Opinion As a newer fan what do I need to know about the Saints

[Pakenhamsaint]

.

This kinda leads into another question I had. Is there any Saints focused media? Like over here all the teams will have local radio that has game broadcasts and post game call in shows and what not, and of course local papers will report on the local team. I'm just not sure if the same would be true of the AFL with so many teams based in the Melbourne Metro area.

8 out of 18 teams are based in Melbourne and one is based in Geelong(About 75km from Melbourne) Everything when it comes to footy is generic because of how crowded the market is.

Basically Melbourne runs off football and as the great Mike Brady once sang "football' such a part of this whole town"

Radio wise 3AW, Triple M, SEN, ABC and KRock in Geelong all broadcast the football.

SEN is only the pure sports radio station and does pre and post game talkback.
Perhaps the most famous call from SEN is Richmond supporter Mario from Doncaster who famously microwaved his membership:

 

[Satanic Saint]

Haha if you are ever interested hockey is a great sport to watch, and we will always take another Sens fan.

LOL my knowledge of hockey comes from watching The Mighty Ducks, Slap Shot and playing Blades of Steel on original Nintendo but I'll keep an eye out on ESPN for any Senators games. I did go to a game a few years ago in NYC I saw Long Island v NJ Devils. It was fun to watch and the crowd was hyped. What is the origin of the Senator nickname? A politician?

 

[George]

St Kilda Senators after we are done with this thread;

 

[ScrappyDo]

Haha if you are ever interested hockey is a great sport to watch, and we will always take another Sens fan.

I played for 12 years as a young'n and recently broke my leg in an old age comeback attempt.
*ing love it!
Still my favourite sport to this day.

 

[St Kilda Senators]

LOL my knowledge of hockey comes from watching The Mighty Ducks, Slap Shot and playing Blades of Steel on original Nintendo but I'll keep an eye out on ESPN for any Senators games. I did go to a game a few years ago in NYC I saw Long Island v NJ Devils. It was fun to watch and the crowd was hyped. What is the origin of the Senator nickname? A politician?

The name just comes from Ottawa being the capital of Canada as far as I know. The original team folded in the early 30's due to rising costs from US expansion and the great depression lower revenue. In the 90s there was a group bidding for an expansion team that ran a "Bring back the Senators" campaign. Hopefully you can find us on ESPN, though I doubt they have any interest in showing Ottawa lol.

 

[pebblesofsand]

The name just comes from Ottawa being the capital of Canada as far as I know. The original team folded in the early 30's due to rising costs from US expansion and the great depression lower revenue. In the 90s there was a group bidding for an expansion team that ran a "Bring back the Senators" campaign. Hopefully you can find us on ESPN, though I doubt they have any interest in showing Ottawa lol.

Morning - just looked at the playing schedule for the Senators - 50+ games in 4 1/2 months with usually 2 or 3 days between games!!!!

So how many players are on a playing roster, how many subs and whats the normal injury list length?

I think we had 9 out 42 (20+%) out injured before the season started.

 

[St Kilda Senators]

Morning - just looked at the playing schedule for the Senators - 50+ games in 4 1/2 months with usually 2 or 3 days between games!!!!

So how many players are on a playing roster, how many subs and whats the normal injury list length?

I think we had 9 out 42 (20+%) out injured before the season started.

This season is very much an anomaly due to Covid. Normally there are 82 games in the season over 6 months and then 4 playoff rounds of best of 7 series over 2 months. Since Covid pushed back the end of last season this season started late, and was shortened to 56 games. The playoffs will be ending a bit later than normal, but in order to start next year on a normal schedule the schedule is more condensed this year and teams are getting less rest than normal. The schedule has also had to change on the fly this year and get games postponed due to Covid (we had games postponed this week because we were supposed to play Montreal, and they had some players with Covid).

A roster size is 23, although for a game you can only dress 20 for a game (2 of which are goalies). Subs aren't really a thing in hockey. Everyone plays and changes happen on the fly and frequently. Some of the best defenceman might play 30 minutes a game (out of a total of 60, or up to 65 with regular season overtime) and that is seen as playing a lot. Typical shifts last about 30 seconds before you go for a change.

