Toast Danny Frawley’s legacy spurs new $16m centre at Moorabbin

st_trav_ofWA

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 17, 2015
5,810
15,541
AFL Club
St Kilda
i say this time and time again .... for those who dont rate Matt Finnis i can tell you he is the best thing to have happened to our club ... we will have great players we will have strong coaches, we will celebrate list managers who build our teams .. BUT what Matt Finnis has done for our club will be a legacy that will carry on for generations after he has gone...
to think about what we stand for as a club today what we have built both culturally and assett wise and put that against what we had previously we are light years away from the rabble we once were ... and when our football centric moment in the sun comes to fruition with the strong foundations we now have as a club we are going to be best placed to capitalise on that ...
 

st_trav_ofWA

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 17, 2015
5,810
15,541
AFL Club
St Kilda
It's not often I venture outside the Geelong Board...being a Mod keeps me more than occupied there.

However I wanted to give a huge thumbs up to St Kilda for supporting this initiative. There was some complaint re the cost from a very small contingent...there are naysayers everywhere. I have not been touched directly by depression or any other mental issues, and feel incredibly lucky to have avoided it.

My contribution on the Cat board is set out below.....i just felt compelled to quote it and make the effort to come here and pat the St Kilda Fc on the back.

Great work by all involved that made this happen.


Personally, I don't care if it costs 15 million if it helps save lives, and helps those suffering from being in a dark space to lead productive lives.

That productivity mitigates the cost.

The incidence of depression (not to mention suicides related to it) is endemic in Australia and its incumbent on the Govt to do something about it...our response to this, particularly (but not exclusively) within the indigenous community is not something we can write home about.

As a moderator on this site, I have been stunned by the number of posters on this site who either are suffering from, or touched by mental health issues.

This initiative is long overdue in my opinion.

Well done St Kilda.
wowsers .... good to see its not just our side of BigFooty that have some "interesting posters" ...
 
It looks to be at the Nepean Hwy end past the goals. Is there enough room there?

Great initiative and we should all be very proud of the fact that we as a club are focussed on the community and people in general. All we need now is that second flag, which I believe is not far away.

Again sorry to intrude.. but honestly about 10 years or so ago you guys werent exactly my second favorite team (or 3rd etcetc)- for reasons im sure youd be well aware of.

Now- not so much. Sincerely hope you win a flag and win one soon. (Just not against Geelong hehe)

Keep up the good work guys.
 

no1saint66

Premium Platinum
Apr 14, 2016
435
949
AFL Club
St Kilda
i say this time and time again .... for those who dont rate Matt Finnis i can tell you he is the best thing to have happened to our club ... we will have great players we will have strong coaches, we will celebrate list managers who build our teams .. BUT what Matt Finnis has done for our club will be a legacy that will carry on for generations after he has gone...
to think about what we stand for as a club today what we have built both culturally and assett wise and put that against what we had previously we are light years away from the rabble we once were ... and when our football centric moment in the sun comes to fruition with the strong foundations we now have as a club we are going to be best placed to capitalise on that ...

Amen. He is future proofing the club now. It’s amazing how much he has achieved in partnership with many others since arriving at the club.
 
 
Sep 28, 2016
6,625
21,640
AFL Club
St Kilda
i say this time and time again .... for those who dont rate Matt Finnis i can tell you he is the best thing to have happened to our club ... we will have great players we will have strong coaches, we will celebrate list managers who build our teams .. BUT what Matt Finnis has done for our club will be a legacy that will carry on for generations after he has gone...
to think about what we stand for as a club today what we have built both culturally and assett wise and put that against what we had previously we are light years away from the rabble we once were ... and when our football centric moment in the sun comes to fruition with the strong foundations we now have as a club we are going to be best placed to capitalise on that ...
I understand your frustration Trev, am right there with you, but we cannot blame people for their views if their life experience has not exposed them to this stuff. Nor should we, given how badly managed we were back in 2013.
That was the nadir for us: broken team, broken management and broken business model.
But from Matt’s appointment in April 2014, the club has progressively addressed each of those issues.
Of course, like a cruise liner, it takes some time to turn the ship around.
And our correction is not simply due to Finnis either.
A big call out to the Summers Board; because that’s where the vision originated and that’s where the work started.
It is there in black and white if anyone ever took the time to read it.
I‘d like to think the Bassat Board is simply continuing the vision, but of course we’re further along the path now.
All that hard work back in the day is coming to fruition, one building block supports the next.
There is a business term used to describe this: synergy.
Where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
That‘s what we are seeing now, and blowing everyone’s mind.
Undoubtedly there is more in this journey so I can only encourage everyone to “watch this space”.
I have been saying for three or four years that the Summers/Bassat administration is the second best in our history, and challenged anyone to name another.
Of course, no one challenged that statement. Which really is a sad commentary on our history.
Anyway, I thought of that statement again today.
With the thought being: what would it take to be better than Huggins/Drake?
Another premiership?
No.
That’s not sufficient.
If people are impressed by this Administration, they would have been blown away by Huggins/Drake.
Moorabbin 1965 was groundbreaking.
The 2020 equivalent of 102k attending the first game in a new stadium in the outer suburbs.
Funded by the club.
First grand final since 1913, then the big one the following year.
Huge!
St Kilda was the glamour team.
The administration were trend setters.
Richmond moved their games to the G, North moved to Coburg imitating us.
So I’m thinking: no, one premiership cannot change the ranking.
Gotta be two.
At least.
😁😁😁
 
