crack. News of a backflip on Leek Aleer did momentarily bring back scorn for St Kilda; it was briefly on-trend to dunk on the Saints again and Josh Jenkins was again having a great time.
“Recruiting aggressively as we have, no doubt involves a degree of risk … (but) there is no risk-free way to a flag and indeed, doing nothing is the greatest risk of all,” Bassat said at the Trevor Barker.
Ro’s talks with the Cats gradually broke down. Wilkie went as far as meeting with St Kilda’s former momentary director of coaching Luke Beveridge, but he stayed, too, and for all intents and purposes is the next captain of the St Kilda Football Club.
Because Jack Steele, firstly, relinquished the captaincy, and then was traded.
I’ll just put here what I tweeted on the day of his 200th (lol, definitive):
For some people of a certain generation, like Scar, he was their captain, their peer on the ground in red, white and black. He is who they saw carry the team when they were old enough to properly appreciate them, but still young enough to be looking up to them. He is who they saw carry the team at the peak of a failed rebuild (perhaps the darkest of all times). Mildly mannered (except when it came to tackling opposition players) and good for the occasional strong mark inside 50 and captain’s goal (see the Miracle at Concrete Dome), he was once the subject of a rumour that Ross Lyon told him on his return to the club he was an “8 out of 10 captain”. I believe that all St Kilda players have been playing in a space that is in the shadow of those who made up the Riewoldt generation, and none more so than the captain. Jarryn Geary was given an impossible task of taking the reins from Nick, and Jack Steele was handed the culmination of the Road to 2018 (derogatory) and was perhaps a little reluctant to take this whole business on in the first place, but he gave it a 10 out of 10 shot.
***
Author of The Bubble David Misson left the club and Ross basically took over the whole thing, as he unofficially may well have months (years?) ago. Hugo Garcia was used as a “plays like” reference on draft night(s), which came and went with Kye Fincher levels of fanfare after the first round pick was traded for Sam Flanders. St Kilda has its own VFL team now. Meanwhile, the candy stripe was promoted to being the clash jumper for 2026. In the club’s stated supposed attempt to honour the 1966 jumper in the 60th anniversary year of the premiership, the club introduced black cuffs to go with a white collar on the home jumper, but by taking out the traditional black box (the most distinctive part of the ‘66 jumper) they’ve literally just made the jumper worn for a small part of 1995.
***
At the end of the trade period, Kane stated: “If I am a Saints fan I have got hope.”
Expectations for 2026 are high, from some anyway. The club went from 12 losses in 14 games to aiming for 85,000-plus for a home game in Opening Round and a non-zero number of pundits have floated the possibility of top four. (The fixture in its entirety wasn’t quite box office, but it included one more home game with hopes for 85,000-plus than it usually does. A crowd of that size would smash St Kilda’s own record for a home crowd in a home-and-away game in its by-then 153-year history.)
I have to ask again: Was this all based around one lightning strike in July? It couldn’t have been based on the three meandering wins in the following three weeks, right? I don’t know if now is the time to go full top-up. There are some echoes of the 2000 recruitment spree that netted Gehrig and Hamill (as well as Capuano and Callaghan and Stephen Lawrence), which brought a great mix of experience and youth, but that was really built around the picks 1 and 2 national draft punch of Roo and Kosi. And there is no dual Coleman-medal winner in this lot of recruits. Perhaps because maybe he’s already on the list. He’s just kinda injured forever, though.
SUMMER
Summer is for pre-season training shots of the fellas looking fit. Summer is for The Age leading the entire online publication with Jake Niall’s look at St Kilda’s finances. “Saints said they wanted to get off ‘welfare’ but accepted extra AFL cash,” the headline thundered. The story went up quite some time after the annual report had actually been released, and The Saint was there to straighten some things out.
Summer is for the consitutional path to be cleared for Andrew Bassat to have his tenure as President extended. Summer, like all seasons, is for Max King to have more knee surgery. “Expected to be back in full training in January,” oh yeah sure. Summer is also for the nation this is all taking place in to feel like it’s coming apart at the seams.
