Kildonan
Premium Platinum
Patron Saint
In his most revealing interview, Grant Thomas explains to Jenny McAsey how he is using his wild past to build a new St Kilda
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August 19, 2006
GRANT THOMAS is hanging out in the players' lounge at the St Kilda football club, downing a huge ham and salad sandwich.
Stephen Milne is presiding over the ping pong table as other players help themselves to lunch. Outside on the lush green of Moorabbin Oval, a dozen kids are kicking footies in the sun.
They're indigenous secondary school students, defender Troy Schwarze explains, who come to the club each week as part of a mentoring program set up by his Aboriginal team-mates Xavier Clarke and Allan Murray.
Thomas has been hanging around in this room - formerly part of the infamous Saints social club where the players of the 1970s and 1980s drank themselves silly after games - on and off for 33 years, since he arrived as a talented, knockabout 15-year-old from bayside Frankston.
It was not a place for salad sandwiches and social welfare programs during Thomas's 10 years at St Kilda, which ended in 1983 after 72 games as a tough centre half-back. As he admits, it was the venue for some of his maddest moments.
"All the players here know I wasn't a saint, so to speak, or didn't have saintly habits," Thomas says.
"I actually had very St Kilda habits, but not saintly habits - and there was a difference back then."
But not now, if Thomas achieves what he believes is his mission in life.
"It is really difficult to have 40 men together and not have issues," he says. "But I see a huge improvement in that area and I see if there are any, albeit slight, indiscretions there is genuine remorse."
Thomas's prime aim since he took over as coach in 2001 has been to ensure the club earns the respect it never had during his playing career.
He was part of the club's laughing stock days, lived its culture of failure from the inside, and is driven to see it erased forever.
"If St Kilda footy club has 100 per cent respect and I don't have any, it doesn't concern me in the slightest," Thomas says.
"It is not about Grant Thomas per se. I have a real passion and determination for St Kilda football club to be respected and successful. Perhaps it is because I came here at 15 and I didn't like what I saw even though I motivated much of it. There is a guilt there from that."
Twenty-five years ago, as now, Thomas was a commanding presence in the room. A leader of the lads with a dangerous charm.
Back then, though, he was more likely to be leading his team-mates astray, rather than his role today leading a group of professional young men into successive finals series.
Post-match in those days, he would have had a beer in one hand and his other around the waist of a buxom blonde.
"I was socially professional," Thomas recalls. "Loved a beer, loved the camaraderie and the spirit of mateship. In the early days football was just a vehicle to get together with the blokes and have fun."
As party animals, the Saints of that era had the best reputation. "Exactly, and we had the worst performance," he says.
At club headquarters this week, Thomas was happy to reflect on the bad old days, something he had not been comfortable doing previously.
Now, as the club sits fourth on the ladder and has gained the credibility he craves, he can talk more freely about the days when it didn't have any.
"You can vouch for my bad behaviour," he says in confessional mood.
(I should also confess to frequenting the Saints social club and disco for a brief period long ago.)
At 15, he learned street smarts from the ultimate 1970s role models - hard-nut players like Carl Ditterich, Jim O'Dea and Cowboy Neale.
"Training and having showers with guys like that ... you grow up pretty quick," he says. "I learnt most things from the mistakes I made. We didn't have trailblazing saints here."
Thomas's wild ways began to temper in the mid-1980s.
Twenty-two years ago he married Kerry, sweet-natured and pretty, who had previously been the girlfriend of team-mate Michael Roberts.
"Kezza", as Thomas calls her, is now mother to his eight children, aged between five and 20. Responsibility brought out the best in him and he went on to have success coaching country football at Warrnambool in Victoria and then in business as a senior manager.
There is permanent chaos with eight kids, but he says he and Kerry love having a full house and don't notice the noise. What interests him most, both at home and the football club, is relationships and understanding why people behave the way they do.
"I like asking why, I do it with the kids and the players," he says. "I say why and you get an answer and then I say why and get an answer and you can keep drilling down to the root cause of the whole issue.
"The players have a bit of fun now, they jump to the root cause rather than going through the process."
In that regard, his chequered past comes in handy, equipping him to guide his own kids as well as the players he considers his mates.
"That forms part of your life and then you have kids and you try to impose the right values on kids and walk away thinking, 'you hypocrite'," he laughs.
"And you have the other dynamic where you are coaching 41 players and there is not much they can get past you because there is nothing I haven't tried."
