Malcolm Blight's Sacking

[nicko016]

Just wondering if someone could explain the series of events that occured leading to his sacking and after. I was fairly young when that happened and didn't follow the club as much as I do. Until recently, I just assumed that GT was an assistant coach under Blight, so I really don't know what happened. Anything would be appreciated.

 

[Munga]

Apparently he bogeyed the 10th and lost the plot after that.

 

[Lindner Wazzagun]

GT was installed as an interim coach and Butterrs gave him the job of head hunting a permanent coach. GT didn't have to look far....he appointed himself.

 

[Kildonan]

Malcolm Blight had retired to a lovely home on the Gold Coast.
He was finacially well off and had guaranteed income if he wanted it through the media.

St Kilda's 1997 Grand Finalist team had been decimated by Tim Watson. He took what was essentially our grand finalist team and left when he had coached them to the wooden spoon. Watson frequently overruled our recruiting officer and our squad was in bad shape.

Tim Watson’s resignation late in 2000 was the trigger for a changing of the guard across the board, and Andrew Plympton followed suit by stepping down as President after a reign, which had seen the Club’s financial situation turned around completely.

Blight was approached by the St Kilda football club to coach in late 2000 for the 2001 season. He was interested but declined at first. The club sent representatives including some young players to the Gold Coast to meet with him. He was offered $1 million dollars to coach for a year with the freedom to trade for players and build a team around the two new star recruits (Saints had picks #1 and #2 in the draft). He began to gain enthusiasm and did a lot of research with the club on who was available on the trade table and who they were willing to trade from their own list.

He accepted the position and was instrumental in enticing players to the club that probably would have declined the offer had he not been coach. (Such was the low opinion of our club at the time).

So who had departed and who were the new recruits besides the expected messiah Malcolm Blight? From the 2000 list 15 players had departed. Some had retired, others had moved on to other clubs while others drifted into obscurity. They were;

Matthew Carr: To Fremantle where he is still playing well.
Sam Cranage: To Carlton as part of the Aaron Hamill deal.
Joe McLaren: Off to the Roos where he was to play a few more AFL games.
David Sierakowski: To the Eagles
Darryl Wakelin: To the Power where he was to become a Premiership player.
Fred Campbell: Unknown
Damien Monkhorst: To a brief sojourn in minor football
Ben Thompson: Retired
Tony Brown: To the SANFL
Jason Heatley: Bobbed up in the Tasmanian VFL team
Kurt Heazlewood: Unknown
Gavin Mitchell: Did he return to the West?
Murray Pitts: Unknown
Steven Sziller: To the Tigers for a brief extension of his career.
Shane Wakelin: Delisted and on his way to the Pies.

The arrivals were expected to add enough to the Saints firepower to have us in contention for a finals berth come late August. They were:

Craig Callaghan: From the Dockers and expected to add much needed grunt.
Matthew Capuano: It was hoped he would free up Spider and allow him to spend more time up forward.
Fraser Gehrig: Coming home after success with the Eagles.
Aaron Hamill: To the Saints after his well publicised spat with “Jack” Elliott.
Steven Lawrence: To his Dad’s club after some up and down years with the Lions.
Brett Moyle: From the Rookie list.
Mark Gale: Ex Docker.
Justin Koschitzke: Number 2 in the national draft.
Robert Powell: From the Tigers.
Nick Riewoldt: Number 1 in the national draft
Daniel Wulf: Taken in the national draft
Brett Voss: Picked up in the pre season draft from the Lions.

The Rookies in 2001 were, Justin Berry, Chris Oliver, Mark Wittison and Stephen Milne.

When Malcolm came to Moorabbin to coach, he was dismayed at the state of the facilities and the mindset of the entrenched players. He had coached Adelaide previously, one of the newest clubs yet one of the wealthiest clubs with state of the art facilities. He set about to change the culture of the club.

What happened ?

Malcolm Blight did a number of important things for the club, but despite promising the club he would move back to Melbourne, his home was still the Gold Coast. He commuted to Melbourne for training and stayed there for the matches, but still resided in Queensland. He was apparently not available for periods during each week. He played golf with more enthusiasm than his football commitments. He humiliated the players after a loss, making them train publically after completing the match. His methods were bizarre and he played some of our better players in positions where they were ineffective. Eventually the club's continued poor performance became a topic of several board meetings and it was decided that Blights commitment was not commensurate with the St Kilda committee’s expectations nor the huge salary they were paying him. After 15 weeks he had been sacked.

