Speaker 1: What would have happened if they had done that to
Speaker 1: Ken Sheldon or even a Stan Elks later on down
Speaker 1: the line at Grand Thomas. All of those three in
Speaker 1: particular had the makings of a great coach. Given the
Speaker 1: right support, given the right background. What could we have done?
Speaker 1: But Saint Kilda's history has always been no, we need
Speaker 1: someone else to put the icing on a cake. And
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit concerned about the sort the Ratten
Speaker 1: and lion that is, this history of repeating itself.
Speaker 2: I'm John Ralph and I'm Glenn MacFarlane.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Sacked, a podcast that explores what really happens
Speaker 3: when the ax falls in the AFL world. Will take
Speaker 3: you behind the scenes with some of the biggest names
Speaker 3: in football and find out how they found out, how
Speaker 3: time was up and.
Speaker 2: Who pulled the trigger.
Speaker 3: Sacked AFL is made possible with the support of subscribers
Speaker 3: to The Herald Sun. To find out more, go to
Speaker 3: Herald Sun dot com or download the Herald Sun app
Speaker 3: at your.
Speaker 2: App store Today.
Speaker 4: The Saint with a Helmet Part one of our chat
Speaker 4: with Nathan Burke. Nathan Burke was still a young Frankston
Speaker 4: school kid when he's picked to make his taboo for
Speaker 4: the Saints, but he became a legend of the Red,
Speaker 4: White and Black with involvement in Arabin Across four decades.
Speaker 4: He played with some of the greatest names of the
Speaker 4: modern era Lockett, Frawley, Harvey Windmar across three hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty three games as the bedrock of a Saints team
Speaker 4: whose fortunes fluctuated wildly. And if that wasn't enough, once
Speaker 4: his playing career ended, he wound up with a seat
Speaker 4: on the Saints board as well, and a front row
Speaker 4: seat to the turmoil that was the end of Ross
Speaker 4: Lyon's first tenure as Saints coach.
Speaker 3: So Nathan Burke, three outed in twenty three games, seventeen seasons,
Speaker 3: thirty three possessions in the nineteen ninety seven Grand Final,
Speaker 3: a hugely decorated career. But you've never been sacked until
Speaker 3: last November, so you were never eligible for this podcast.
Speaker 1: So Burkie, welcome to Sacked. Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to meet the criteria.
Speaker 2: We always talk about it.
Speaker 3: You know, when your head hits the pillow at night,
Speaker 3: do you think about being a great father and a
Speaker 3: great husband to your wife, or a great footballer and
Speaker 3: a Football Hall of Fame member, or are you talking
Speaker 3: do you think about the low points of being sacked
Speaker 3: and not quite getting close? What's your overall feelings of
Speaker 3: an extraordinary career in life?
Speaker 1: It comes and goes to be totally. There are times
Speaker 1: when when you're laying there and sort of the injustice
Speaker 1: sort of filters through the brain and I could add
Speaker 1: this conversation and I should have said this and should
Speaker 1: have done that. But then you sort of move on
Speaker 1: very very quickly from there and you look back on
Speaker 1: all the good times.
Speaker 2: Was it right?
Speaker 4: One of your coaches, one of your early coaches said,
Speaker 4: don't have any regrets?
Speaker 1: Was that I was, yeah, Daryl Bulldock right at the
Speaker 1: very very start, and I remember getting called up into
Speaker 1: his little office up there in the old grandstand at
Speaker 1: Rabin and he just said you could make me a promise,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, I'm fine, I'll do anything that
Speaker 1: you want, Doc, And he just said that when you're
Speaker 1: get kicked out of here, whether it be one game,
Speaker 1: hundred games, throw under games, whatever it is, look back
Speaker 1: and say that you've got no regrets. You gave it everything,
Speaker 1: and then you can when you're an old farts in
Speaker 1: your rocking chair. You can look back and be pleased
Speaker 1: with what your whatever, your talent allowed you to get.
Speaker 5: And that's what always stuck with it.
Speaker 4: And did you think about that conversation over the journey
Speaker 4: that you went through, even with the Bulldogs, did you
Speaker 4: think about that?
Speaker 2: Ye, that conversation with a great doc.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And everything I do at the moment
Speaker 1: I still sort of put through that lens. Am I
Speaker 1: giving it my all. You give it, you're all. It's
Speaker 1: harder to quit when you're giving it.
Speaker 5: You're all.
Speaker 1: You know exactly how good you are and where you
Speaker 1: need to work when you're giving it you're all. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just been a mancha that the great Man has
Speaker 1: sort of left with me.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty good feeling about looking the mirror and
Speaker 3: feel proud of what you've done, aware of your shortcomings.
Speaker 2: It's a rare person that can do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, look, I'm absolutely aware of my shortcomings.
Speaker 1: Saints past players had a raiser a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago and they showed a game from I think it
Speaker 1: was my last season two thousand and three Fraser Gary
Speaker 1: Kick nine. We played North Melbourne at the Docklands. We
Speaker 1: were in front. They came back and as we highlights
Speaker 1: first three quarters, watch the last quarter, all I could
Speaker 1: think of was in that last quarter the scores or level,
Speaker 1: I got the footy and I panicked, and I handballed
Speaker 1: straight to Adam Simpson who kicked the point to put
Speaker 1: them in the fat last.
Speaker 5: Minutes ago.
Speaker 1: And it's funny the things that come from I cannot
Speaker 1: remember anything else in the game. It was actually the
Speaker 1: game when I equaled Stuart Lowe's the record game. All
Speaker 1: I could think of was, they're going to show this
Speaker 1: me making a handball mistake in the last quarter, making
Speaker 1: a Really that's just what sort of goes ahead. And
Speaker 1: the things that I remember, so I try and put
Speaker 1: them aside. But it's probably a legacy of getting the
Speaker 1: most out of it yourself that you possibly can, is
Speaker 1: that you've got to recognize the mistakes that you make
Speaker 1: and then try and correct them. But I knew it
Speaker 1: was coming on you. It was coming, and when it
Speaker 1: did happen, all the crowd grown and looked at me
Speaker 1: and oh, and they sort of laughed at I might
Speaker 1: have lost the game, but luckily we wouldn't have played
Speaker 1: a game that we lost. And so Robert Harvey got
Speaker 1: the ball in middle of the ground, two bounces hit
Speaker 1: Fraser geig And on the chest and kicked his ninth
Speaker 1: and were won by five points.
Speaker 2: And the day as he has for something as well
Speaker 2: as Sint Kilda, just added the kid from the Pines.
Speaker 2: It used to get fifty cents.
Speaker 5: It was right.
Speaker 4: I think Ralphie wrote the story for your Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: Fifty cents for a pine a coke from your dad
Speaker 4: to hang around. How did that kid become a some
Speaker 4: kilder player?
