The squabbling Saints
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ST. KILDA are proof that a squabbling club cannot win Premierships. Over the years they have had the talent, coaches and money to win Premierships and yet they have never really gone close to winning one. The couple of times they have made the finals and looked possibilities they have blundered in selection of unfit players or their players have faltered under the increased tension of finals play.
Their list of best ever players compares favourably with the greats of any other V.F.L. club and that goes right back to 1925 with their first Brownlow winner, Col Watson. The history of the club is one of back-biting, strife and disagreement. A trail of coaching rows and feuding between committee men. A couple of losses is all they need to stir up a fight and they have more post mortems on a defeat than they have at the city morgue.
They have had the added burden of a hostile cricket club sparking off the rumours. One coach dubbed the club bar ‘The Oven’. ‘They’re always cooking somebody,’ he said. ‘Generally the coach.’
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St. Kilda are progressive, I’ll give them that much. The negotiations to switch to Moorabbin were ruthless and daring and their supporters started the new system of mass purchase of class players in defiance of the Coulter Law. They seem to have the mortgage on the star players of Tasmania. Verdun Howell (right) and Darrel Baldock are two of the classiest players ever to leave the Apple Isle and there were plenty of big offers for their services.
They are buying class but they cannot buy harmony and until they get a united committee, working together for the best interests of the club and letting the coach run the players, they will always be a brilliantly disappointing side.
They are inclined to do silly things at St. Kilda. I can remember the origin of the crest on the guernsey over the player’s heart. It came after a torrid match against North when they finished with only 16 players and the Saint committee decided to add the crest to signify their courage. If Collingwood and Richmond players were given a crest every time they displayed courage, we would have had to have 100 guernseys to fit the crests on. It made them the laughing stock of the League.
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One of their greats was full-forward Bill Mohr (left), the boy from Wagga. He was renowned for his accuracy and he gave St. Kilda plenty of bite on their forward line. He knocked up kicking 100 goals in a season but still they couldn’t make the finals. In 196 matches he kicked 735 goals and it wasn’t through talking or the feeding by his team that he got them.
He was a quiet player but he had to go out and get his own goals and he could kick them from 70 yards and he got those goals against the full backs Regan, Sheahan, Jocker Todd, Hillis and Gill. He beat them all at one stage or another. Imagine the damage he would have wreaked for a side who played through him. If the Saints had Bill Mohr they would be winning Premierships not struggling to make the finals.
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The trouble with St. Kilda until recently was that they lived in the past. Committee men and supporters derived consolation in years of football depression by romancing about the wonderful kicking feats of Dave McNamara (right), he has been credited with the kick of 96 yards in a match and they say he has even exceeded 100 yards. But you can’t live in the past. The only memories to glory are in Premiership memories and that’s what a side is there for, to win Premierships, and if you are not winning them you are letting your club and your supporters down.
My first taste of captaincy came in a St. Kilda game and it was in their first Premiership win—the 1940 Lightning Premiership. These matches lasted only 20 minutes and being slow starters we didn’t give ourselves a show. So the stars went off to the races while they let the youngsters play.
By a football miracle we won our way into the final against St. Kilda and all our stars beat hasty retreats from the races to the M.C.G. to take part in the final match. I was captain, deputizing for Perc Bentley, who had also gone to the races. I refused to let them play, including Bentley. The kids had taken us into the final and I decided to give them the chance to win. Bentley took it well, but St. Kilda beat us. It was a big day for the Saints. Understandable, I suppose, because, apart from winning the Lake Premiership a few times, they had never won a Premiership. They have a night Premiership since, but still the big one eludes them.
They looked the part in 1950, winning their first five on end and Richmond’s scalp was one of those hanging from their belt. It went to their heads. You were lucky to be able to talk to a St. Kilda They forgot there were 18 matches and in a row with their captain I got a bit heated. We exchanged words and I blew up. ‘Don’t run away with the idea you are a good side. You won’t even make the four.’
I was a bit dirty on being beaten and they were brave words about a side with unbeaten record of five straight wins. My prediction seemed to spark a collapse. They won only three of their next 13 games. That should have proved to them a season of football is a long arduous fines and every game a game unto itself. That collapse sent them into a spin and they spent a number of seasons drifting round the bottom of the ladder.
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The Saints' lack of success made me feel sorry for one of the best footballers they ever produced, Harold ‘Squeaky’ Bray (left). He was a brilliant centreman and all you had to do was hold him to an ordinary game and the Saints were beaten. The problem being to hold him. He was photo-finished out of a Brownlow and was another of the unlucky tribe who fully deserved to win one.
The old St. Kilda deserved roasting, but it now seems they have learned their lesson by their numerous mistakes. They still have the bickering in committee but there seem to be some men at the top who have a positive approach. Most important, they have prevented further coaching flare-ups, which have marred the club in the past, by giving Alan Jeans a long-term contract.
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Yabby Jeans (right) was never a great as a footballer but as a coach he is proving himself. He sneaked into the position when he was a 100/1 outsider and St. Kilda were engrossed in another of their rows. It looked like they wanted a yes man in the appointment of the quiet young policeman. Instead they found themselves a coach with a positive approach and able to infuse teamwork and a little bit of enthusiasm into the team. With the smart, energetic secretary from Tasmania, Ian Drake, they gathered the plums of Tasmanian football and built a side good enough to win a flag.
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And it is time the St. Kilda battlers saw a Premiership. Players of the calibre and zeal of Eric Guy, Mohr and Bray deserved it, but nobody deserves one more than Alan Morrow. He has carried the burden at St. Kilda for years and at last he is being helped by brilliant youngsters like Carl Ditterich. And, mark my words, Ditterich is a player who could become the greatest of the great.
I have been accused of slamming this brilliant footballer. I don’t see it that way. As a youngster I did silly things and any criticism I have made of the Blond Bombshell has been directed at putting him on the right path. This is one fellow I want to see hit the high spots. He’s all colour and good for the game and I wish we had him at Richmond. Only injury can stop him, he’s over that early self-importance stage.
With Baldock at the helm St. Kilda look good. Dazzling Darrel is one of the most skilled players I have seen. If St. Kilda cannot notch a Premiership with these players, or other players of the same calibre, then they never will. Some teams just have that tragic knack of being losers and St. Kilda have always been one of them.
Footnotes
An excerpt from Captain Blood: Jack Dyer as told to Brian Hansen. Published in 1965 by Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd.
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