At a time when players behaving badly make regular headlines, his personal experiences are part of the education process at St Kilda.
"I still remember quite clearly walking into hotels when I was playing footy and you could think of nothing better than to have a few beers and let the hair down and whatever else happens then," Thomas says.
"But I learnt very early to assess the crowd and who was there. There were several times when I evaluated it wasn't the place to be, I just got a bad sense or feeling and convinced the others to go somewhere else and you found out later there was a huge all-in brawl there that night."
When he tells his charges the cost of playing up is too high, it is not theory.
"There is nothing worse than going into a contest with a bit of guilt, because you are living in hope a bit," he says.
He harbours regret from those days, when he didn't do the best for himself or the club.
In 1999, as St Kilda continued to falter, he decided he had to stop complaining and pitch in to help. He went on the board and then in July 2001, as football director, he pushed for the sacking of dual premiership coach Malcolm Blight.
The move shocked the football community and when Thomas was appointed coach, he was vilified by the media.
"Ridiculed is too soft a word," he says. "The way the whole thing came to fruition didn't help the perception (of me) and it is taking a long time for people to rid themselves of that.
"I treat the lack of respect out there as a constant motivation. Not to prove people wrong, because I really don't care externally what people think. If this was about Grant Thomas well I would but it is not, it is about St Kilda footy club.
"I am not about to go and coach another team; this is the task, this is the life-ending venture, I don't know what has happened, or why it has happened.
"I ask myself that question on a regular basis, why am I doing what I am doing? I don't know, I don't know how it came about and I don't know why I have the passion and desire to help St Kilda footy club to be successful."
He does know part of it relates to the death from cancer at age 40 of his revered team-mate Trevor Barker.
"There is a bit of Barks and ... I suppose I got sick and tired of people belittling St Kilda," Thomas says.
"I thought I either have to join them, because it was hard to disagree with, or I have to help change their perception."
This year, at last, he detects a healthy change in attitude towards him from people in the media he says he respects. It is the hard-earned result of lifting the team into the finals three years running despite a devastating series of injuries to key players including Nick Riewoldt last year, Aaron Hamill, brilliant midfielder Lenny Hayes, Justin Koschitzke and most recently defender Matt Maguire.
"It seems like anyone in the leadership group or anyone who is captain ends up getting the curse," Thomas says.
The coach's great strength, according to star player Riewoldt, is his ability to inspire and lift the group to triumph over adversity.
Riewoldt spoke this week of feeling flatter than ever when Maguire broke his leg two weeks ago.
After a sleepless night, Thomas worked a miracle with the group, according to Riewoldt, reminding them of a memorable win against all odds over Adelaide in last year's finals series.
Thomas says he just told the players what Maguire would want.
"I say there are two paths to go down," he says. "One is to compound it and have pity and be victims and have everyone feel sorry for us.
"Or the other one was to continue on a road that has just been made a little bit harder and if we are up for the challenge, when you get harder roads you get more enjoyment when you get through them."
Thomas says adversity has been a great teacher for the team, but he admits the string of injuries has taken an emotional toll.
"What I have found most difficult is you pick yourself up first because you have to, otherwise you are dead, and then you have to pick the team up," he says.
"But I've always found the most difficult period is after that. I have always been reasonably proud of how I am able to pick a group of people up, whether in business or sport or whatever, but it is in that post period when you go home, that next 24 or 48 hours, when you feel so drained, mentally and physically and it is who coaches the coach."
Apart from his wife and kids, he has two mentors who pick him up when he needs it and whose identities he wants kept secret: one a businessman and the other a legend of the club.
His ability to lead is now acknowledged, although queries are still raised about his tactical abilities in the coaching box on match day.
"I usually put up with it and say nothing but you have got me in a good mood and I will say it is just a load of crap, it is ridiculous," Thomas says.
"I have coached for a fair amount of time now, you want to add up five years at Warrnambool with four premierships, and I have either been in a coaches' box or coached for nearly 15 years now. I don't pay any weight to that whatsoever."
Thomas believes that every day in life, we carry a hammer and chisel, slowly carving out the words on our headstone.
He wants his to read, "Hard, fair and helpful", and his legacy to be that he left the St Kilda football club a very different place to what he found it.
"I'd like my legacy to be a spirit of respect. It is something this club has never had a lot of, and I am really determined for the club to be respected on the basis of performance," he says.
