Review Bassat completes men's football program review

ScrappyDo

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If you read it there is a lot of de-Finnising going on. Having Lethers in the footy department was just us being dumb. He should have been in a business or administrative role. I'm willing to give him another run in a more suitable role. He's bought an energy that we didn't have before. He's a prime mover and gets s**t done.

Walsh and him are bulls and will clash and box to move us forward in their direction and Lyon won't be a sycophant to any of them. I feel like the other campaigners were all bluffing to hold their jobs and didn't have clue about their roles. At least now we have gone from asleep at the wheel of the Hyundai to a B-double truck driver with the head full of amphetamines with two serial killer hitchhikers in his cabin. It might not end well but it should be a good watch.
This is how l feel too. Irrespective of the outcome you know now they're powering towards a GF appearance.
 
What do you know about being in the board of a football club? I would wager zero.

Just had a review where many people lost their positiions but get this

Walsh
Hayes
Harvey
Goddard
Misson
Lyon

All top grade football people just came on board. Lyon would not come on board unless all the pillars are in sync. He then accepted the job.
We just had the biggest shake up of the football department in a decade and you want to get rifd of the people who did it? For whom?
Spare me.

The board were not watching the footy department. If we gave half the arse it could only be a good thing. That report looks absolutely terrible for them.

The footy department repair job is great but it doesn't excuse all the bad calls that they've made in the last decade.
 
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On a practical level there's also no reason to keep any of them.
I suspect that Maddie's match might put a few more bums on seats which should be the metric if we're serious. It also raises money for an underfunded cause which is not an issue for the other two.

Probably best to ditch the lot of them.

Lucky we dont have Anzac Day, Dreamtime or the Queen’s Birthday.


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That’s fine
But he has been in charge and made many bad decisions over five years take some ownership
Employed his mate that should not have got a job
If Ratts is the only big name to go its BS
He should not be in the role of CEO of our club

What are the many bad decisions?

I hear this mentioned all the time but rarely is there anything beyond Hannebery & Gags.


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I like everyone else has no clue. What I do know is that Basset didn't become a multi millionaire by surrounding himself with incompetents. The fact that he appointed Lethlean as co chair of the review says to me that Basset had a good idea where the problems were and it is not Lethlean. that and the fact that he and the board have decided on him being CEO leads me to believe that they know more than us.

As for Ratts being the only one. Him, Jacobs, the fitness bloke, looks like Roughead are all gone, Finnis has stepped down.

I think Lethlean will make an excellent CEO and obviously Basset, the board and Ross Lyon think so as well.


You must have seen how the top of big organisations work. Half the time it's just luck that anything operates well. It's usually the tiers under them that get things working functionally. Businesses usually work well despite management, not due to management.

I don't care about those guys now because they have employed the right footy department people to straighten the place up. At the moment I'm happy with that but those guys all have a few crosses against their names and want to get more right than wrong from here.
 
Actually he's been COO for the last couple of years.

If we take stavro's source at face value, Lethers did not want Ratts extended, ergo a new coach, plus Lenny was in the pipeline by then too (Carrol & Walsh last year also).
So he was doing his job and attending to the footy dpt but was overruled by Finnis who has an established pattern of hiring spuds and extending them beyond proven failure.
In the liability chain, Lethers - Finnis - The Board - Bassett, the only one who didn't duck it up is Lethers. Yet somehow you twist it into a negative against him.
stavros source is a good one

So you saying Leathlean isn’t responsible for some
pretty shitty appointments over his time ? Those appointments have held the club back
I’m not twisting nothing have been pretty consistent on Leathlean for a long time
And my source who knows him well and is not huge wrap for either

Yeah Ratts and Finnis are gone let’s blame them for everything
 

#gosaintas

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Lucky we dont have Anzac Day, Dreamtime or the Queen’s Birthday.


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Public Holidays, traditional rivalries, stand alone matches, MCG co-tenants and large supporter bases compared to us playing Syd, Hawks or Rich at varying venues on nothing days which quite rightly capture nobody's attention.
Just shut up about the causes and win games of footy. Regular finals appearances will create rivalries, causes won't.
 
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On a practical level there's also no reason to keep any of them.
I suspect that Maddie's match might put a few more bums on seats which should be the metric if we're serious. It also raises money for an underfunded cause which is not an issue for the other two.

