“Really unfair”: Hinkley corrects mistruths around Blight’s Saints sacking

Malcolm Blight endured a short and turbulent tenure as senior coach of St Kilda back in 2001.

The Saints splashed the cash to lure the two-time Adelaide Crows premiership coach to Moorabbin after a couple of average years under Tim Watson.

But the move lasted less than a year with Blight given his marching orders after 15 games which included only three wins.

Joining Blight at Linton Street was his former flying Geelong defender Ken Hinkley who recalled the brutality of the axing decision made by president-at-the-time Rod Butterss.

“I lived that one. It was really brutal and really unfair for lots of reasons,” Hinkley said on SEN SA’s The Run Home.

“I’m not going to go into them now because it will only cause problems for people who were a part of it at some point.

“Malcolm took on the job as Malcolm Blight. I think the difference was St Kilda didn’t realise exactly who Malcolm Blight was.

“Malcolm coached the way he’d always coached in my view. I’d been around and played under Malcolm so I knew exactly the type of person (he was).”

Hinkley insists that Blight didn’t do anything differently to how he would have coached at the Cats and Crows prior.

“Nah, not from my point of view,” he added.

“He was a big believer in players more often than not. He had some really strong standards and he made some of those standards clear when he first got to Adelaide.

“He made some clinical and critical changes.”

There was a rumour that Blight was more interested in his golf handicap than coaching the Saints. Butterss had even later questioned Blight’s commitment to the cause.

But Hinkley couldn’t quite fathom that notion.

“That was totally untrue,” Hinkley replied.

“The story was what he did on his day off is he played golf, like every player in the world now that’s playing football.

“Blighty on his day off liked to have a game of golf - good on him and so he should - you don’t want to be working 24/7, you need to have some break in the traffic.

“He put so much time into the other sides of the game like reviewing the game and things like that. He was probably ahead of his time with some of that stuff. He needed to know exactly what was going on.”

Hinkley explained what he believes to be a misconstrued incident prior to a clash with the Lions in Brisbane which just so happened to be Blight’s second last game in charge of the Saints.

“There was a game in Brisbane at the Gabba and Blighty, (assistant coach) Peter Jonas and myself went up the day earlier because Malcolm still had his place on the Gold Coast,” the former Port Adelaide coach continued.

“We stayed the night there and had a game of golf, and then we’d meet the players at the Gabba. That is the only thing that happened. The only difference was that he didn’t fly on the same flight as the players on the day of the game.

“I didn’t see it as massively critical but the results weren’t going great and results get everyone.”

Kenny said his loyalty to Blight prompted he and fellow assistant Jonas to step away from the Saints not long after the master coach was given the flick, with Grant Thomas stepping in.

“Peter Jonas and myself left the club almost immediately in support of Malcolm,” Hinkley said further.

“I did the one game (against the Western Bulldogs) the next weekend when Grant Thomas took over, but Peter and myself met up with Jim Watts who was the CEO at the time.

“We had a discussion around wanting to support Malcolm and leaving at the right time.”

Hinkley added: “From my point of view I see Malcolm as Malcolm. I loved him and still do.

“That was one of the big sackings, that was pretty big.”

And Hinkley reckons Blight never took a payout from the Saints after he was dismissed less than a year into his initial three-year contract.

“One thing about Malcolm is he didn’t believe in payouts. He was big on the fact that you do your job - if you’re doing the job you deserve to get paid, if you’re not doing the job you don’t deserve to get paid.”