In his most revealing interview, Grant Thomas explains to Jenny McAsey how he is using his wild past to build a new St Kilda
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 19, 2006
GRANT THOMAS is hanging out in the players' lounge at the St Kilda football club, downing a huge ham and salad sandwich.
Stephen Milne is presiding over the ping pong table as other players help themselves to lunch. Outside on the lush green of Moorabbin Oval, a dozen kids are kicking footies in the sun.
They're indigenous secondary school students, defender Troy Schwarze explains, who come to the club each week as part of a mentoring program set up by his Aboriginal team-mates Xavier Clarke and Allan Murray.
Thomas has been hanging around in this room - formerly part of the infamous Saints social club where the players of the 1970s and 1980s drank themselves silly after games - on and off for 33 years, since he arrived as a talented, knockabout 15-year-old from bayside Frankston.
It was not a place for salad sandwiches and social welfare programs during Thomas's 10 years at St Kilda, which ended in 1983 after 72 games as a tough centre half-back. As he admits, it was the venue for some of his maddest moments.
"All the players here know I wasn't a saint, so to speak, or didn't have saintly habits," Thomas says.
"I actually had very St Kilda habits, but not saintly habits - and there was a difference back then."
But not now, if Thomas achieves what he believes is his mission in life.
"It is really difficult to have 40 men together and not have issues," he says. "But I see a huge improvement in that area and I see if there are any, albeit slight, indiscretions there is genuine remorse."
Thomas's prime aim since he took over as coach in 2001 has been to ensure the club earns the respect it never had during his playing career.
He was part of the club's laughing stock days, lived its culture of failure from the inside, and is driven to see it erased forever.
"If St Kilda footy club has 100 per cent respect and I don't have any, it doesn't concern me in the slightest," Thomas says.
"It is not about Grant Thomas per se. I have a real passion and determination for St Kilda football club to be respected and successful. Perhaps it is because I came here at 15 and I didn't like what I saw even though I motivated much of it. There is a guilt there from that."
Twenty-five years ago, as now, Thomas was a commanding presence in the room. A leader of the lads with a dangerous charm.
Back then, though, he was more likely to be leading his team-mates astray, rather than his role today leading a group of professional young men into successive finals series.
Post-match in those days, he would have had a beer in one hand and his other around the waist of a buxom blonde.
"I was socially professional," Thomas recalls. "Loved a beer, loved the camaraderie and the spirit of mateship. In the early days football was just a vehicle to get together with the blokes and have fun."
As party animals, the Saints of that era had the best reputation. "Exactly, and we had the worst performance," he says.
At club headquarters this week, Thomas was happy to reflect on the bad old days, something he had not been comfortable doing previously.
Now, as the club sits fourth on the ladder and has gained the credibility he craves, he can talk more freely about the days when it didn't have any.
"You can vouch for my bad behaviour," he says in confessional mood.
(I should also confess to frequenting the Saints social club and disco for a brief period long ago.)
At 15, he learned street smarts from the ultimate 1970s role models - hard-nut players like Carl Ditterich, Jim O'Dea and Cowboy Neale.
"Training and having showers with guys like that ... you grow up pretty quick," he says. "I learnt most things from the mistakes I made. We didn't have trailblazing saints here."
Thomas's wild ways began to temper in the mid-1980s.
Twenty-two years ago he married Kerry, sweet-natured and pretty, who had previously been the girlfriend of team-mate Michael Roberts.
"Kezza", as Thomas calls her, is now mother to his eight children, aged between five and 20. Responsibility brought out the best in him and he went on to have success coaching country football at Warrnambool in Victoria and then in business as a senior manager.
There is permanent chaos with eight kids, but he says he and Kerry love having a full house and don't notice the noise. What interests him most, both at home and the football club, is relationships and understanding why people behave the way they do.
"I like asking why, I do it with the kids and the players," he says. "I say why and you get an answer and then I say why and get an answer and you can keep drilling down to the root cause of the whole issue.
"The players have a bit of fun now, they jump to the root cause rather than going through the process."
In that regard, his chequered past comes in handy, equipping him to guide his own kids as well as the players he considers his mates.
"That forms part of your life and then you have kids and you try to impose the right values on kids and walk away thinking, 'you hypocrite'," he laughs.
"And you have the other dynamic where you are coaching 41 players and there is not much they can get past you because there is nothing I haven't tried."