Probably best to ditch the lot of them.
The awareness and visibility the Pride game provides to a community that often feels isolated and ostracised from male sports is also extremely important and it would do a lot of harm to walk away from it.
 
He believes the football department has under performed

He was in charge of the football department for how many years? 5 ?”

He is responsible for some pretty poor decisions while in charge


If Stavro is right he sounds as though he wasn't given free rein on decisions. He had no experience in the footy department and was in an unsuitable role, that's 100% on the board. You don't get your mechanic to bake your bread. He's come in off the back of doing a review that he was unsuitable for and was impressive enough for them to get him in to redesign the list and strategy.

The list isn't horrible when you look at it and he has made a huge amount of changes to the playing list and now the footy department. At least he's going down going at top speed instead of the last lot who looked like they were happy not going anywhere. We were like some guy that collects his dole cheque and smokes it away while playing World or Warcraft all day before.

At least under Lyon we should know if Lethers got more right than wrong. At the moment we might have made a lot of moves to stand still or he might have done it well but our s**t coaching and development held us back.
 

ScrappyDo

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stavros source is a good one

So you saying Leathlean isn’t responsible for some
pretty shitty appointments over his time ? Those appointments have held the club back
I’m not twisting nothing have been pretty consistent on Leathlean for a long time
And my source who knows him well and is not huge wrap for either

Yeah Ratts and Finnis are gone let’s blame them for everything
I'm not saying he's been perfect, I'm saying your a bit OTT on the subject.

Maybe your source doesn't like him and has a skewed opinion. Maybe you don't have proper context on every front.

There's plenty l don't like about him but l get over it because the club has been on an upeard trend since he arrived and he continues to make more good decisions than bad ones. Since he just got the top job he'll be around for a while yet. Could you give it a rest for our sake perhaps??
 

#gosaintas

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The awareness and visibility the Pride game provides to a community that often feels isolated and ostracised from male sports is also extremely important and it would do a lot of harm to walk away from it.
yes, difficult to walk away from so I guess just continue to pay lip service to it and treat it like every other game.
 

ScrappyDo

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The awareness and visibility the Pride game provides to a community that often feels isolated and ostracised from male sports is also extremely important and it would do a lot of harm to walk away from it.
I don't think that's the case anymore. Gay footballers are known to be out and about within their teams but none want the publicity of being the first to go public.
You can guarantee the AFL has told the media dogs to leave them be because there will be social media stuff out there yet it never makes the papers.
 
Lucky we dont have Anzac Day, Dreamtime or the Queen’s Birthday.


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It actually probably is. We are at the stage of trying to transition off the training wheels. The Tour de France is probably a bit further down the track for us. We need to straighten the ship before we get given anything. You need to get your backyard cleaned up before you can expect to get the big games. If we play regular finals football with momentum pushing forward we have shown over the years we can pack venues.

When fans turn up the AFL and other clubs take you seriously. You get picked by the people making the fixture and big clubs for primetime spot preference and you get neutrals attending. It's not something you get given, it's all earned.

Demanding big drawing games when you can't even guarantee a decent effort put up from week to week is just childish. Like a dole bludger demanding more respect.
 

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So he was doing his job and attending to the footy dpt but was overruled by Finnis who has an established pattern of hiring spuds and extending them beyond proven failure.

I get the sense that Finnis is one of those over-promoted lawyers that the AFL loves, like Bains or even McLachlan. They all talk a good game but that doesn't mean they're particularly good at managing a team or running a high-performance organisation. Before he came to the Saints Finnis had only managed the AFLPA for 9 years which was about 30-40 people and pretty bureaucratic and low-performing like most unions, pretty different to running a bigger and hopefully more high-performing org like a footy club.

Of course Lethers was a lawyer originally too, but at least he's been managing people for 20 years. Hopefully he's better at it that Finnis.
 
The awareness and visibility the Pride game provides to a community that often feels isolated and ostracised from male sports is also extremely important and it would do a lot of harm to walk away from it.


It's poorly attended and has no energy about it. Other than a few rainbow scarf sales it really hasn't had any effort put into it for years. It's like the blue ribbon cup. Most don't even realise it's on until the present the medal at the end.