Speaker 1: Probably My father's mantra was play every sport that you can,
Speaker 1: and the one that you love the best is the
Speaker 1: one that you're probably going to practice the most, and
Speaker 1: you want to go to training, you'll end up being
Speaker 1: the best at That's what we did. We played basketball, cricket,
Speaker 1: everything that we possibly could, and my junior years were
Speaker 1: very formative. He was coaching down the local Frankston areas
Speaker 1: down at the Pines and so we'd get there at
Speaker 1: sort of nine o'clock in the morning for the thirds
Speaker 1: and then he's fifty cents pine and cann of coke,
Speaker 1: something to eat, and when the final sign went for
Speaker 1: the seniors, you had to be back at the car
Speaker 1: and that's what it was, and so you just hang
Speaker 1: out for the breaks and quarter a time, halftime out
Speaker 1: and the ovell kicking the footy around. And that probably
Speaker 1: love of footy enabled me to just sort of go
Speaker 1: through the pathway and knowing that because I lived on
Speaker 1: that area of Frankston, I was always zoned the old
Speaker 1: zoning days to Saint Kilda and Richmond support bag for
Speaker 1: the Tigers were mad Tigers, but always had one eye
Speaker 1: on if I mean it good, I'm probably going to
Speaker 1: end up at Saint Kilda. And it sort of all
Speaker 1: happened very very quickly around that sort of seventeen years
Speaker 1: of age.
Speaker 3: And how close we did the Hawthorne zone is, you
Speaker 3: know though the over the back fence, it's pretty close
Speaker 3: sort of.
Speaker 1: The Hawthorne was more Frankston South right, so they got
Speaker 1: Ermie and those sort of guys Franks in South. I
Speaker 1: was Frankston North and I think Hawthorne picked up again
Speaker 1: round about Chelsea, which is where they got to Matthews
Speaker 1: those players from So I was sort of wedged right
Speaker 1: in that Hawthorne's own Probably good I didn't go to Hawthorne.
Speaker 1: They had some great midfielders.
Speaker 2: I probably a game.
Speaker 1: So as it was the Saints of the time, we're
Speaker 1: willing to take anyone.
Speaker 3: So you get a letter of the schoolboys squad that
Speaker 3: s announced to someone, it's just not Nathan Burke.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was doing year twelve at the time.
Speaker 1: I played first two games of that year in the
Speaker 1: under nineteens and then four in the reserves. And then
Speaker 1: Devil Bordock said to my father and I come for
Speaker 1: a meeting. We wanted to play in the seniors, and
Speaker 1: the old man said, oh, I'm not sure whether he's ready.
Speaker 1: He's seventy kilograms ringing wet. And I sort of turned
Speaker 1: around and said, hey, this is Devil Boardock. I think
Speaker 1: he knows that tad more than you. I'm taking this
Speaker 1: up to go with what Doc thinks. So and then
Speaker 1: it was sort of a whirlwind from there.
Speaker 4: And against Richmond. You're still a schoolboy, was it Monterey
Speaker 4: High School? Is that where you went?
Speaker 1: Mondre High School? I used to sort of bell used
Speaker 1: to go, used to fly out. The old man was
Speaker 1: a four tiler, so yeah, he'd finished work at the
Speaker 1: time and be meeting me at the gate. Jump in
Speaker 1: the car and drive up to Morabin and yeah against
Speaker 1: the Tigers, and I had Richmond paraphernalia all around the
Speaker 1: bedroom walls, and Markley and Jeff Rains and Jim Jess.
Speaker 4: I was about to ask you about Jim j just
Speaker 4: did he nearly clean you up? Almost your very first
Speaker 4: passenger play my very.
Speaker 1: First I can I can still see it now. My
Speaker 1: very first headline was Nathan ghosts into the big time
Speaker 1: ghost being obviously Jimmy Simms's nickname. Apparently I ducked just
Speaker 1: at the right time as Jimmy with his big sharp
Speaker 1: elbows came flying through, and I don't know what it
Speaker 1: was instinct I ducked and their head stayed on the shoulders,
Speaker 1: but it was that close.
Speaker 2: Apparently, take us through what you know what that was like?
Speaker 3: So Harlie Reid comes in Schoolboy done the way it
Speaker 3: looks great sanctified game. When you were playing in a
Speaker 3: brutal environment there where you know those elbows, you know
Speaker 3: we're going to swim past and sometimes cheer every five minutes.
Speaker 3: It's so different to what Harley and all these young
Speaker 3: kids Nick Dacos would find these days.
Speaker 1: It is, but we didn't know any different. That was
Speaker 1: just the way the game was played. It wasn't like,
Speaker 1: oh this is extra violent at the moment or extra
Speaker 1: rough and tough. It was just the way the game
Speaker 1: was played. And one two memories from that day. One
Speaker 1: was trying to tackle Mark Lee and I sort of
Speaker 1: hung around the waist but I don't think I slowed
Speaker 1: him down and he just kept running. And as I said,
Speaker 1: seventy killer games. And after the game is when the
Speaker 1: nerves said him. We had a dinner after the game
Speaker 1: and I was throwing up in the toilets because I
Speaker 1: all just sort of hit the anxiety. The anxieties were
Speaker 1: really after the game, and probably that in figuring out
Speaker 1: how am I going to get home because I can't
Speaker 1: drive a car, so which one of these guys heading
Speaker 1: back to Frankston.
Speaker 2: A few of the boys would have been at the
Speaker 2: Saints Disco or something.
Speaker 1: Like that exactly, and a good mate, Peter Freeman, ended
Speaker 1: up driving me home because I was thinking I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to jump on the train here and get
Speaker 1: the train back to Frankston. But they were the sort
Speaker 1: of things that he thought of in those days, but
Speaker 1: completely different scenario to driving underground and all the fancy
Speaker 1: stuff they.
Speaker 2: Do decent parks and stuff like that. Just with a doc.
Speaker 4: He obviously had an impact on you from the start
Speaker 4: in that first year. He has the stroke later in
Speaker 4: the year and doesn't coach for the and you have
Speaker 4: another coach, Alan Davis. Davis four or five four or
Speaker 4: so games in that So how tough was that as
Speaker 4: a young kid coming in You really love this legend
Speaker 4: of the club, and all of a sudden he's not
Speaker 4: no longer there, He's having his own battle.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, it was certainly tough.
Speaker 1: And look i Io Doc Alt, Robert Harvey, Jason Daniels,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Doc Alt, because to be totally honest,
Speaker 1: we didn't deserve a game every single week, to just
Speaker 1: roll up and get games, get games, get games. But
Speaker 1: DoD Doc's credit, he played us young bokes. He looked
Speaker 1: after us some training. So the funny thing was we
Speaker 1: sort of trained half the night and it's young bukes
Speaker 1: in you go and Joffer Burns and Trevor Barker and
Speaker 1: these older Bolks and Greg Burns, Jeoffah Cunningham. Sorry, they'd
Speaker 1: stay out and keep training all lust. Young bikes would
Speaker 1: go in and get rested too much to their chagrin.
Speaker 1: But the reason why we were able to play so
Speaker 1: many games, and the reason why we were able to
Speaker 1: sort of have the crews that we did, I think
Speaker 1: because he persevered and blooded us and gave us games
Speaker 1: week after week, probably when we didn't deserve them. These days,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sort of happen very much. It's it's very cutthroat.
