Culture Club
The history of the St. Kilda Football Club is littered with failure, inadequacy and dishonourable off-field mismanagement.
The history of the St. Kilda Football Club is littered with failure, inadequacy and dishonourable off-field mismanagement. Formed in 1873, the club has hoisted the premiership cup just once, that lone triumph coming via a wobbly, ill-directed snap from the foot of Barry Breen way back in 1966 against a Collingwood side in the midst of the most infamous run of misfortune and calamity in football history. For the Saints’ many supporters, it serves as both a high watermark and an irritating reminder of their clubs habitual ineptitude. As with England’s glorious World Cup victory the very same year, it represents a sepia-toned juxtaposition completely at odds with the truth of their plight. For those too young to have witnessed it, its existence is akin to conspiracy theories surrounding the moon landing.
Indeed, 1966 was part of a golden age for St. Kilda. They topped the table for the first time in 1965 before falling short in the big one, then came ’66 and another Grand Final appearance in 1971, a narrow defeat this time at the hands of Hawthorn. Between 1965 and 1973 the Saints competed in the finals seven times. In the days of the final four and then five, this was the record of a successful club, a consistent contender.
Of course, the club would not taste September action again for a generation, yet even when they did the litany of wooden spoons and sacked coaches continued. It was not until the Ross Lyon epoch with a glut of top draft picks in tow that St. Kilda would look anything like reversing their past. Even the brief flirtation with success that was 1997 seemed only to confirm their place in the scheme of things.
Undeniably, 2009 was the greatest single season in Saints history and one of the most dominant on record. 20 wins, two narrow losses and at three quarter time on Grand Final day they had extended their lead at every change. That they would then succumb to a mighty Geelong – and in doing so become the only team in history to lose just the final quarter of a decider and fail to become premiers – says everything about St. Kilda’s existence, as if the players were thespians living up to a pre-ordained role. That the whole rigmarole of heartbreak was to recur the following year solidifies the suspicion.
Two seasons in a row they were just a kick, a leap, a bounce away from immortality. Something that galling could only come to pass at St. Kilda.
Coming into 2014 the club is one of the favourites to register a mind-blowing 27th wooden spoon. To put that into perspective, that means finishing with the worst record in the competition in almost a quarter of all league seasons. They have just sacked another coach and are a club once again in disarray. It is a cycle their fans are all too familiar with.
Contrast this with the fortunes of Hawthorn, another club that was mired in perpetual ineptitude for more than half a century from their formation. It took the Hawks 37 years and 11 wooden spoons before they won their inaugural league premiership in 1961. Unlike the Saints, Hawthorn has parlayed that success into a further ten flags in the ensuing six decades, making them one of the true powerhouses of Australian sport.
The reverse can also be true. Melbourne, the foundation club of the code, was the dominant side in the game throughout the 1950’s and early 1960’s, winning six premierships in a decade – a run of success the equal of anything ever achieved. When they saluted for a 12th premiership in 1964 no-one could have foreseen that 50 years later they would have failed to add to the tally. The monolith that is Richmond has endured the very same phenomenon.
It seems that a club’s providence can be altered positively or negatively only by a seismic event; a premiership, the arrival of a prominent and influential figure or, as with Norm Smith at the Demons, a shameful decision at board level that tore the club apart. Even then, how do those events in isolation continue to ripple for generations and why did the Saints, unlike the Hawks, return to type? Perhaps players and coaches engrossed in a club culture that is predicated upon being the underdog are more likely to be accepting when they fall short.
Dr Lionel Frost, in his outstanding history of the Carlton Football Club, described it thus:
“In some respects the game is a simple one – great players can make it seem more so – less obvious are the complex factors that impinge on the fortunes of clubs. The result of any given match is thus the outcome of a multitude of decisions made not only by those involved directly in the game – players, coaches and umpires – but also club officials who have in the past made decisions about recruiting and player payments. Every football club has a history that shapes what it can do and how well it can do it. Only an interpretation that takes these forces into account can explain… success, on and off the field.”
Just three clubs have been routinely successful for essentially their entire existence – Carlton, Collingwood and Essendon – and it’s therefore no surprise that they are clearly the three most triumphant in the game. Even when these sides are in a slump there is genuine belief that the next premiership is imminent. Their club culture stubbornly refuses to accept a position of mediocrity even when, as with the Blues and Bombers, they haven’t been near a flag in well over a decade. Is that delusion or well-founded confidence?
Either way, supporters of St. Kilda and the Western Bulldogs, with just a premiership apiece, hold dear the examples of modern fairytale stories in Geelong and the Sydney Swans, both of whom until recently hadn’t succeeded since the advent of decimal currency, or in Sydney’s case, before WWII. The Cats and Swans have been able to capitalise on the changing face of the game to produce golden eras that could well revise the course of club history for decades.
With draft and salary cap measures designed to have all on an level playing field, it defies logic that some teams are hindered by constant incompetence while others continue to thrive regardless. Surely with all things being equal, that indefinable thing that is club culture must have its invisible hand somewhere near the wheel.