Both have either run their course or need a bit of a revamp because they aren't really embraced by anyone. When we did the Good Friday match against the Roos, I was shocked by how much better their game day experience and attendances were. Most other clubs are noticeably better as well.

Employing someone for game day experience tweaks would be a great investment, At the moment it's just a more uncomfortable version of watching at home. Lighting and music isn't expensive. You could let students in event management or sound and lighting come in and refresh it all on the cheap.
 
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THE AGE​

Can St Kilda change or is the change just more of the same?​

Peter Ryan

By Peter Ryan

November 11, 2022 — 7.20pm

If football clubs are to learn lessons from St Kilda’s recent history, it’s that open communication, hard conversations and engagement at all levels and in appropriate forums is preferable to a late charge towards the truth that ends in decisions such as Brett Ratten’s sacking that the board described as a “heartbreaking” one. This needs trust, cool heads and people not worried about keeping their jobs, having all the answers or making mistakes.

The dejected Saints after a loss to the Western Bulldogs.

The dejected Saints after a loss to the Western Bulldogs.CREDIT:AFL PHOTOS

It’s clear that Ratten wasn’t, as everyone conceded, the problem at St Kilda but part of a wider club issue that meant the chances of success were reduced as leadership voids opened up, roles became unclear, lines of communication became clogged, messages to players suffered and no one knew who was supposed to turn it all around.
That doesn’t make anyone involved lesser people, just that they became part of an environment that drifted below what is needed for consistent high performance. The players sensed it so are enthused at the change.

The board needed to be stronger when it had doubts about the football program and the decisions being made within it. The transition from head of football to CEO needed to be handled better to ensure the football department did not suffer. The discussion around list decisions needed to be less defensive and the assessment of players more balanced.

The on-field leaders needed their lens to widen so their own performance was not their only measure of success.

That assessment did not come just from the pages of the executive summary of the review that St Kilda released on Friday but from sources with knowledge of what led to the broom being swept through their football department.

Interestingly, the review committee, which spoke to former greats as well as those working on the inside, had not specifically recommended Ratten be sacked but identified enough problems that president Andrew Bassat, the founder of online giant SEEK, was troubled.

Bassat wrestled with the fact his gut was telling him he might have to make a change he did not relish making given the board had only extended the coach’s contract by two years in July, a decision that now can be seen as a symptom of the underlying issues.

Ross Lyon with St Kilda president Andrew Bassat.

Ross Lyon with St Kilda president Andrew Bassat.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES

He triangulated the data, heard from the incumbent who could not convince him he was the Saints next premiership coach then, with a heavy heart, made the call he thought was in the club’s best interests. That hurt Ratten in a way only he will be able to describe and also hurt the president who knew a good man when he saw one in the coach.

That Bassat made the decision so late was because, across the board, not enough had been dealt with sooner. Early wins masked issues, sugar hits from trade acquisitions fuelled energy before eventual realities saw blame shifted elsewhere, to the midfield, or the selling of home games, or to players who had not come on as hoped, to goalkicking or to fitness. Despite the review and the new crew involved, residual damage from that inaction followed by brutal calls can be dangerous which is why the appointment of the sometimes gruff, yet always straight shooting and fair Geoff Walsh as football manager is critical.

The board won’t die wondering about what is happening in the football department, and they won’t be left in any doubt as to what he thinks of their questions, for better or worse. That will suit Bassat and new coach Ross Lyon.

Lyon has assembled a group who know how to drive performance and growth. He feels ready to delegate to Lenny Hayes, Robert Harvey, Brendon Goddard, Dave Misson and those who remained including Corey Enright doing team defence, David Rath in strategy and Damian Carroll in development. Jarryd Roughead and Graeme Allan’s roles will need to be defined.
Despite the shock and disappointment at the decision on Ratten, most within football think the Saints will improve, in the short term at least, as Lyon puts in train what he described on 3AW as a simple model that relies on sound planning and hard work.
“We need to identify the sort of team and individuals we want to be and what action will get us there and commit to that action until you get what you want,” Lyon said.

The challenge for the coach and those around him will be to resist implementing the same, sometimes mad, routines that got them close to the flag in 2009 and 2010 but ultimately left them without a premiership cup and in the decade that followed, as Walsh so eloquently put it, irrelevant.
 