Injuries do occur throughout the year for every team. I tried searching for an average, but couldn't find the data I was looking for. Injuries can also very in length quite a bit. You could see a guy miss one game or a whole season or anywhere in between. I'd say in a typical year you might expect 5-10 injuries per year with the average length being a week or two, but I'd like to find some data for a more definitive number. For reference this year the Senators have had 29 skaters play at least a game, I'd say this is above average for this time of year, but is due more to trades and roster movement than injuries. Where we have been unlucky with injuries is in net where we have had 5 goalies with playing time. If you do get injuries throughout the season you get to call up players from the AHL (minor league) to fill the gaps.

 

[NYIStKSean]

Hi all.

You may have seen my posts in some of the other threads, but if you haven't I'm a newer fan from Canada in my second year following the team and AFL.

I just posted this thread to get a better understanding of St Kilda history/culture. If there is anything you think it is important for a Saints fan to know I'd love to here it as my knowledge of our history is basically limited to lots of wooden spoons and one premiership.

Giddyup! Love to see fellow Canadian fans.

 

[dct66]

Welcome St Kilda Senators!

Previous posters have given you a good background to some aspects of our fabulous history. Apologies if I repeat some things.

We were formed in 1873. Played in the Victorian Football Association (VFA) until the Victorian Football League (VFL) was formed by eight breakaway teams in 1897 (Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon, Fitzroy, Geelong, Melbourne, St Kilda, South Melbourne). By the time the VFL was formed we were playing our home games at the Junction Oval which is at the opposite end of Albert Park Lake to the Lakeside Oval where South Melbourne played their home games. Matches between the two clubs were called the Lakeside Premiership. South Melbourne were relocated to Sydney in 1982 and became the Sydney Swans. In recent years St Kilda & Sydney play an annual Pride Match.

In 1965 the Saints moved to Moorabbin and won our first Premiership in 1966.

The VFL gradually expanded to 12 teams all based in Victoria until South moved to Sydney. West Coast and Brisbane Bears joined in 1987 and the name was changed to the Australian Football League (AFL) in 1989. Adelaide joined in 1991 and Fremantle in 1995. The AFL celebrated their centenary in 1996 and midway through the season it was announced that Fitzroy would merge with the Brisbane Bears to form the Brisbane Lions. Primarily this was due to lack of financial and recent on-field success by Fitzroy. While there is not currently an appetite at AFL HQ to merge or relocate any other Victorian teams the topic does raise its ugly head regularly. Currently it is Tasmania looking for a team with North Melbourne in the sights of some as a relocation target much to the chagrin of North supporters and many football traditionalists. With our lack of success and relatively large debt St Kilda is not immune to this talk. Port Adelaide were admitted to the league in 1997 followed by Gold Coast (2011) and Greater Western Sydney (2012) to round out the current 18 team competition.

From 1993 to 1999 we played our home games at Waverley Park (currently Hawthorn's training base) and then played home games at Docklands (currently Marvel stadium) from 2000, the only AFL stadium with a closable roof. After a brief time using Seaford as our training base which I don't think anyone loved, we returned to Moorabbin (RSEA Park) as our training base a couple of years ago which I think everyone loves.

To sum up St Kilda, we lost our first 48 VFL games! This is the worst VFL/AFL losing streak except for University who lost 51 games straight from 1912 to 1914. University played in the VFL from 1908 to 1914. We won our first game in R1, 1900 against Melbourne. The game actually finished in a draw but we successfully argued that one of Melbourne's behinds was scored after the three-quarter time bell (I think) and we were awarded the win by 1 point. We promptly lost our next 27 games before beating Carlton 7.8.50 to 4.8.32 at the Junction Oval then lost another 23 games in a row. Of the seventeen 20+ game losing streaks in VFL/AFL history, St Kilda has five. Fitzroy, North Melbourne, South Melbourne/Sydney have two each. New teams Gold Coast and GWS have each had 21 game losing streaks soon after they joined the comp.

If you are interested in stats, match results or want to find out when a particular player played AFL Tables is a great site.

