No dickhead policy = cosy little nest of introverted polite boys
I played for a club where we were all long time mates and we sucked. I moved to a club where I had rivals I hated and a wanky jock culture with heaps of little clicks. We were a machine. We were spiteful and super competitive at training. And the same thing on game day.
We respected winning, not meeting up for bro dates and a tickle fight.
Have no doubt Billings, Membrey & Acres would be different beasts at Hawks, Cats, even the ******** Bombers. They have an edge to them.
we never had a no dickheads policy ... its always been about the low risk high reward choice for our team in regards to players... we dont have the ability to recruit a "troubled" player and have it go south on us for three reasons .
1 we will get slayed as "same old St Kilda culture" BS
2 we dont have the leaders to pull a player into line as that senior respected figure
3 we dont have the depth in the list to afford it to go south..
take Dayle Garlett .. He had issues galore , he was a great talent but there was a fair risk involved , he gets to hawthorn and while the gamble didnt pay off and he walked out of the club after mutliple issues arounf being late and turning up in an unfit state for training Hawthorn came out as hreo's for giving him a shot , they plonked him in with hodge to give him the best shot of making it and when he left they still had the list depth to cover playing one short for the whole season .. had that been us to take him on there would have been story after story on how we let him down and how the clubs culture was not strong enough to nurture such a talent now wasted because of us, he would have been rooming with one of the other kids and possibly dragged them with him , and we would have been spending hours debating how we screwed up another pick for years to come ...