When St Kilda made the brutal call to jettison Brett Ratten and bring back Ross Lyon, they were hiring far more than a coach with a proven capacity to command a playing group and get immediate improvement.
Lyon’s first stint as St Kilda coach, especially the years of 2009 and 2010, represents a kind of Camelot for the Saints. The best players of that period – Nick Riewoldt, Lenny Hayes, Brendon Goddard, Nick Dal Santo, Leigh Montagna, Robert Harvey (who’d retired in 2008) – can be seen as knights of the round table.
And they’re now knights at Ross’s table.
The Saints are all in on coach Ross Lyon.Credit: AFL Photos
While the grail eluded them and Lyon, those players carry enormous weight with the St Kilda faithful; if a club does not have a premiership era – and 1966 is too long ago to retain relevance – then the gallant knights who almost touched the cup become the benchmark and perhaps the guardians of the club.
Those players also have significant media profiles – Riewoldt, Dal Santo, Goddard and Montagna have been/are commentators with Fox Footy or radio – while Hayes and Harvey are bona fide legends.
So, when Lyon was brought back at the behest of president Andrew Bassat’s board, he did so with the backing of the knights and a round table duly was erected at Moorabbin.
Ross Lyon with his former player Brendon Goddard, now St Kilda’s assistant coach.Credit: AAP
Simon Lethlean learned in 2023 that he didn’t have a seat at the table, certainly not where the business of football was concerned.
Lyon likes to say “let the cobblers cobble”, a variation on Mick Malthouse’s “let the bakers bake their bread,” which really means that the coach shouldn’t interfere with staff who have particular expertise in their field.
But the coach also must have faith in the cobblers. If he doesn’t trust what’s being produced – whether that’s the players recruited, the preparation of their fitness or the psychologist helping them think and run straight – there’s a chance that he’ll want his own cobblers, or at least cobblers he’s aligned with.
On Friday, after Nine’s Tom Morris broke the news that chief executive Lethlean was leaving, the reaction within the AFL ecosystem – from current and former officials from rival clubs and others within the industry – was that this was a victory for Lyon, in terms of consolidating power/control; that, as one senior official at a Victorian club put it, the Saints “bet the house on Ross”.
Lyon and former Saint Nick Riewoldt in 2010.Credit: Sebastian Costanzo
Lyon’s enhanced power base and clout – and St Kilda’s judgment that their list isn’t up to contention-level yet – is in contrast to the situation of Luke Beveridge at the Bulldogs, who has seen a raft of changes made around him, and then a further review of the football program by Peter Jackson, the ex-Essendon and Melbourne CEO.
Beveridge, as this masthead reported, was overruled on the removal of assistant coach Rohan Smith late last year. His control of the football domain has eroded.
Bassat downplayed the notion that Lyon and Lethlean clashed, telling this column that the pair had tried to make their relationship work. But the president acknowledged that Lethlean had ended with less input into football and that he would have preferred “a role that was the original conception”.
The balance of power that led to Lethlean’s exit can be discerned simply by examining who’s been hired and who’s left before and after Ratten was replaced by Lyon.
In: Hayes, Goddard, Harvey (all in coaching crew). Stephen Silvagni, a close friend of Lyon’s, has a role as list manager. David Misson, initially brought in to oversee conditioning, is the new head of football and is another Lyon ally from the Camelot of 2008-11. Simon Dalrymple, ex-Swans and Dogs recruiting boss, has come in to work under Silvagni and his veteran ally, Graeme Allan.
Out: football manager/strategist David Rath (now at Essendon), list boss James Gallagher, recruiting manager Chris Toche, recruiter and ex-Hawk great Jarryd Roughead, psychologist Ben Robbins.
St Kilda had initially hired the highly experienced Geoff Walsh to head the football department, shortly before Ratten’s removal by Bassat, only for Walsh to walk away after four months for personal reasons. It is hard to say how Walsh would have navigated any Lyon/Lethlean discord – certainly he and Lyon established a rapport – but the upshot is that Misson is more wedded to the coach, who technically reports to Misson, but realpolitik says is answerable only to Bassat and the board.
Carl Dilena, the acting chief executive and ex-Kangaroos CEO, is well regarded by Bassat and favourite to land the CEO job. It is hard to imagine that Dilena will be much involved in Lyon’s domain – Bassat, indeed, suggested that the next CEO would be less football-focused than Lethlean had been.
From outside, this has the appearance of a slow-motion coup d’etat.
But really the driver of this takeover is Bassat, rather than Lyon himself. The board – whose football director is Jason Blake, another knight of 2009-10 – has handed the keys to the coach.
Bassat said of the Lethlean exit: “Ross had no agency in this decision at all. It was a conversation between the board and Simon. So it [Lethlean and Lyon’s relationship] wasn’t perfect but it was fine.”
Bassat, in effect, has considered the Lethlean vision of St Kilda’s football operation and Lyon’s version and chosen to back the latter.
It is unclear who will stand in Lyon’s way on football matters if there’s a disagreement or an overreach. As it stands, due to the overlapping relationships and history, he arguably has more power within his club than any other current coach, John Longmire possibly excepted.
But the question of whether Lyon and the knights land the grail will hinge more on the quality of players that Dalrymple and Silvagni find than on how the coach marshals the Saints in his second coming.
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