The Saints in trouble - very broad topic

[alwaysadog]

St Kilda hasn’t handled this matter well from the beginning, not in terms of dealing with that part of the girl’s claims that were genuine nor with the PR aspects. In fact they make the bluebagger filth’s attempts to deal with the boatgate boozing episode look consummately professional. Andie D must hate the off season.

Aints supporters must hate seeing the club’s reputation continuously trashed and wonder if they’ll ever be back in the headlines for the right reasons, and the board members must be wondering if sleepless nights are a permanent feature of the job.

Just when peace seemed to have been declared between the teenage girl and the club we have two signs of the matter further unravelling, from their own doing, and perhaps the first public signs that its impact is beyond their control.

The first is their blond haired flipper reacting to a couple of wannabe toughs taunting him. I don’t know what happened in any detail, but why the hell wouldn’t he have got straight back into his car and gone elsewhere, as soon as the nonsense began.

Problem one he has created for himself is that now every hoon knows he can be got to react, and some of them play AFL football, so even game time isn’t going to be hassle free in that regard, and every time he is in public he’ll know some f...wit is waiting for his chance at glory.

Problem two he seems to have created for the club, they now feel they have to protect him... and probably others, as if they didn’t have enough problems before these. Now I acknowledge that Rossie L could have been lead on by a journalist or two, but what was going through his head when he bit at the bait dangled before him and launched into a reminder that the AFL would act against sledging.

This is a funny psychology it seems to suggest that we know we are vulnerable and big brother will look after us. Publicly admitting to a weakness, which seems the subtext of his amazing outburst, is not clever and it is contradictory to the line they have been running, if not in fact at least in terms of perceived impact.

I don’t know who is advising them but they either aren’t listening or the advice they are getting is just plain stupid: they stumble from one mistake to the next and complicate matters along the way. Whoever smoked the peace pipe with the girl must have thought now we can breathe. Well the clean air they sought has been again fouled completely by their own actions. And they can’t blame the girl, this time they have done it on their own and in the process negated their core and only strategy.

While I didn’t always like his ruthlessness, the ghost of Graeme Richmond sits on my shoulder as I write. The doyen of facing the enemy and turning every crisis into an opportunity reminds me that he would have taken charge. Any player or staff member who said a word about the issue, or did anything more than walk away when it was mentioned would be threatened with eternal damnation, while he set to and fixed the matter, and then he would have turned it into an “it’s us against the world situation”.

Strength in adversity and an opportunity to forget any self doubts and a chance to show your mates that in any situation you are not only by their side but prepared to risk life and limb for the cause would have been the mantra.

But if the flipper is losing it and the coach is getting trapped who do they have to lead?

It’s still possible for them to make some sense of this issue and get back onto a positive course, but they are so far behind on the matter and they have so compounded the problem that it’s hard to see that happening. Maybe the media and the public will tire of it, after all it’s not riveting reading or watching and the prurient interest doesn’t last forever, or does it?