Grant Thomas became “caretaker coach” while they searched for a replacement. At that stage, (Round 16, 2001) the Saints had lost 41 of their last 49 games.

Thomas's intentions, it seemed, were to make the players prove they deserved their spot on the list and set about giving them the opportunity to commit themselves to an improved individual effort for the remainder of the season.

He was basically treating the remaining 7 weeks as a head start for next season's preseason.

In the meantime, the club set about searching for a coach to replace Blight.

 

[sauce_head]

GT was installed as an interim coach and Butterrs gave him the job of head hunting a permanent coach. GT didn't have to look far....he appointed himself.

That is not strictly correct. A panel was set up to evaluate available coaches and at the end of the review they recommended GT. The criteria was never released which posed some commentators to question how a coach that did not have any AFL experience could win out against assistant coaches that did. That arguement was countered with leadership ability.

The reason for Blights sacking, I believe, came to a head when he failed to turn up to a club function. The board took the opinion that if you wanted to be a part of the new St Kilda culture you must live for the club, the club does not live for you. It was a very strange time but if you look beyond the hype and the accusations of "jobs for the boys" it made some sense. Blight did not seem to have his heart in it, certainly something you could not accuse GT of.

 

[nicko016]

Thanks All, particularly St Kildonan. During the short period Blight was coach before he was sacked was GT involved in the club such as board member or football operations manager or anything?

 

[Kildonan]

Grant Thomas was a board member - he held the post of football director.

Grant Thomas did it his way
15 September 2006 Herald-Sun
Trevor Grant

BEFORE the fall that shook the football world this week, the rise of Grant Thomas at St Kilda was one of unerring, seemingly unstoppable momentum.

It began in 1999 when the Saints had reverted to type after a brief period of success and sunk back into the mire of perennial failure.

Thomas, a former player and assistant coach, wanted to help. So he put himself forward to the then-president Andrew Plympton.

As it turned out, the timing was perfect. The team, under coach Tim Watson, was in free fall on the ladder. The departure of Stuart Trott as the football director on the board created a vacancy.

Plympton, president since 1993, had resolved to go the following year, once he'd seen through the deal to move to Docklands from Waverley.

"Thommo approached me during the year and said, 'I'm interested. I've got a lot of time and I've got a mate of mine called Rod Butterss, who has just recently sold his business and wants to get involved as well.' So I introduced them both back to the club," Plympton said yesterday.

Plympton, who oversaw the departures of three coaches, Ken Sheldon, Stan Alves and Watson, said it did not take long for Thomas to assert himself as a new board member. "I guess, within a very short period of time, Thommo had made himself well-known and his presence well felt around the club. He became very active in a lot of things."

As has happened throughout Thomas's tenure at Moorabbin, his intentions, rightly or wrongly, instantly became a subject of discussion. People found it hard to take him at face value. Plympton was one of those, although he admits at times he didn't quite know why.

"He was so active so quickly that, when I looked back, I asked, 'What was driving it?'. Was it his desire to firmly entrench himself as football director? Where did he want to be with the club?" he said.

"All of a sudden, Thommo had taken some giant steps. Tim Watson was struggling at the time and Thommo took an absolute lead on these things. He took the initiative to become his (Watson's) sounding board and mentor.

"I saw him (Thomas) once in the coach's box and wondered if footy directors should be that closely involved. But you tend to take things on face value, that everyone is there to help.

"I can speculate forever about his motives but he certainly rolled up his sleeves and got very much involved in the club."

It turned out that all this energy and blinkered intent produced one of the swiftest and most controversial ascents in AFL.

He was part of the Butterss-led board that sacked Malcolm Blight 15 games into his tenure. Then, with nothing more than Warrnambool and Old Xaverians on his senior coaching CV, he became Saints coach.

All the way through his 5 1/2 years as team boss, which saw the club play in finals for three successive seasons, he was never accorded the same respect as other coaches. Again people couldn't quite stop suspecting his motives.

To explain this, some at St Kilda point to a trail of broken relationships through his time in football, beginning with 1994-98 coach Alves, for whom he acted as an assistant, and more recently Saints 323-gamer Nathan Burke, who resigned after spending 2004-2005 as one of his offsiders.

Relations had also deteriorated with a few board members, and there was the fallout last year with former best mate Butterss. However, it should be noted that the people who never doubted the sincerity of his motives were those with whom he worked most closely.

Although the likes of veteran Fraser Gehrig could not see eye-to-eye with him, the bulk of the team were in his camp right to the bitter end.