Sep 20, 2009
9,659
28,070
NSW
AFL Club
St Kilda
This was an incredible initiative when I first heard about it earlier in the week. I didn't realise until I came on here that it was going to be at RSEA park. That is fitting, and I hope it's not just something that St Kilda supporters think about utilising.
 
Sep 20, 2009
9,659
28,070
NSW
AFL Club
St Kilda
i say this time and time again .... for those who dont rate Matt Finnis i can tell you he is the best thing to have happened to our club ... we will have great players we will have strong coaches, we will celebrate list managers who build our teams .. BUT what Matt Finnis has done for our club will be a legacy that will carry on for generations after he has gone...
to think about what we stand for as a club today what we have built both culturally and assett wise and put that against what we had previously we are light years away from the rabble we once were ... and when our football centric moment in the sun comes to fruition with the strong foundations we now have as a club we are going to be best placed to capitalise on that ...

I'm now at the point where I am happy to admit I was wrong about Finnis. He's ran a good ship, but the trouble was the team was in such shambles that it seemed (to me) totally idiotic for the club to focus on anything else except playing footy. Now that we are playing good footy, and have assembled a great off field team, it's easy to see how his ideas are good for the club.

This in particular, isn't just a good idea for the club but a good idea for those in Melbourne who are struggling.
 

st_trav_ofWA

Norm Smith Medallist
Aug 17, 2015
5,810
15,541
AFL Club
St Kilda
I'm now at the point where I am happy to admit I was wrong about Finnis. He's ran a good ship, but the trouble was the team was in such shambles that it seemed (to me) totally idiotic for the club to focus on anything else except playing footy. Now that we are playing good footy, and have assembled a great off field team, it's easy to see how his ideas are good for the club.

This in particular, isn't just a good idea for the club but a good idea for those in Melbourne who are struggling.
its about future guarding our club ...the fact is we still have a big debt and thats a problem but that debt is from doing value add things to our club ..
we are still the poor child of the AFL who needs the leg up from them.. but we are no longer the disfunctional 40yearold step kid that the AFL are growing tired of living in the den sponging money for get rich quick scams we once were ..

notice we were the only Victorian club without a COVID breach , we were the only club to without fuss move to a hub and just get on with the job.. we play an exciting brand of footy that works well for TV viewers... these seem like nothing items but lets look at if this way..
if the AFL were forced to move on one Victorian club on next year would you expect it to be the club that has strong roots down in its community? a socially positive club? a club that does what its told without fuss ? a club that has worked well with local state and federal government to obtain grants and joint ventures ...
no club can rely on football ability alone to stay relevant we will be a bottom 4 club again as is the nature of the comp but the steps we make now mean that when we are bottom 4 again we are able to ride it out while we build up , gone ar the days (hopefully) where we self implode ...
 
I really hope that many of us supporters email the club and congratulate them, and provide positive feedback.

This legacy that the club is able to get done will live with us and be a support to members, players, staff and the general public. It's just wonderful.

In the survey I completed last week I praised the club for its media , on field and off field over the year. It was special that the club was able to be the only Vic club to not break Covid protocols, and to be in finals for the first time in 9 years.
 
Sep 20, 2009
9,659
28,070
NSW
AFL Club
St Kilda
I really hope that many of us supporters email the club and congratulate them, and provide positive feedback.

This legacy that the club is able to get done will live with us and be a support to members, players, staff and the general public. It's just wonderful.

In the survey I completed last week I praised the club for its media , on field and off field over the year. It was special that the club was able to be the only Vic club to not break Covid protocols, and to be in finals for the first time in 9 years.