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I don't think that's the case anymore. Gay footballers are known to be out and about within their teams but none want the publicity of being the first to go public.
You can guarantee the AFL has told the media dogs to leave them be because there will be social media stuff out there yet it never makes the papers.


No wonder, that soccer kid that came out was swamped. Who gives a * these days. Everyone would know someone gay these days surely. It's hardly an issue for anyone under 25 these days.
 

#gosaintas

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It's poorly attended and has no energy about it. Other than a few rainbow scarf sales it really hasn't had any effort put into it for years. It's like the blue ribbon cup. Most don't even realise it's on until the present the medal at the end.

Both have either run their course or need a bit of a revamp because they aren't really embraced by anyone. When we did the Good Friday match against the Roos, I was shocked by how much better their game day experience and attendances were. Most other clubs are noticeably better as well.

Employing someone for game day experience tweaks would be a great investment, At the moment it's just a more uncomfortable version of watching at home. Lighting and music isn't expensive. You could let students in event management or sound and lighting come in and refresh it all on the cheap.
It's not as if StKilda as a club get involved in the pride march or the Mardi Gras, every year there is the Police Blue Ribbon ball and I've never heard of StKilda sponsoring it and having tables there and making a show of taking part. It's all pretty half arsed so why bother? If the club can't be stuffed caring about the cause how can they expect supporters to give a hoot. In fact I just checked... the Haawks are one of the sponsors of the ball and we have nothing to do with it! Like do it properly or drop it
 
I'm not saying he's been perfect, I'm saying your a bit OTT on the subject.

Maybe your source doesn't like him and has a skewed opinion. Maybe you don't have proper context on every front.

There's plenty l don't like about him but l get over it because the club has been on an upeard trend since he arrived and he continues to make more good decisions than bad ones. Since he just got the top job he'll be around for a while yet. Could you give it a rest for our sake perhaps??
I'm not saying he's been perfect, I'm saying your a bit OTT on the subject.

Maybe your source doesn't like him and has a skewed opinion. Maybe you don't have proper context on every front.

There's plenty l don't like about him but l get over it because the club has been on an upeard trend since he arrived and he continues to make more good decisions than bad ones. Since he just got the top job he'll be around for a while yet. Could you give it a rest for our sake perhaps??
Easy fixed use the ignore button
Maybe I have 💯 proper context
A few of us were told we were OTT in not wanting Ratts signed to the end of the year and told he was doing a good job have a look his 1st half of the year and to give it a rest The same posters are now saying what a great decision that Ratts is gone

I have beenreally positive since all this has happened
Give it rest ? It’s a forum I haven’t abused anyone you don’t have to read my stuff
 

ScrappyDo

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Easy fixed use the ignore button
Maybe I have 💯 proper context
A few of us were told we were OTT the top in not wanting Ratts signed to the end of the year and told he was doing a good job have a look his 1st half of the year and to give it a rest The same posters are now saying what a great decision that Ratts is gone

I have beenreally positive since all this has happened
Give it rest ? It’s a forum I haven’t abused anyone you don’t have to read my stuff
Actually l was the first one to drop the hammer on Ratts after round 1 and held firm on that belief. I was equally staunch in rebuffing all the sheep who fell in line with his extension.
And hiding behind the P66 defense is poor form. That in itself should give you pause for thought.
 
Actually l was the first one to drop the hammer on Ratts after round 1 and held firm on that belief. I was equally staunch in rebuffing all the sheep who fell in line with his extension.
And hiding behind the P66 defense is poor form. That in itself should give you pause for thought.
I have been on SL for a while and won’t change that because someone tells we to give it a rest

So just post stuff you’re happy to read ?
 
Easy fixed use the ignore button
Maybe I have 💯 proper context
A few of us were told we were OTT in not wanting Ratts signed to the end of the year and told he was doing a good job have a look his 1st half of the year and to give it a rest The same posters are now saying what a great decision that Ratts is gone

I have beenreally positive since all this has happened
Give it rest ? It’s a forum I haven’t abused anyone you don’t have to read my stuff


You've been very consistent in your opinions and been proven right on most of them Mowy. We at least have some hope back. It sounds like the whole place is running at a higher level now. I don't think bullshitters and under performers are going to get to hang around any more. Or hopefully not. Too many have got away with s**t for years. In one off season we've repaired so much. I actually have faith in what they're doing at the moment..... it's been a long time since I've said that.
 
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