Speaker 1: So yeah, no, I the great Man a lot, and
Speaker 1: as does Robert Harvey, Stuart Low and Jason Daniels and
Speaker 1: US Bikes who came through that early ages, late ages.
Speaker 2: Running run, running the reward to their point.
Speaker 3: So you're playing in that first year and you're playing
Speaker 3: alongside Trevor Barker, Spud Frawley, Tony Lockett.
Speaker 1: I was just yeah, well that first year eighty seven
Speaker 1: was plug Is Brown a year Yeah, kicked one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventeen. So just playing at myrabin. You're driving down
Speaker 1: Linton Street and you just park out in the field
Speaker 1: with everybody else, and you walk in and you line
Speaker 1: up at the gate with everybody else, and everyone pat
Speaker 1: me on the back and back. Then I was playing
Speaker 1: in the back pocket first year. And the bad part
Speaker 1: was was that wherever I went, the crowded go up
Speaker 1: the other hand, everyone wants to watch it is it me.
Speaker 1: The crowd would move up the other end when I
Speaker 1: was up there, so there was no under there's spud
Speaker 1: foiling myself standing there with no crowd around. But that
Speaker 1: was the way football was back then. So like there's
Speaker 1: no Premiership to look back on, but I can look
Speaker 1: back on from those days at Rabin in the Mud
Speaker 1: with Plugger, through to the Waverley through to playing at
Speaker 1: Marvel Stadium under a roof and the sterile environment there.
Speaker 1: I was unfortunate that I managed to last long enough
Speaker 1: to have a whole with three generations of players from
Speaker 1: the Barker's cunning Hams to the Burns to the Low
Speaker 1: Harvey and wind Mars and then finish off with Ree Walton,
Speaker 1: Hayes and Delsandros and those guys, and so three different
Speaker 1: generations of footballers that I managed to play with. And
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, putt your head on your pillow at night.
Speaker 1: I don't have a Premiership look back on, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good to be able to say that your
Speaker 1: teammates for those guys.
Speaker 4: Definitely, there was always talk about some Kilda taking short
Speaker 4: cuts at the time, did they they had a good
Speaker 4: good time off the field and that as well. Did
Speaker 4: you notice that from the start or was that something
Speaker 4: that is overblown from the outside of the club in
Speaker 4: that sense?
Speaker 2: Do you think.
Speaker 1: Probably didn't know what other clubs did. But I dare say,
Speaker 1: and you know, we got a lot of players from
Speaker 1: Carlton in my early years, you know, Sheldon the Marku
Speaker 1: and Cork Emilis and Ian Mauler and Luckie Nickson.
Speaker 7: You don't know where to go to you come done
Speaker 7: with your meats, playing for all the scenes, easy kicks,
Speaker 7: good conditions, good being. Did you're tired of meat?
Speaker 1: They could party with the best of them, But I
Speaker 1: reckon what was happening was that they had success to
Speaker 1: wallpaper over that. We didn't have success to wallpaper over that.
Speaker 1: But but it was the was the culture of the club.
Speaker 1: If you won a game at Rabin, you'd go up
Speaker 1: into the Social Club and they'd be singing O when
Speaker 1: the Saints go marching in a the top of a
Speaker 1: hat and drinks would be flowing and want to be
Speaker 1: cheering and carrying on. If you lost a game at Rabin,
Speaker 1: you go up to Social Club and pretty much the
Speaker 1: same thing the song Ago and you'd be treated like
Speaker 1: a hero and that I think that was probably three
Speaker 1: quarters of the problem, is that there wasn't a great
Speaker 1: deal of difference between winning and losing. It was just
Speaker 1: happy to be there in the club. And you know,
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that they needed to
Speaker 1: change and sort of say, hey, you know what, we're
Speaker 1: not going to accept this losing like we did. But
Speaker 1: that was just the culture of the club at the time.
Speaker 2: Kenny Sheldon Hearer, So of course he takes over.
Speaker 3: You build towards nineteen ninety one, you know, you transition
Speaker 3: more into a midfield to take us through those years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I started off as a back pocket work
Speaker 1: my way into the midfield. I think I had seven coaches,
Speaker 1: and every time a new coach came, I sort of
Speaker 1: got shoved down at the back line and they will
Speaker 1: find a better midfielder and then you sort of work
Speaker 1: your way.
Speaker 5: Back up again.
Speaker 1: But Kenny was great for the club in that he
Speaker 1: brought a level of professionalism from Carlton, but his strength
Speaker 1: was getting the players united as a group, wanting to
Speaker 1: be together, wanting to play together. Was he the tactical
Speaker 1: genius that some of the other coaches were probably not.
Speaker 1: Did we get hurt a little bit by that in
Speaker 1: games when we played sheets and those sort of things, Yes,
Speaker 1: we probably did. But got us to the finals two
Speaker 1: out of four years purely on us wanting to play
Speaker 1: together and getting that momentum and utilizing the talents of
Speaker 1: a big black up front.
Speaker 4: And that ninety one season like started pretty slowly, but
Speaker 4: you're really you know, to get through to player finals.
Speaker 4: I think it was the first final Sekula played in
Speaker 4: eighteen years, and there would have been some celebrating just
Speaker 4: even getting.
Speaker 2: There to do that, wasn't there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was eighteen years was a long drown, yeah, finals,
Speaker 1: and so to get there was a really big effort.
Speaker 1: It was not a great day. I think we finished
Speaker 1: sixth that year and that was the first.
Speaker 2: First year of the six. Wouldn't it was that, right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It might have been. Actually, yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was the last year that six didn't get a
Speaker 1: double chance, right, yeah? And so we played I think
Speaker 1: too long it a third. I didn't last very long.
Speaker 1: I got it cleaned up by Gary Ablett. David Grant
Speaker 1: the same, and both of us were sitting on the
Speaker 1: bench with blird vision sort of we'd hear that cheers
Speaker 1: go off and it was either plug a kicking nine
Speaker 1: at one end. I think Billy Brown has kicked out
Speaker 1: at the other end and.
Speaker 5: Was that us? Was that us? Or was that there?
Speaker 2: That's how bad you were? Yeah, both really bad.
Speaker 5: Blur vision couldn't see what was going on.
Speaker 1: And we had another couple of players who wanted to
Speaker 1: come off in that game but couldn't because we had
Speaker 1: no one to go on. And as it turned out,
Speaker 1: we just got pipped and that was the end. But
Speaker 1: I think out of all my sort of years of
Speaker 1: not being successful that one, if we hadn't got through
Speaker 1: that game, I think West Coast ended up going on
Speaker 1: and winning the flag.
Speaker 5: We were a chance.
Speaker 8: Aside well, it was one of the great matches and
Speaker 8: the Cats have won by.
Speaker 6: Seven points when mar played his heart out. Malcolm Blint
Speaker 6: went through some tough times here today twenty forty twenty
Speaker 6: eight today reading the Saints for the first time in
Speaker 6: the finals match. Garry Ablett and that you'd rather forget.
Speaker 6: I think Tony Loved who was magnificent good nine goals.
