Persevering Saint
10 Jul 2008, 10:13
Big wheels' deals insulting to a patron Saint
Trevor Grant | July 08, 2008 12:00am
MY mate Herb has suffered a few afflictions through life's unrelenting journey, the most serious of which has been his 50-year relationship with the Saints.
A bung hip, emphysema, the punt and retrenchment are nothing to him when compared with the price he has had to pay for having St Kilda imprinted on his forehead at birth.
He has only vague childhood memories of the club's lone flag, in 1966, so his known life in football has been a saga of unfulfilled promise and the occasional despairing struggle for survival.
Yet, like so many of his ilk who have carried their burden so stoically, he has never lost hope in the cause, even as the economic gap between so many Melbourne clubs and the cash-rich interstate outfits grew into a scary black chasm.
He was there back in the 1990s rattling tins at Moorabbin when the club was dangerously close to bankruptcy.
He watched friends mourn the death of their club Fitzroy as they would a family member.
The experience taught him not to take his footy club for granted.
He listened to those club officials who constantly made the point that every dollar, and every membership, was critical to the cause and, even though it stretched the budget a bit, he made it his business to sign up all six members of the family, including the dog under an assumed name.
It might have been hard work convincing the wife that it was more important than the new washing machine he had been promising for months, but he always knew he was doing the right thing, even if the laundry flooded every washing day.
Nothing could shake his belief that his club needed his dollars, and if it meant things cooled in the bedroom for a while, then so be it.
Nothing, that is, until he read about the recent court case, in which former coach Grant Thomas sued the club for refusing to pay him out fully after sacking him in 2006.
Herb couldn't quite equate the happenings in the County Court with the footy club he knew and loved.
It was as if there were two different clubs: the one he knew eked out an existence in the unforgiving battle between the rich and poor and another in the hands of people who were so cavalier with money that they were willing to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to change the coach before the end of his contract.
The figures mentioned in court were simply mindblowing to a $40,000-a-year council worker like Herb.
St Kilda paid out Thomas $270,000, which was half of his yearly salary due on the contract.
Then, they offered him $100,000 not to bag the club in public but withheld it. He sued for this money, and $90,000 in unpaid leave.
Thus by the time the County Court had found for Thomas last week, the Saints had paid out $500,000 to rid themselves of him one year early.
Which means, including the salary to his replacement Ross Lyon, the club effectively spent about $1 million on the senior coaching role in one year.
Herb worked out that the $500,000 spent on despatching Thomas accounted for the hard-earned contributions of almost 3000 members.
So much, he thought, for every dollar counting.
He wondered if this was the way these big shots operated in the corporate world.
But even he could work out that these men would be as broke as him if they conducted their business affairs with such disregard for the bottom line.
He suspected that club officials who live in $11 million homes struggle to understand what it's like to have to save up for months to buy the family membership tickets. Now he knows it.
He also knows that long after these people and their money have come and gone, he will still be there, conning the missus out of a new vital household appliance so he can renew those memberships.
Trevor Grant | July 08, 2008 12:00am
MY mate Herb has suffered a few afflictions through life's unrelenting journey, the most serious of which has been his 50-year relationship with the Saints.
A bung hip, emphysema, the punt and retrenchment are nothing to him when compared with the price he has had to pay for having St Kilda imprinted on his forehead at birth.
He has only vague childhood memories of the club's lone flag, in 1966, so his known life in football has been a saga of unfulfilled promise and the occasional despairing struggle for survival.
Yet, like so many of his ilk who have carried their burden so stoically, he has never lost hope in the cause, even as the economic gap between so many Melbourne clubs and the cash-rich interstate outfits grew into a scary black chasm.
He was there back in the 1990s rattling tins at Moorabbin when the club was dangerously close to bankruptcy.
He watched friends mourn the death of their club Fitzroy as they would a family member.
The experience taught him not to take his footy club for granted.
He listened to those club officials who constantly made the point that every dollar, and every membership, was critical to the cause and, even though it stretched the budget a bit, he made it his business to sign up all six members of the family, including the dog under an assumed name.
It might have been hard work convincing the wife that it was more important than the new washing machine he had been promising for months, but he always knew he was doing the right thing, even if the laundry flooded every washing day.
Nothing could shake his belief that his club needed his dollars, and if it meant things cooled in the bedroom for a while, then so be it.
Nothing, that is, until he read about the recent court case, in which former coach Grant Thomas sued the club for refusing to pay him out fully after sacking him in 2006.
Herb couldn't quite equate the happenings in the County Court with the footy club he knew and loved.
It was as if there were two different clubs: the one he knew eked out an existence in the unforgiving battle between the rich and poor and another in the hands of people who were so cavalier with money that they were willing to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to change the coach before the end of his contract.
The figures mentioned in court were simply mindblowing to a $40,000-a-year council worker like Herb.
St Kilda paid out Thomas $270,000, which was half of his yearly salary due on the contract.
Then, they offered him $100,000 not to bag the club in public but withheld it. He sued for this money, and $90,000 in unpaid leave.
Thus by the time the County Court had found for Thomas last week, the Saints had paid out $500,000 to rid themselves of him one year early.
Which means, including the salary to his replacement Ross Lyon, the club effectively spent about $1 million on the senior coaching role in one year.
Herb worked out that the $500,000 spent on despatching Thomas accounted for the hard-earned contributions of almost 3000 members.
So much, he thought, for every dollar counting.
He wondered if this was the way these big shots operated in the corporate world.
But even he could work out that these men would be as broke as him if they conducted their business affairs with such disregard for the bottom line.
He suspected that club officials who live in $11 million homes struggle to understand what it's like to have to save up for months to buy the family membership tickets. Now he knows it.
He also knows that long after these people and their money have come and gone, he will still be there, conning the missus out of a new vital household appliance so he can renew those memberships.