Not back until mid-season: Did Saints do due diligence on King?

Did St Kilda do enough due diligence on Max King before extending his contract?

The injury-prone forward remains sidelined with calf, groin and hamstring soreness after missing the entire 2025 season due to persistent knee issues.

Comments from Saints coach Ross Lyon recently suggested that King could be available to play by Round 4. However, SEN’s Tom Morris is hearing that it won’t be until at least mid-season.

“So Max King is half a season away. He won’t be playing AFL before Round 8-12," said Morris on SEN's Locked In.

As King remains sidelined, Morris and Kane Cornes discussed the contract extension he signed in October 2024 on the back of two seasons which were restricted by injuries.

Cornes still cannot quite believe the Saints rushed to secure him for the long-term with a deal that runs until 2032.

“It was an extension. He had two years left and he signed a six-year extension,” Cornes said.

“He was not coming out of contract until the end of this year. People say ‘well if they didn’t sign him someone else would have got him’. No they wouldn’t! They didn’t have to do anything.

“He wasn’t coming out of contract until this year. How many clubs would have taken him now? None!

“They prematurely signed him, it was ridiculous. We called it out at the time and it looks horrifically worse now.”

Morris said he touched base with some list managers to understand if the Saints had undertaken due diligence on such an injury-stricken player.

“The estimates form rival clubs I spoke to is he’s on about $1.1-1.2 million a year on average, but it’s front-ended,” he said.

“What I found out is he didn’t have a medical before he re-signed with St Kilda. I’m not a medical person and I don’t know how it plays out behind the scenes when someone is re-signing, so I spoke to four list managers.

“I asked, ‘Is it normal to have your player undergo a medical before you re-sign them?’. Two of them said it’s a bit abnormal because you know their medical history anyway.

“The other two said you need to give a medical to every player that re-signs so that when they do re-sign, particularly long-term, you can go to the board sand say ‘this is all the information about this player, this is why I think they deserve a six-year extension’.

“So, make your own mind up. This is a question: Did St Kilda do enough due diligence before extending him by six years?”

It prompted a back and forth between the two.

Cornes: “It would be a surprise to me if the current club had to do a medical. I would have spoken to my club doctor every day.”

Morris: “One of the clubs I spoke to formalised a medical even if for a one or two-year deal.”

Cornes: “There’s no harm in spending an hour and getting a proper medical done and documenting everything. But that doesn’t mean the next day after he signs the deal you can’t go and do your knee at training.

“So how much protection does a medical actually give you?”

Morris: “It protects the list manager, doesn’t it?”

Cornes: “Perhaps, but it’s still hard to forecast ahead a six-year extension on top of two (existing) that he’s going to be ok.

“I would think they were intimately aware of everything Max was dealing with from a body point of view.”

Morris: “There is a difference of opinion of people around Max King and around St Kilda as to how much due diligence St Kilda did.

“St Kilda will say they did everything they could. But there is a view that they didn’t do enough to understand his body before they signed him to a six-year extension.”

Cornes: “What St Kilda did, they need to put their hand up and say ‘we made one of the almighty blunders in the history of the game’.”

Morris: “You know they’ll never say that. And he might still have a good last three or four years of the contract as well.”

Cornes: “Well they need him now after Cooper Sharman dropped about 10 marks on the weekend and I don’t think Rowan Marshall is going to be the long-term solution as a key forward.”