Speaker 6: Devin Port can hardly lift himself and not the for
Speaker 6: all this face it says it all.
Speaker 2: What's a lot to get cleaned up by Ablett Senior.
Speaker 5: He got two weeks for that one.
Speaker 2: What would he get today?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it'd be eight.
Speaker 1: Just at eight, I went into I went into Shepherd,
Speaker 1: one of my players, and he just came flying through
Speaker 1: with an elbow and went bang. And the two weeks
Speaker 1: meant that he could come back for the Grand Final
Speaker 1: and playing that one. I'm glad they actually lost, but yeah,
Speaker 1: look he was as a brutal player. I've got no
Speaker 1: hard feelings at all, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: That your first concussion. Was that your first or had
Speaker 4: you had something before then?
Speaker 5: Do you think or you I had what we now
Speaker 5: know is concuction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the time, i'd get the blurred vision, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a sort of three or four minutes later, the blurred
Speaker 1: vision that come on after the game, I'd get the
Speaker 1: your headaches and nausea, And the doctors diagnosed it as
Speaker 1: a former migraine, And they said, you get a migraine
Speaker 1: that comes on for me, Yeah, knock. Now we know
Speaker 1: that's concussion. But what it allowed me to do was
Speaker 1: to whenever I had it subsequent years from that, to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm not concussed. I've got a migrant grain I play
Speaker 1: next week.
Speaker 4: So you would have played the week after. You would
Speaker 4: say Sink would have had to won that game.
Speaker 1: You would have played that absolutely, Yeah, I would have
Speaker 1: rolled out. I probably had headache every time I bent
Speaker 1: down and did my shoes up, and the probably when
Speaker 1: I ran around at training. My had to be buntering
Speaker 1: around and get a headache. But at the time we
Speaker 1: didn't know much better. So yeah, I definitely would have
Speaker 1: played the following week.
Speaker 3: And eventually that became something where you wore a helmet
Speaker 3: and it certainly helped you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because what was happening was that the following year
Speaker 1: was I was getting the blurred vision more often, and
Speaker 1: Kenny Sheldon just sort of said, look, we can't we
Speaker 1: only got two on the bench. I can't keep playing you.
Speaker 1: If this is going to you're going to keep coming
Speaker 1: off with his blurred visions, You've got to try something.
Speaker 1: And they said, they've got a pill that takes about
Speaker 1: an hour to work, and that's no good, So try
Speaker 1: the helmet. They had an old one of Trevor Barkers,
Speaker 1: he wore once or twice in his career from his
Speaker 1: air different He was sort of taking speck. No, that
Speaker 1: was not in any way, shape or form. So try
Speaker 1: that one. It was too big, didn't fit, so try
Speaker 1: something else and look. Anecdotally it worked for me. I'd
Speaker 1: still get the issue, but that was mainly through hits
Speaker 1: in the nose or the chin. I'd get a whack
Speaker 1: in the helmet and I'd think, right, is it going
Speaker 1: to happen? Is it going to come on? And sometimes
Speaker 1: he didn't. Sometimes it came on a little bit enough
Speaker 1: for me to sort of recognize that, Hey, Maka, you're
Speaker 1: getting a heap of touches the other team. So I'm
Speaker 1: just going to follow you around for a bit. And
Speaker 1: the coach would say, why are you tagging that person? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, they were just getting off the leash of Yeah.
Speaker 5: Basically all I could see was you.
Speaker 1: I'd stay on the field and not come off because
Speaker 1: I could still run around. My arms and legs worked,
Speaker 1: but my eyes just didn't.
Speaker 2: And you've had all the brain scans now and you're
Speaker 2: in reasonable shape.
Speaker 5: No I haven't, but I think I'm still in reasonable shape. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Memory is still spectacular. Yeah, No, it's still okay.
Speaker 1: I test myself so in my line of work, I
Speaker 1: get up and give speeches and talks and seminars and
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. So if I can remember what's
Speaker 1: there without cheat notes, well then you know, I keep going.
Speaker 5: So so far, so good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just with concussion, Like, is there something we can
Speaker 4: do better? We're doing as much as we can. It's
Speaker 4: a it's a combat sport in a lot of ways,
Speaker 4: but there are other things that we can do.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the next step and what we
Speaker 1: need to bring in is that there are machines that
Speaker 1: can diagnose better than a SCAT test, better than a
Speaker 1: doctor sitting there asking you questions. We did sort of
Speaker 1: like a stick SCAT came in towards the end of
Speaker 1: my career, and I'll put my hand up blatantly say
Speaker 1: I did the test slower in the in the control area,
Speaker 1: so that if I got a whack to you the game,
Speaker 1: there were some sort of things that you had to
Speaker 1: follow with your hand eye and draw on maps, and
Speaker 1: so I did them with my left hand. And so
Speaker 1: that I'm thinking, Okay, if I get a whack, that
Speaker 1: nothing's going to happen. So I need to play next week.
Speaker 1: So we need to take that human element out of
Speaker 1: the diagnosis. Absolutely, you can sit there and there's machines
Speaker 1: that I've tested. You put your eyes, you follow your
Speaker 1: eyes around a board, and that can tell you how
Speaker 1: diminished you are. We need those at every game to
Speaker 1: put the players through it and take away the human
Speaker 1: element and say yes, you are can cast, you can't
Speaker 1: go back on, and you can't play until you get
Speaker 1: a certain standard.
Speaker 3: And there's blood tests and there's lipid tests and all
Speaker 3: those things that better Jest pushes and the NFL has
Speaker 3: done so much with their rule changes, but it's almost
Speaker 3: like they're just you know, they're resisting that.
Speaker 5: Got to have the human element out of it wherever
Speaker 5: I can.
Speaker 4: And then ninety two, obviously that's another year where the
Speaker 4: club's going really well.
Speaker 2: And Ken was a bit of a hot gospel.
Speaker 4: I think there was one famous day where he got
Speaker 4: a hold of Craig Devenport over the boundary line and
Speaker 4: grabbed him and Devo goes on and kicks an important
Speaker 4: goal as well.
Speaker 2: Devin, look at that. Now, that tells you what discipline
Speaker 2: is all about.
Speaker 6: The man who's played in the Premiership sides telling the
Speaker 6: youngster what self disciplines all of its.
Speaker 2: Unusual for the coach to come down to the battery
Speaker 2: line and.
Speaker 6: Using pavorits on his ard of the gold Squeen.
Speaker 2: That team in ninety two. How good a side was that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a really good. Plugger was at the
Speaker 1: peak of his scary end. He was I think I
Speaker 1: was come here, I was ninety one On ninety two.
Speaker 1: He missed the first six games with a cook back
Speaker 1: and plug of rehabbing. Was basically sitting there waiting for
Speaker 1: it to get better. There wasn't a.
Speaker 5: Lot of coustraining or anything like that.
Speaker 1: And then he came back and he played the first
Speaker 1: three games back, he kicked like thirty one and then
Speaker 1: at the end of the year he kicked another thirty
Speaker 1: one in the last three games. And so he was
Speaker 1: at the peak of his powers at that particular time.
