Victoria
South Australia
With calls for a Tasmanian AFL team gathering significant momentum, outspoken ex-St Kilda coach Grant Thomas believes the Saints' future in the competition is in serious jeopardy.
Speaking on SEN SA Breakfast on Wednesday, Thomas, who was at the helm at Moorabbin for 123 games between 2001-2006, said the poorly-performed clubs, of which St Kilda is one, are under the cosh.
"I don't think Melbourne can continually sustain 10 clubs forever, and I think Tasmania absolutely deserves to have an AFL football team," Thomas said.
"I'm sure there's going to be further expansion around the country, as well, and that's only going to put pressure on the lowly-performing AFL teams that continue to invent ways to stuff things up, which St Kilda's quite clearly in that category at the moment."
If they handed premierships out to the team that was most inventive, innovative and focussed on stuffing things up I reckon my Saints would be on top with 43 premierships! So sad.
— Grant Thomas (@Thomo_Grant) March 26, 2019
Thomas said, "it would be disastrous" and "I would hate it", and admitted he would be willing to "help try and do something about it".
He claims the Saints can ill-afford to keep making "outrageous mistakes".
"I've got to be perfectly honest, if you're running a book (setting odds) on who's the most likely club to have the spotlight on them if one had to go out of Melbourne, I'm sure, if they're not short-priced favourites, you could throw a blanket over one or two of them," said Thomas.
"If you did a straw poll on which club tends to make the most outrageous mistakes, I think St Kilda would be regarded by most to be top of the tree.
"We make some really good decisions in amongst it, but we make some really poor ones."
Thomas conceded he too made mistakes during his time at the club, despite coaching the club to consecutive preliminary finals in 2004-05.
"I was a part of some myself, I'm not abstaining myself from anything, I just think that as a club we haven't grown up in that regard and that's why we've won one premiership by one point in 150 years," he said.
Thomas also questioned the Saints' decision to appoint administrators Simon Lethlean and Graeme Allan.
Former AFL operations manager Lethlean was hired to head up St Kilda's football department after resigning from the governing body because of "inappropriate relationships with two younger women who work in the AFL industry".
Allan, meanwhile, who was handed a 12-month suspension as a result of the Lachie Whitfield drugs saga, has an advisory role within the club's football program.
"You always give someone a second chance, but I find it really interesting how the whole thing panned out," Thomas remarked.
"Two of the people that are seemingly in the most control at St Kilda have had some quite serious allegations levelled against them at AFL and then (have) been booted out of there or had been suspended or whatever and now they're running (the) St Kilda Footy Club.
"On one side of the coin you can say 'we're getting what we should expect', on the other side of the coin you've got to say, 'give them a chance and see how they go'.
"The jury's still out and we'll wait and see."