 

[pebblesofsand]

This season is very much an anomaly due to Covid. Normally there are 82 games in the season over 6 months and then 4 playoff rounds of best of 7 series over 2 months. Since Covid pushed back the end of last season this season started late, and was shortened to 56 games. The playoffs will be ending a bit later than normal, but in order to start next year on a normal schedule the schedule is more condensed this year and teams are getting less rest than normal. The schedule has also had to change on the fly this year and get games postponed due to Covid (we had games postponed this week because we were supposed to play Montreal, and they had some players with Covid).

A roster size is 23, although for a game you can only dress 20 for a game (2 of which are goalies). Subs aren't really a thing in hockey. Everyone plays and changes happen on the fly and frequently. Some of the best defenceman might play 30 minutes a game (out of a total of 60, or up to 65 with regular season overtime) and that is seen as playing a lot. Typical shifts last about 30 seconds before you go for a change.

Injuries do occur throughout the year for every team. I tried searching for an average, but couldn't find the data I was looking for. Injuries can also very in length quite a bit. You could see a guy miss one game or a whole season or anywhere in between. I'd say in a typical year you might expect 5-10 injuries per year with the average length being a week or two, but I'd like to find some data for a more definitive number. For reference this year the Senators have had 29 skaters play at least a game, I'd say this is above average for this time of year, but is due more to trades and roster movement than injuries. Where we have been unlucky with injuries is in net where we have had 5 goalies with playing time. If you do get injuries throughout the season you get to call up players from the AHL (minor league) to fill the gaps.

82 games in 6 months - jeez there would be no players left in the AFL by the end of the season if that was the schedule!!!

 

[St Kilda Death]

Get out while you still can.

 

[Munga]

Embrace disappointment, it's a good laugh

And thus, lesson one concludes. I hope you're paying attention St Kilda Senators

 

[Mikka84]

Where do I begin. There’s a book that probably sums up the club more than anything. Don’t ask me the name.. but it begins something like this:

In the beginning God created the heavens and Moorabbin. Now Moorabbin was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. ... God saw that the Saints were good, and he separated the Saints from the darkness. And God said, "Let there be Saints," and there were Saints.

A simple and humble beginning we had. And from that moment we never took more than we needed. We shared all of our wins and success with our friends. Premierships we did not need.

 

[LiterallyNobody]

Nice knowing you Senators.

 

[MUFKilda]

Nice knowing you Senators.

We did try to warn him.

 

[marcus1232]

Welcome to the life of being a saints supporter hahaha

 

[Mowman]

That this club will rip your heart out and p1ss on your soul

but you learn to enjoy it

 

[Tygrys]

Firstly apologies for the intrusion, but I've always been fascinated by St Kilda, living and working in your heartland all my life, knowing and being related to your fans by the bucketful so I thought I'd make a contribution. Anyhow I was just reading 'The Jack Dyer Story' (a 1996 biography of a long dead Richmond Great and media personality) and he had observations about the other Victorian clubs and this is what he had to say about St Kilda.

'The saints are the most disappointing club in the competition. They're had champions by the ton and won only one flag. Carl Ditterich, Allan Morrow, Darrel Baldock, Ian Stewart, Plugger Lockett, Neil Roberts, Verdun Howell...the big names are endless, yet they're won only one flag and that by a lucky point.
St Kilda are proof a squabbling club cannot win premierships. The history of the club is one of back-biting, strife and disagreement. A trail of coaching rows and feuding between committee men. A Couple of losses is all they need to stir up a fight and they have more post-mortems on a defeat than they have at the city morgue.
They've been dubbed The Oven. "They're always cooking somebody,' said a former champion, 'Generally the coach'.'

Again I intend no offence by posting this, but I guess St Kilda Senators is no doubt curious how a club could have so many champions and good supporter base, can yet have so little premiership success. Bad administration (as a Richmond supporter I know all too well) equals lack of success. And besides again I just read it. Also a couple of other things worth knowing, in the days when all clubs had suburban home grounds, you had one of the scariest with one standing room area actually being known as the 'Animal Enclosure'. And speaking of animals although you're known as the Saints (obviously) you have dabbled with other mascots for brief times, namely the panthers in the 40's and penguins in the 50's (neither obviously took off). Oh and getting back to your Moorabbin home ground again, the middle of it was notorious for being a mud heap, it was kind of a running joke that the whole of Melbourne could be in the grip of crippling drought, yet the middle of Moorabbin would remain somehow a muddy quagmire. The rumour was that ground staff would hose it in the middle of the night to try and enhance your home ground advantage Anyhow that's my lot, again apologies for the intrusion.