Speaker 1: We had Sparred and Robert Harvey Stuart Larv coming into
Speaker 1: their powers and Nicky Wimmer was probably at the peak
Speaker 1: of his powers at the time. And we've played two finals.
Speaker 1: We'll be Collingwood in the first one.
Speaker 2: Who released Bulldogs foots Gray it's in the semi final.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, again, that was close, but yeah, he didn't
Speaker 1: quite get across the line.
Speaker 2: So if someone said to you Tony Lockett. I never
Speaker 2: heard of him.
Speaker 3: How did you encapsulate his great off the field all
Speaker 3: that stuff and give us one of the great Tony
Speaker 3: Lockers stories.
Speaker 1: Look, he was probably the most competitive player that I
Speaker 1: came up against. If there's a training draw, he said, right,
Speaker 1: we're going to do lane work. This group here got
Speaker 1: to kick it at that lead and just go back
Speaker 1: to some formants and warm up your legs. Player would
Speaker 1: get to the front of the line. He'd go right out, Johnny, right, Mackie,
Speaker 1: you go, and he three steps backwards and let the
Speaker 1: others go, and then he'd eventually have a go. Because
Speaker 1: it was training d all, it meant nothing. But if
Speaker 1: you said radio, it's a competition between this line and
Speaker 1: that line so you can get the most kicks in
Speaker 1: the next five minutes and not hit the ground, he'd
Speaker 1: go to the front of the line every time.
Speaker 5: And that's just what he was.
Speaker 1: He was just a competitor. But he hated all of
Speaker 1: the other crap that went on with playing AFL football.
Speaker 1: And I didn't think he would leave and go to Sydney.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to say, did I ever enter
Speaker 2: your mind at all that he would know because.
Speaker 1: He hated at that particular time. He's living out in
Speaker 1: cranber living out there by himself, some sort of quiet area.
Speaker 1: Coming in playing football. I didn't think he'd go and
Speaker 1: be the marquee player in a place like Sydney, but
Speaker 1: as it turned out, it was the best thing for him.
Speaker 1: It was getting star. I think sort of ninety four
Speaker 1: to ninety five weren't his greatest years. He had had
Speaker 1: a lot of injuries, and certainly going to Sydney we
Speaker 1: saw the best comeback out in him. So and I
Speaker 1: think he matured a lot as a person as well.
Speaker 1: They managed him extremely well and let him sort of
Speaker 1: live out in Barrel and sort of ye commute it
Speaker 1: backwards and forward. So but yeah, he is the most
Speaker 1: competitive blake that I've come across, and it's actually the football.
Speaker 1: The other day was commentating Carlton game and Charlie Kerner
Speaker 1: picked the ball up, you know, one grab below his
Speaker 1: knees and snapped the goal and the commentator said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the modern day full forward for you.
Speaker 5: Aren't they great?
Speaker 1: And I've got anyone You don't realize how good training
Speaker 1: like it was below his knees on left foot, right
Speaker 1: foot marking the ball in the air. He actually puts
Speaker 1: the modern day full forward to shame because he could
Speaker 1: do everything.
Speaker 2: And he never missed, did he He was one of
Speaker 2: the more accurate kicks you would ever see.
Speaker 5: Never missed.
Speaker 1: And you know, in terms of skill, he's probably one
Speaker 1: of the most skillful players that I played with, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, you're marking the ball with Steven Sulfony
Speaker 1: hanging on to you like a koala sitting on your back.
Speaker 1: If the ball hits the ground and then you're picking
Speaker 1: it up, you're balking around three blokes and snapping it
Speaker 1: on your left foot.
Speaker 5: That's what he could do with the bloke of that size.
Speaker 5: Just enormous.
Speaker 3: And yet we talked games record holder. But yeah, we
Speaker 3: talk about Gary Abbott Senior, and we talk about Wayne
Speaker 3: Carey's or and we talk about lead.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying we discount what he's been able to do,
Speaker 3: but all the periphery of the crutch throwing and the
Speaker 3: fail comeback and that's the you know, to say, like
Speaker 3: we probab always discount some of his exquisite grandeur.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think people say, who's the best
Speaker 1: player you played with? The best player I played with?
Speaker 1: The best player I saw by Mill. He did have
Speaker 1: those sort of down years, but when he was on
Speaker 1: the song thirty first first three games back, thirty one goals, Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1: He kicked one hundred and twenty seven that year and
Speaker 1: averages seven and a half if by kick seven and
Speaker 1: a half goals of these days, he's a superstar. He
Speaker 1: averaged seven and a half goals a game. And that
Speaker 1: was I think that was the ninety one season. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: it was, yeah, yeah, And he didn't kick a goal
Speaker 1: against Collingwood hundred and twenty seven during the year, didn't
Speaker 1: kick again. Believable, isn't And that was when Tony Shaw
Speaker 1: got into him. Tony Shaw, absolutely.
Speaker 2: What did he say to you remember anything he said there?
Speaker 2: He gives good at it.
Speaker 5: Sure, sure, he just got inside Plugger's head and lost it.
Speaker 2: And that would be rare for Plugger to other than
Speaker 2: to people.
Speaker 1: Not many were game enough to be pretty sure. He
Speaker 1: absolutely got into him that game and he didn't kick
Speaker 1: a goal. So we played them in the final and
Speaker 1: the rule wise coming in was that we all had
Speaker 1: to ignore Surey sure he would have hated that to
Speaker 1: not allowed to talk to Shrey. You forget what he's
Speaker 1: going to say, because Plugging, don't fall into this trap again.
Speaker 1: And then Spud went in to toss the coin, and
Speaker 1: that was when Shorey walked up and actually punched him,
Speaker 1: sort of pushed him and started yapping off at Spud
Speaker 1: at the toss of the coin. So then Spud came
Speaker 1: back to the huddle before we started, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know that plan about ignoring Surey, let's forget that.
Speaker 1: Every time he goes near to the ball punched the
Speaker 1: ship out. So he got under Sud just at the coins.
Speaker 1: Plan we'd set up the whole week were to ignore
Speaker 1: him so Plugger could kick old.
Speaker 9: Frawling and sure, we're so busy arguing that the task
Speaker 9: went on and on row when the ends were decided,
Speaker 9: it was also to prove the end for Frawley. Listen
Speaker 9: killed the skipper limped off with an achilles.
Speaker 4: I was going to ask you about the Plugger game
Speaker 4: in Sydney, which you would have thought he would have
Speaker 4: been a millium to one whoever played for Sydney. After
Speaker 4: he nearly decapitated poor old Kenny in the stands and
Speaker 4: you guys were forty eight points down with.
Speaker 5: Nine minutes the hour.
Speaker 4: It was like yeah, some ridiculous short amount of time
Speaker 4: to go and not only you win and come back
Speaker 4: and win.
Speaker 5: Yeah, got mine. I think Plager kicked eleven eleven that
Speaker 5: that game. And that was the Peter Caven.
Speaker 2: Peter, I was going to ask you about the Peter Caven.