Just filled it out. I daresay it's much more optimistic than previous years. Thanks for the reminder, it feels good to have been able to give the club some positive feedback.
 

austinnn

Veteran GOP
Nov 7, 2012
9,448
30,883
France
AFL Club
St Kilda
Other Teams
Bristol City FC, Urawa Red Diamonds FC
I understand your frustration Trev, am right there with you, but we cannot blame people for their views if their life experience has not exposed them to this stuff. Nor should we, given how badly managed we were back in 2013.
That was the nadir for us: broken team, broken management and broken business model.
But from Matt’s appointment in April 2014, the club has progressively addressed each of those issues.
Of course, like a cruise liner, it takes some time to turn the ship around.
And our correction is not simply due to Finnis either.
A big call out to the Summers Board; because that’s where the vision originated and that’s where the work started.
It is there in black and white if anyone ever took the time to read it.
I‘d like to think the Bassat Board is simply continuing the vision, but of course we’re further along the path now.
All that hard work back in the day is coming to fruition, one building block supports the next.
There is a business term used to describe this: synergy.
Where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
That‘s what we are seeing now, and blowing everyone’s mind.
Undoubtedly there is more in this journey so I can only encourage everyone to “watch this space”.
I have been saying for three or four years that the Summers/Bassat administration is the second best in our history, and challenged anyone to name another.
Of course, no one challenged that statement. Which really is a sad commentary on our history.
Anyway, I thought of that statement again today.
With the thought being: what would it take to be better than Huggins/Drake?
Another premiership?
No.
That’s not sufficient.
If people are impressed by this Administration, they would have been blown away by Huggins/Drake.
Moorabbin 1965 was groundbreaking.
The 2020 equivalent of 102k attending the first game in a new stadium in the outer suburbs.
Funded by the club.
First grand final since 1913, then the big one the following year.
Huge!
St Kilda was the glamour team.
The administration were trend setters.
Richmond moved their games to the G, North moved to Coburg imitating us.
So I’m thinking: no, one premiership cannot change the ranking.
Gotta be two.
At least.
its about future guarding our club ...the fact is we still have a big debt and thats a problem but that debt is from doing value add things to our club ..
we are still the poor child of the AFL who needs the leg up from them.. but we are no longer the disfunctional 40yearold step kid that the AFL are growing tired of living in the den sponging money for get rich quick scams we once were ..

notice we were the only Victorian club without a COVID breach , we were the only club to without fuss move to a hub and just get on with the job.. we play an exciting brand of footy that works well for TV viewers... these seem like nothing items but lets look at if this way..
if the AFL were forced to move on one Victorian club on next year would you expect it to be the club that has strong roots down in its community? a socially positive club? a club that does what its told without fuss ? a club that has worked well with local state and federal government to obtain grants and joint ventures ...
no club can rely on football ability alone to stay relevant we will be a bottom 4 club again as is the nature of the comp but the steps we make now mean that when we are bottom 4 again we are able to ride it out while we build up , gone ar the days (hopefully) where we self implode ...
You guys get it.

As the thread I linked to in another thread proves, no matter how safe we feel now, we will always be vulnerable when talk of merging or relocating teams comes around again. We need to do more than win games, maybe even more than win premierships.

I think it started way back at the moment Thomas, Butterrs and Waldron got together with a future vision of St Kilda as something a lot more than simply the joke of the league. Thomas began working on the culture of the playing group, taking our young players around to South Africa and so on to give them a view of something else besides the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne. A tiny first step in the right direction. If he'd stayed on as director of coaching or director of football and replaced Blighty with a proven coach, or even had a coaching mentor on hand in the matchday box, I've no doubt we'd have added to our 1966 cup. I liked Thomo as a coach though, he was innovative and great at man managing.

Meanwhile, Butterrs worked the Brighton circuit, tried to get the movers and shakers involved with our club, so long an unfashionable secret with the rich and connected. To do anything positive, we need more money, that's the long and short of it, and more connections with people outside the world of footy. Smart operators who had the nous to reshape the club into something resembling a modern progressive organisation. Butterrs knew that, and his world was that world. He instigated the Bayside Club angle in Brighton and so on first or at least first since I started following the footy.

Of course, we all know how those guys ended up, and we are well aware of the shysters and grifters that poisoned our progression with their own poor decisions, but I wonder how much of what came afterwards was made easier because of the positive contributions of that group.

Sadly we didn't maximise our last period of strength in the game to any useful effect, partially because of the crippling stadium deal and partially because we didn't have forward thinking people at the helm then, and we paid for that with a huge period of stagnation.

When Finnis got on board after replacing Nettlefold/Dillon in March 2014 (significantly some months after Watters was hastily replaced with Richo), the progressive vision returned. He was smart operator who saw St Kilda as more than a footy club, but a modern organisation in every sense. He didn't always get it right at the start. Jamie Cox was a left of centre appointment that could have been genius but didn't work out, and the Road to 2018 though paved with good intentions, proved to be a long and winding dead end.