 

[Parkysp]

I was reading this article in The Atlantic and started changing every use of 'the Mets' to 'St Kilda FC'. They seem as gloriously f'd up as us so think it will give some understanding...

The Best Losers in America

Forget the Lions or the Clippers or even the Knicks. No team in all of American sports is better than the Mets at being the worst.

www.theatlantic.com

Here is a small part of it at the end...

In 1977, the Mets ran their best player in franchise history out of town in the dead of night, in what instantly became known as the Midnight Massacre. Then, six years later, after the franchise had changed leadership and he consented to a triumphant return, they did it to him again, only this time they ran him out of town by accident. Just this century alone, they wasted a home-run-robbing feat of epic athletic wonder—the best defensive play in playoff history—when their best hitter struck out on three straight pitches in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series, with the tying run on second base. Thirteen years later, the Mets hired that guy, the curveball watcher, to manage the team, and weeks later it turned out he was among the masterminds of baseball’s biggest cheating scandal since the 1919 Black Sox.

And then there are the injuries. My god, the injuries. And the illnesses, and the accidents. Mishaps that boggle the mind. It started right at the start: Gil Hodges got kidney stones at the honorary dinner after Old-Timers’ Day at the Polo Grounds in 1962, which is maybe not so shocking for an Old-Timers’ Day, except that Hodges was the Mets’ opening-day first baseman. In 1973, a year that ended with the Mets’ second World Series appearance in five seasons, four Mets were stretchered off the field in the span of a single month. In the fall of 1988, the Mets’ ace left-hander Bob Ojeda chopped off the top of his (left) middle finger with a pair of hedge clippers. Catcher Mackey Sasser, the franchise’s heir apparent to the aging World Series hero Gary Carter, discovered a brand-new strain of the yips, and within five seasons he was out of baseball. In late July 2006, a taxicab containing the Mets’ electric young reliever Duaner Sánchez was struck by a drunk driver, and Sánchez separated his throwing shoulder in the accident—only his throwing shoulder; he had no other serious injuries—and his velocity never recovered.

Chronically bad franchises tend to have far more of their identity bound up in their title droughts than they realize. Once the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016, their first title since 1908, they became what they’ve always been: the luxury-class franchise on the upscale side of a world-class city. The White Sox are the true Mets of Chicago, which is why there’s nothing lovable about the Cubs when they’re not losing.

The Mets will never have this problem. We will never shed our skin. We are the phoenix that rises from the ashes, only to light ourselves on fire and go right back to ashes again. No matter how good things get, we will always revert to our Metsy ways. Winning can’t cure this. In fact, the occasional bout of success is a key symptom of the pathology. This is a terminal condition, and we are blessed to be cursed with it forever.

This piece is adapted from Gordon’s book, So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets—The Best Worst Team in Sports

DEVIN GORDON is a writer based in New York City.

 

[#1_pigeonracer]

Don't put a jumper on Tommy Bents statue before the game.

After winning the 1966 Grand Final locals put a jumper on Tommy Bents statue. (W)

Before the 1997 Grand Final a St Kilda Jumper appeared on Tommy Bent (L)

Before the 2009 Grand Final a St Kilda Jumper appeared on Tommy Bent (L)

Before the 2010 Grand Final a Collingwood scarf appeared on Tommy Bent early in the week, before being torn down and replaced by a St Kilda Jumper (Draw)

Before the 2010 Grand Final replay the week before's St Kilda Jumper remained on Tommy (L)

 

[George]

Ugh, * off with this bullshit

 

[Longmembrey]

This concludes lesson 2 on the Saints

 

[LiterallyNobody]

This concludes lesson 2 on the Saints

The entire game is the entire life of a st kilda supporter. Lol

 

[scotteydog]

BELIEVE!!!

 

[Saintos The ITK]

That’s what it’s all about mate.