Speaker 2: I got twenty eight weeks for that one. Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, standing started side love courage shown. There's your Peter
Speaker 10: Caven left mark. Read the mark before us well.
Speaker 2: Cur the stretch.
Speaker 1: There's another little known fact. Sydney Cheersquad sit behind the
Speaker 1: guy and before the game, you're walking around. Plugger checks
Speaker 1: out the goal square and the Sydney Cheersquad were getting
Speaker 1: into him, and Pluggers turned around to one of the
Speaker 1: old guys and he's gone, I'm going to kick one
Speaker 1: straight at your head. And he watched the vide out
Speaker 1: of game. It was probably there might be the last
Speaker 1: or second last goal. He kicked the handball over the top,
Speaker 1: the low flat Plugger turns around and kicks his low
Speaker 1: flat punch straight at the cheers squad and he said
Speaker 1: after the game, he said, soon as it left my boot,
Speaker 1: I thought I've killed him. I've killed him, but the
Speaker 1: guy has killed Kenny just it was it was the
Speaker 1: old Kenny and the following year they Jason Daniels was
Speaker 1: up there at the time, Sydney player. He said, look
Speaker 1: they became best mates. Yeah, he said it was. It
Speaker 1: was a little bit strained between he and Peter cavn.
Speaker 1: Peter caven never quite got over what the Plugger did
Speaker 1: to him, and the year later I think he went
Speaker 1: moved off to Adelaide. Laden It was a little bit
Speaker 1: straying there, but yeah, that particular game we were ordinary.
Speaker 1: I think Sydney ordinary. But there were forty eight points
Speaker 1: up in the mines.
Speaker 9: All right back to David Berger's really lifted.
Speaker 10: He's been one of the players that brought He killed
Speaker 10: her right.
Speaker 5: Back, kicking off his head.
Speaker 10: You don't have to get back quickly, ten quick quicker
Speaker 10: over the top.
Speaker 2: Can go to plugger.
Speaker 3: What would happen now if if he had hit Kenny?
Speaker 3: And then what were the Affle have done? Knowing that
Speaker 3: it was probably delivered. Just you think of this the
Speaker 3: old fashion extraordinary stories in the lot of era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, as I said, he I think he got
Speaker 1: he got seven h Yeah. Yeah, these days he's probably
Speaker 1: bad for life.
Speaker 2: Ninety five.
Speaker 3: So there was talk of a merger and Carlton and
Speaker 3: probably emerged again recently with Andrew Plimpton's death. So talk
Speaker 3: about John Elliott Andrew Primpton, you know, whether it was
Speaker 3: going to be a merger not a takeover.
Speaker 1: There's pledgures of loyalty, you know. Were you part of
Speaker 1: that discussion, not rely just on the peripheral at that
Speaker 1: particular time. I don't think we ever truly thought it
Speaker 1: was going to happen. It was just too far out
Speaker 1: of the box. Clubs have far too different, different demographics,
Speaker 1: different areas.
Speaker 2: It would have been a good side.
Speaker 1: It would have been they won the flag in ninety five,
Speaker 1: you've be We've beat them. Yeah, I think we were
Speaker 1: the only team to beat them that year. And it
Speaker 1: was a bit of a catalyst for the Saints because
Speaker 1: after the end of ninety five a lot of the
Speaker 1: spud retired and Fugger had gone, and it was a
Speaker 1: real sort of changing at the Guard sort of internally
Speaker 1: at the club. The club sort of thought, you know, no, no,
Speaker 1: its merger, that we need to get serious about what
Speaker 1: we're doing and the resources we give the football club.
Speaker 1: And most people thought that we were going to be
Speaker 1: in the wilderness for half a dozen years. Because for
Speaker 1: Tony going, we got Ozzie Jones, Tony Brown, Joel Smith
Speaker 1: who happened seven year olds and I thought there guys
Speaker 1: are saints for at least half a dozen years. But
Speaker 1: we managed to turn around pretty quickly, which is something
Speaker 1: I'm probably pretty proud of.
Speaker 4: And so by that stage, Ken Sheldon's been sacked and
Speaker 4: Stan Ols comes in tell us a little bit about
Speaker 4: the transition to stand.
Speaker 2: And how that worked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Stan was assistant coach, and everyone generally loves
Speaker 1: you assistant coaches, so we were quite excited for Stan.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for Kenny, Kenny made the mistake of not managing
Speaker 1: up and did the fatal mistake of saying a board members,
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to come in the rooms before the game,
Speaker 1: and you've got to keep hands length and you don't
Speaker 1: into their workspace. Bad move never works out well for
Speaker 1: coaches when they keep the board members out. And he
Speaker 1: had a guy named Peter Hudson who was his right
Speaker 1: hand man, and Huddo was assistant coach, CHAMPI selectors, marketing manager,
Speaker 1: sort of football manager.
Speaker 4: He pretty much did everything he used to do the
Speaker 4: media back then you have to used to ring him
Speaker 4: to do all to get in touch with players.
Speaker 1: It was all powerful and Kenny being the loyal person.
Speaker 1: When they came to Kenny and they said, mate, Hardo's
Speaker 1: got two power too much, He's probably going to have
Speaker 1: to go. Kenny thought, you know what, I've been in
Speaker 1: the finals two out of four years. I've got enough
Speaker 1: cachet here to say if he goes, I go. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: work that way, I didn't have that much, and off
Speaker 1: Kenny went, which was, as I said, not many coaches
Speaker 1: at Saint Kilda to fifty percent finals record suddenly get
Speaker 1: the flick, and he did. He just didn't manage up
Speaker 1: that well. So stan came in and the best thing
Speaker 1: was what happened in ninety five to carp because Carlton
Speaker 1: on the back of David Park and giving the players ownership.
Speaker 1: You guys tell me who you want in the team.
Speaker 1: You guys tell me how you want to train. You guys,
Speaker 1: tell me how do you want to do this. Stan
Speaker 1: Al was being very savvy, picked up on that ethos
Speaker 1: and brought that into a young Saint Kilda team who
Speaker 1: were really took on that and grasped that and we
Speaker 1: we improved very very quickly because of that particular Ethos,
Speaker 1: and I think Parkin deserves a lot of credit for
Speaker 1: what he actually spread out through the rest of the
Speaker 1: league in that ninety five years.
Speaker 2: He was still a pretty tough man, stand like, oh
Speaker 2: he could give a spray about that.
Speaker 1: He give us spray with the best of them, and
Speaker 1: he got to the stage at times when he actually
Speaker 1: banned himself from speaking to us after the game really,
Speaker 1: so we'd come in, do a cool down, and we
Speaker 1: go home. And the reason was was sometimes Stan would
Speaker 1: say stuff after the match which wasn't really relevant, and
Speaker 1: he'd spend the next couple of days finding people and
Speaker 1: apologizing for what he actually said. And some of the
Speaker 1: halftime talks were simply hey, you and you in here,
Speaker 1: and you'd go into the meeting room and he'd barrow
Speaker 1: you and he'd poke his head out and he go,
Speaker 1: you and you in here, and he'd borrow them and yeah,
Speaker 1: and we figured out that that was sort of the
Speaker 1: way things operated. So he'd poke his head out and
Speaker 1: there'd be no players in the physio room so that
Speaker 1: he could find it. He couldn't find you, he couldn't
Speaker 1: bring you in and barroy you. But to his credit,
Speaker 1: he often sort of apologized and made a man afterwards,
Speaker 1: but during a game he could get quite sort of.