But he and his team reversed the two most crippling moves we'd made in the modern era (the stadium deal and Seaford) and strived to keep us in the papers for the best reasons, not the worst. Under his watch, the club's media team went from average to fire. Initiative after initiative, he's the beating modern heart of a club that means something more than an individual superstar in a team of dross, more than discos and schoolgirls and pokies and meat trays and amateur bloody efforts, and though the more conservative members of our fanbase couldn't see it or didn't want to face it, the modern world is where we needed to be. The right looks, the right messages, the right actions. He and his people have done nothing less than help keep us in the AFL long term. We'll be naming a building after him some day. Bookmark it.

But bringing in Simon Lethlean to right the football at our football club, that was a masterstroke. The Satan era is an unfinished chapter at the moment with a very unpredictable ending, but it's going great so far. Together, they brought Brett Ratten into the club, and so many other quality appointments.

And Andrew Bassat is such a crucial piece of this red white and black puzzle that his involvement was the moment where the clouds finally broke and the sunshine poured in. At the highest level, finally, St Kilda is a leader in its field. Andrew is going to preside over one of the greatest parts of our history and rightly so. He gave Finnis and Lethlean the backing that they need to do such good work. He backed the paying out of Richardson and the installation of Ratten as head coach. Say no more.

It's such a novelty for us Saints fans that long-suffering bigfooty contributors have to constantly remind us "We're in the right hands", something most of us refuse to actually believe until we see the cups in our cabinet. But we are. Cups or not, we are one of the best equipped clubs for the modern era, as sunny3193 and st_trav_ofWA have already said so well.

I'm proud to be a St Kilda supporter, always have been despite our history. And Sunny is right, the Drake/Huggins era will take some topping. But I am more confident than ever that the people we have at the head of our club now will keep taking us right up to the summit.
 
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I sometimes ponder if the Moorabbin redevelopment plans had an effect on Lethleans decision to join the Saints. Which, in turn made the joint more appealing to the likes of Rath and Gubby Allen. If the redevelopment did sway Lethlean, whose appointment has led to so much more, then it goes back to what sunny3193 was saying; the first building blocks (the vision) are often the most critical part of the journey. Every incoming administrator would have a mission statement for their tenure, but some do dream bigger and more pragmatically than others though. And then work harder to make things happen.

Kudos to the Summers board and Finnis efforts.
 
I read that Kosi could be coming back to the saints to work at the new mental health facilities
I hope so. I get the feeling that Kosi is or could become lost. He worked on radio a bit until this year and haven't heard him this year.
 
Feb 19, 2009
1,249
3,542
Moorabbin
AFL Club
St Kilda
This is such a great initiative and being a nearby resident I was gutted when I saw the site huts being trucked away at the end of March when they scrapped the build of the pool and grandstand. I emailed the club to get some more info on this build and they confirmed it would incorporate the 1000 seat grandstand into this new build plus the community use pool which is great for all the local residents.
 
this has the potential to be a great initiative where football clubs can become closer to their immediate communities and get back to what they were originally born from.

its great that it encompasses the area of mental health which thankfully is getting more attention.

having said that i am conflicted. i don't like the expansion of professional football spending into the government pocket, whilst basic services like education and health get neglected. i feel the same for the whole corporate welfare thing too. atleast this initiative has some kind of community health connection, but a lot of what is happening now is elite sporting clubs lobbying the government for money and using "community" reasons for it. some of them are so loosely coupled you sit there wondering wouldn't it be cheaper and more efficient just to provide the facilities needed directly to the community organisation that the case is built around.

for example WCE and Fremantle here have acquired 20 million in funding each from the state and federal governments. Fremantle got even more out of the local council if i re-call correctly. WCE built theirs around needing to provide a home for the wirrapunda foundation (would have been much cheaper to build their home directly). Fremantle an acquatic/fitness center. meanwhile there are schools here in WA made out of asbestos literally falling down around the kids, who could have had their school rebuilt/refurbished 2 times over!!! these schools have had assessments done on the facilities and have had a recommendation in front of the state government for a decade and a half to rebuild them, meanwhile two rich AFL clubs come in and in 24 months get funding like that.

now before people jump down my throat, i'm not accusing the club of being disingenuous here and that the project is not worthy. i really hope this can change the way AFL clubs operate and there is a stronger connection to community and the benefits here are genuine. i really do, because the alternative i cannot stomach. i know funding is extremely tight in the youth space especially in critical areas like welfare which are extremely under funded putting pressure on front line workers, which has mental health ramifications on not just the workers but also at risk children.
 
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