***
“We’re 14 shows down
Got 10 more to go.
Ten more to go.”
– Folk Bitch Trio, “Mary’s Playing the Harp”
Fourteen years since Ross left, and we’re still waiting for our next great period. St Kilda fans use the words “great” relatively; only the Jeans era delivered a premiership. Fourteen years since that first Ross era came to an unceremonious and infamous close. A watch of the 2010 Season Highlights DVD with Matt on the eve of the Miracle at Marvel over a few drinks brought back peak Ross memories and feels, not that they’re ever far away: how often do you replay the final moments of the 2010 Grand Final, but with small changes that make it go our way? Small changes that mean an entire different existence as a St Kilda supporter; that mean the entire world?
We all need to “take the emotional risk to give everything without any guarantee”. We all need “a cause to die for”. It’s well past time for this club to step out of the shadows of the Riewoldt generation. It’s time for the supporters of this club to have something to move on to. Something else to believe in. The club is unapologetically making a move. The club is telling us that the somnambulistic winters of 2024 and 2025 were the darkest moments to be endured before the dawn. Is this actually the dawn, or have Ross and SOS and Gubby and Bassat just stormed into this padded cell and slammed the surgical lighting on?
We’re learning, trying, wanting to trust a new team. Commitment to St Kilda can be scary! There’s a King who can’t get on the park and there’s a baby GOAT who can’t get on the park and there’s some new guy coming off a sub-standard year who we’re paying nearly more than anyone in the history of Australian rules football, and another guy who’s really awesome but might not be here for that long (and who we’re paying more than anyone in the history of Australian rules football). The Nas deal was “the most significant signing since Baldock” in 1962, but let’s face it – he’s signed for two years. We’ll be doing the dance all over again before we know it, all the clickbait and the speculation-as-fact and maybe just outright lies-as-fact in articles and tweets and SEN SA dross, and this club had better sort its shit out in the meantime if it wants to get through the audition.
Again, the specific term Ross used was “catastrophic”. If the club savages this attempt to challenge, that 60-year premiership drought could easily become 70.
***
Melbourne ran a festival of unseasonable late-autumn sunshine. I was sitting in the car on Toorak Road in South Yarra with Mum on the way to Mother’s Day lunch at Mama’s. A quite pregnant Gracie had run in to Mecca to grab some Le Labo Rose 31 Eau de Parfum courtesy of a voucher. St Kilda had played Carlton at the MCG on the Friday night. Mum is always across the Saints and watches them most weeks, but that was the first game Mum had actually been to since we’d sat next to each other in Round 2 of 2016 watching Nick Riewoldt run out for his 300th.
The St Kilda world had been up and about following the stunning takedown of Freo the previous week. “What will my Mum think of Saints Footy in 2025?!” I wondered. I’d excitedly told her to look out for Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and Mattaes Phillipou. But it ended up being a dirty night on the big stage. Simple mistakes – balls slipping through fingers and into faces, balls kicked weirdly into open spaces, balls kicked directly into nearby opponents – let to an ugly loss to an unfancied opposition. Losing in front of your home crowd. Another Saints season was on the brink of failure.
While Gracie was in Mecca on that Sunday, I was getting Mum’s take on all things St Kilda. Friday hadn’t been a good showcase of anything, really. She wasn’t overly thrilled.
I, a grown man about to turn 37, childishly asked her, “What’s it like watching the Saints without Nick Riewoldt?”
“It’s not the same, darling,” she said.
“It never will be.”
We live, we sometimes get sick and we always, somehow … recover. One day we will die.
We dare only to dream that next year will be the one. The one that ushers in another few years of sensational, media wide incredulation and fan madness as the lid comes off. Truly, totally, off its freaking head.
Melbourne will be a nicer place when that 2nd cup arrives, and maybe … just maybe … it isn’t far away. Until then, as New Years Eve unfolds … there’s always next year.
Incredible. Well done pulling this together.