Speaker 4: Is it fair to say he targeted a few of
Speaker 4: the senior guys like yourself and Halves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's definitely more harder on his Stan was a
Speaker 1: big devotee. He was a big devotee of Lombardy, and
Speaker 1: so one of the Lombardy's things was that he would
Speaker 1: always put far more pressure on the senior.
Speaker 2: Players did the same that he did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then the rest of the players would go, hey,
Speaker 5: don't pick on them. There my mates, and I'm going
Speaker 5: to lift as well. That was the hope. Unfortunately, at
Speaker 5: times that was you.
Speaker 1: Know, it drove a wedge between the players and the
Speaker 1: coach rather than supporting the senior players.
Speaker 5: But yeah, no doubt. We were often the first ones
Speaker 5: that record into the room.
Speaker 3: So ninety seven, so those kids have got a couple
Speaker 3: of years of action. You start the season slowly and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you just come with a rash
Speaker 3: and it's just the extraordinary season.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, I to be honest in seed coming. I think
Speaker 1: we started the year quite poorly and we won.
Speaker 2: One of the first five games. Stand trying to walk away?
Speaker 1: Is that one out of the first five, and then
Speaker 1: I think we played Melbourne out at Waverley and they
Speaker 1: were in a similar position to us. It was like
Speaker 1: who was going to Whoever lost this game, that's its
Speaker 1: season over, gone down the bottom, and we came out
Speaker 1: and we won fairly convincingly and from that point we.
Speaker 5: Just got on a roll.
Speaker 1: I think we won seventeen in a row. It was
Speaker 1: just phenomenal and the season on top of the ladder.
Speaker 1: But there was that pivotal point of that game out
Speaker 1: at Waverley and they ended up going backwards and we
Speaker 1: shot off the other way. And a lot of it
Speaker 1: came from that ninety five of parking, giving players ownership
Speaker 1: and how are we going to do things and leading
Speaker 1: teams was board in Ray MacLean and his.
Speaker 2: Particular that helped.
Speaker 1: That was good, absolutely because it puts some put some
Speaker 1: shape and rigor around the ownership. Wasn't just handed over
Speaker 1: to the bikes. It was okay, if we have the ownership,
Speaker 1: what does that look like and what are the boundaries
Speaker 1: around that ownership? And that's what a lot of the
Speaker 1: leading team stuff did. So it certainly work with a
Speaker 1: particular group we had there.
Speaker 4: And so you were surprised with how well it went
Speaker 4: in that period. And but you start getting injuries at
Speaker 4: the wrong time. Was how crucial was that you you
Speaker 4: lose Joel Smith and Big Laser who was really important
Speaker 4: from a structural point of view and to protect players
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 2: And then Spider Yes.
Speaker 4: The finals a pretty you haven't got a lot of
Speaker 4: big bikes.
Speaker 2: Left, have you?
Speaker 5: No, No, we didn't.
Speaker 1: And so Brett Cook came in, he was probably the
Speaker 1: third or fourth string rack at the time, actually came
Speaker 1: in and played in the Grand Final and yeah, it
Speaker 1: just I think we might have even been winning at halftime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we came in the rooms and we got sort
Speaker 1: of barrel at halftime thinking, hang on, are we in
Speaker 1: front not in front?
Speaker 2: What was the message there? Like you should be doing better?
Speaker 1: Or yeah, yeah, you should be doing better. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we weren't doing well and we hadn't.
Speaker 1: It was like Nicki Mimmo's father passed away a couple
Speaker 1: of days prior, and Stuart Lower had his personal sort
Speaker 1: of family issues going on at the time, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and then yeah, the old old bloke what's his name,
Speaker 1: I don't say his name, not Darren Charman deliberately his name.
Speaker 1: He went went mad and kicked five control. We sort
Speaker 1: of had no answer for it, so no excuses. They
Speaker 1: ended up just playing a better half in the second
Speaker 1: half and we played in the first half.
Speaker 3: So you know, you think of killer Shark, which is
Speaker 3: obviously a pre match message, you think of a handball handball,
Speaker 3: you think of all the iconic messages there. How much
Speaker 3: can a halftime message shape for the psychology of you
Speaker 3: coming out us three quught a time?
Speaker 1: It can because we were still a very young group overall,
Speaker 1: so I think Stuart Lowe and I were sort of
Speaker 1: twenty six or so and Robert Aby's twenty five and
Speaker 1: so we were of the leaders of the group, so
Speaker 1: we didn't have those thirty year old to the wise
Speaker 1: heads or anything like that.
Speaker 5: So I think it just probably took an edge off.
Speaker 1: And if you're playing in the Grand Final, you take
Speaker 1: five percent off the group, well you're going to get
Speaker 1: run over. Absolutely, that's all it takes. He's at five
Speaker 1: percent edge and whichever team gets to the point first
Speaker 1: of I think we're going to lose, you know, just
Speaker 1: we did well to get here. Then you're going to
Speaker 1: fall away and I think we got to that point
Speaker 1: before they did.
Speaker 4: What stage do you reckon? You got to that point
Speaker 4: because the game was alive for a bit of that
Speaker 4: second half, wasn't it? And then it became a tide
Speaker 4: that just was too strong to stop. Was there a
Speaker 4: stage where is there a moment that you thought this
Speaker 4: is it, We're gone?
Speaker 5: And the probably.
Speaker 1: I kicked a goal at some stage in the third
Speaker 1: and I might have put a slate nine points down
Speaker 1: or something like that off the top of the head roughly,
Speaker 1: And the lack of yes, we're back in this after
Speaker 1: kicking a goal, and the lack of sort of get
Speaker 1: around him, getting around.
Speaker 5: Him down the bird what goal?
Speaker 2: Classic cop?
Speaker 1: This is we're going to be sort of pushing you
Speaker 1: know what? Uphal here? Yeah, even after kicking a goal
Speaker 1: is normally when you should be up.
Speaker 5: Oh we kicked it. Have we got another one in this?
Speaker 5: I'm not sure?
Speaker 4: And have you felt for Jamie Shanahan over the journey
Speaker 4: that he's probably copped too much of the of the
Speaker 4: criticism of the decision to play him on Jarman, which
Speaker 4: you know from from a far now and knowing what
Speaker 4: we know, probably wasn't the greatest matchup was it, No, But.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure who we had.
Speaker 1: For some reason we left a guy on Matthew Young
Speaker 1: out of the team, and Young he was a really
Speaker 1: good defender. Could he have been an option? Who else
Speaker 1: was an option? I'm not too sure. But some of
Speaker 1: those goals weren't Jamie beat one on one. It was
Speaker 1: sort of There was maybe three or four Crows plays
Speaker 1: down there, and the way that the ball came down
Speaker 1: there and the openness of the forward line that they
Speaker 1: managed to craft that. That's all on the rest of us.