At a time when players behaving badly make regular headlines, his personal experiences are part of the education process at St Kilda.
"I still remember quite clearly walking into hotels when I was playing footy and you could think of nothing better than to have a few beers and let the hair down and whatever else happens then," Thomas says.
"But I learnt very early to assess the crowd and who was there. There were several times when I evaluated it wasn't the place to be, I just got a bad sense or feeling and convinced the others to go somewhere else and you found out later there was a huge all-in brawl there that night."
When he tells his charges the cost of playing up is too high, it is not theory.
"There is nothing worse than going into a contest with a bit of guilt, because you are living in hope a bit," he says.
He harbours regret from those days, when he didn't do the best for himself or the club.
In 1999, as St Kilda continued to falter, he decided he had to stop complaining and pitch in to help. He went on the board and then in July 2001, as football director, he pushed for the sacking of dual premiership coach Malcolm Blight.
The move shocked the football community and when Thomas was appointed coach, he was vilified by the media.
"Ridiculed is too soft a word," he says. "The way the whole thing came to fruition didn't help the perception (of me) and it is taking a long time for people to rid themselves of that.
"I treat the lack of respect out there as a constant motivation. Not to prove people wrong, because I really don't care externally what people think. If this was about Grant Thomas well I would but it is not, it is about St Kilda footy club.
"I am not about to go and coach another team; this is the task, this is the life-ending venture, I don't know what has happened, or why it has happened.
"I ask myself that question on a regular basis, why am I doing what I am doing? I don't know, I don't know how it came about and I don't know why I have the passion and desire to help St Kilda footy club to be successful."
He does know part of it relates to the death from cancer at age 40 of his revered team-mate Trevor Barker.
"There is a bit of Barks and ... I suppose I got sick and tired of people belittling St Kilda," Thomas says.
"I thought I either have to join them, because it was hard to disagree with, or I have to help change their perception."
This year, at last, he detects a healthy change in attitude towards him from people in the media he says he respects. It is the hard-earned result of lifting the team into the finals three years running despite a devastating series of injuries to key players including Nick Riewoldt last year, Aaron Hamill, brilliant midfielder Lenny Hayes, Justin Koschitzke and most recently defender Matt Maguire.
"It seems like anyone in the leadership group or anyone who is captain ends up getting the curse," Thomas says.
The coach's great strength, according to star player Riewoldt, is his ability to inspire and lift the group to triumph over adversity.
Riewoldt spoke this week of feeling flatter than ever when Maguire broke his leg two weeks ago.
After a sleepless night, Thomas worked a miracle with the group, according to Riewoldt, reminding them of a memorable win against all odds over Adelaide in last year's finals series.
Thomas says he just told the players what Maguire would want.
"I say there are two paths to go down," he says. "One is to compound it and have pity and be victims and have everyone feel sorry for us.
"Or the other one was to continue on a road that has just been made a little bit harder and if we are up for the challenge, when you get harder roads you get more enjoyment when you get through them."
Thomas says adversity has been a great teacher for the team, but he admits the string of injuries has taken an emotional toll.
"What I have found most difficult is you pick yourself up first because you have to, otherwise you are dead, and then you have to pick the team up," he says.
"But I've always found the most difficult period is after that. I have always been reasonably proud of how I am able to pick a group of people up, whether in business or sport or whatever, but it is in that post period when you go home, that next 24 or 48 hours, when you feel so drained, mentally and physically and it is who coaches the coach."
Apart from his wife and kids, he has two mentors who pick him up when he needs it and whose identities he wants kept secret: one a businessman and the other a legend of the club.
His ability to lead is now acknowledged, although queries are still raised about his tactical abilities in the coaching box on match day.
"I usually put up with it and say nothing but you have got me in a good mood and I will say it is just a load of crap, it is ridiculous," Thomas says.
"I have coached for a fair amount of time now, you want to add up five years at Warrnambool with four premierships, and I have either been in a coaches' box or coached for nearly 15 years now. I don't pay any weight to that whatsoever."
Thomas believes that every day in life, we carry a hammer and chisel, slowly carving out the words on our headstone.
He wants his to read, "Hard, fair and helpful", and his legacy to be that he left the St Kilda football club a very different place to what he found it.
"I'd like my legacy to be a spirit of respect. It is something this club has never had a lot of, and I am really determined for the club to be respected on the basis of performance," he says.