Speaker 6: What a fairy time and clear the Crows if.
Speaker 5: They needed anymore.
Speaker 2: I've done the line of the last quarter, so there's
Speaker 2: nothing left now but to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So yeah, I hold no animosity to Jamie whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it was his last game the Saints. I would
Speaker 1: have loved him to have hung around for another few
Speaker 1: years and finished his career.
Speaker 4: What did Stan say after the game was obviously talk
Speaker 4: about the halftime.
Speaker 2: Was there any message?
Speaker 4: I suppose you're all shattered, your heart broken, you've had
Speaker 4: your dream crashed in a in a half a footy.
Speaker 2: Was there anything that stands out in regards to that?
Speaker 1: No, I don't remember. I remember getting up on stage
Speaker 1: at at the post game with all the fans and
Speaker 1: family and Stany said I'm hurting. I'm hurting from my boys.
Speaker 1: It was like, yeah, okay, it's not quite sure of
Speaker 1: is that really genuine or not genuine? It would have
Speaker 1: been Stands, a very sort of genuine guy, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it just didn't quite feel what we needed to hear.
Speaker 2: And so stand empowered you and stand drove you to
Speaker 2: the Grand Final.
Speaker 3: And as you say, you know, probably a better tactician
Speaker 3: maybe than Kenny, but he wasn't quite the man for
Speaker 3: you necessarily.
Speaker 5: So next year we were sort of flying at the start.
Speaker 2: You're on top after fourteen rounds, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 5: We fell in a hole.
Speaker 1: And the great lesson was that if you give players ownership,
Speaker 1: you can't then yanke it back when things don't start
Speaker 1: working well. And what happened was we lost a games
Speaker 1: after that sort of round fourteen, and then the ownership
Speaker 1: that we had started to get yanked back. And what
Speaker 1: happens then is you go, well, we don't trust me anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a certain stamp, but and then you get some
Speaker 1: of the playing groups sitting back going okay, if you
Speaker 1: don't trust, well, what have you got for us?
Speaker 5: And we started to clutch at straws.
Speaker 1: We were doing meditation before before games and on the
Speaker 1: airplane flying up to Sydney and we're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of weird martial arts sort of stuff and
Speaker 1: clutching at straws, not going back to Okay, this is
Speaker 1: what worked for us for a year and a half.
Speaker 1: Let's get back and do that properly. It was okay,
Speaker 1: that's not working anymore. I'll take control and here's some
Speaker 1: weird stuff. And I can just see the board we're
Speaker 1: standing around watching us lay on the floor and go
Speaker 1: to sleep before training and again standing to manage up. Well,
Speaker 1: you banned the board from coming into the rooms and
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: A lesson here, graphie and to keep them so with that,
Speaker 4: like you go out in straight sets. And the very
Speaker 4: next day Andrew Plmpton talks to Don Hanley to start
Speaker 4: a review that he wants finished within a week.
Speaker 2: Do you know this? Do you know that it's over
Speaker 2: at that stage? For Stan certainly brought passion excitement to
Speaker 2: the club and I left nobody no doubt as to.
Speaker 10: How I felt in terms of when we were going
Speaker 10: well and when we were going poorly and so no regrets.
Speaker 1: A group of US senior players met with Gary Colling,
Speaker 1: who was like a football manager ex saying great, and
Speaker 1: we met with him down at bo'morros and restaurant and
Speaker 1: we just sort of gave that sort of observation. That
Speaker 1: was the observation that we gave. And then I got
Speaker 1: a phone call from Andrew Plimpton the next day saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've done it, Burkey, We've pulled the pen and I've
Speaker 1: let him know and I've gone, what are you talking
Speaker 1: about it? And I said, well, I don't know what
Speaker 1: message Kat gave you. Our message was not Stan's got
Speaker 1: to go. Stan had a lot of great qualities, but
Speaker 1: Stan just needed to be given boundaries. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: why have you done it? You said, oh, we need
Speaker 1: a good bike. We need a good bike, good blow
Speaker 1: because they've got a good coach. We need a good blake.
Speaker 5: We need a good bike.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: good blokes so were senior coaches. That's not true, lunatics,
Speaker 3: but the balance isn't there.
Speaker 5: We need a good bike and we're going to get
Speaker 5: you a good bike.
Speaker 1: In that particular role, and the good blake they got
Speaker 1: was with Tim Watson, who, yes, it's the quality of
Speaker 1: a good bike, a good bike, who had the grounding
Speaker 1: of you know, I've gone on a pathway to become
Speaker 1: a senior coach and I've done the assistants job, and
Speaker 1: I've got a game plan that I reckon is going
Speaker 1: to win. That wasn't part of the good black package
Speaker 1: and within two years were blasted on the ladder.
Speaker 3: So the frustrations for you of knowing it at various
Speaker 3: points in your security career you had very good sides.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if they were great sides, but again,
Speaker 3: every time you felt you were close to the summit
Speaker 3: there that you know it was own goals.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's this. We need someone else to put
Speaker 5: the icing on the cake.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Never. I look at Geelong who went backwards with the
Speaker 1: Chris Scott but said, you know what, we're going to
Speaker 1: put something around him and make it work. And you
Speaker 1: know he's got enough good qualities. We can build hard work, Yeah, hardware.
Speaker 1: Should we sack him, shack him? No, let's support him.
Speaker 1: We've got build on his good qualities and put some
Speaker 1: support around him. What would have happened if they had
Speaker 1: done that to Ken Sheldon or Stan Elves later on
Speaker 1: down the line, Grand Thomas. All of those three in
Speaker 1: particular had the makings of a great coach. Given the
Speaker 1: right support, given the right background, what could we have done?
Speaker 1: But Saint Kilda's history has always been no, we need
Speaker 1: someone else to put the icing on the cake. And
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit concerned about the sort of the
Speaker 1: Ratten and Lion situation. There is this is itself and
Speaker 1: that's going to worry you because has got a history
Speaker 1: of this, haven't.
Speaker 5: They At the moment, it's probably a history of repeating itself.
Speaker 2: And that's a challenge, isn't it that?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: I think Ratten clearly in his last ten weeks was
Speaker 3: not coaching beautifully, but there was so much good in it.
Speaker 2: And there was so much great stuff in Brett Ratton
Speaker 2: as a coach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, had look speaking from experience now, when you've
Speaker 1: got a looming am I going to be here? It
Speaker 1: does affect a coach. It absolutely affects a coach because
Speaker 1: it's their livelihood. And to be a coach, you've got
Speaker 1: to put one hundred and ten percent into being a
Speaker 1: coach and you can't do it any other way. I
Speaker 1: can't do it half as And when you've got looming,
Speaker 1: you know, am I going to be here?
Speaker 5: Am I going to be here?
Speaker 1: I'm going to get the chop? And I've presidents given
Speaker 1: me a call? What does that mean that that's taking
Speaker 1: a lot of focus away from being the best coaching
Speaker 1: that you can be.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to Sacked.
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