THE NEW SAINTS DOCO
DIRECTOR Ben Raimondo isn’t sure how many hours he poured into his documentary capturing St Mary’s 2019 GFL premiership, but he says it was worth it.
A reserves player with the club, Raimondo took on the task of reliving the club’s remarkable run to the flag in his 22-minute film, Saint Sox.
The documentary captures thoughts from players, coaches and club legends on the build-up to Nick Connors’ premiership-winning goal with seconds left in the decider against Colac last September.
It is regarded as arguably the most dramatic grand final in the GFL’s 41-season history.
Thanks to the coronavirus shutdown, Raimondo found himself with extra hours up his sleeve to complete the final edits of the piece, which has been warmly received by the playing group.
He said he could not put a figure on the number of hours he worked away at the film.
“I don’t know honestly,” he said. “It’s a bit of a blur, it’s been a long time. It took ages. It’s more since the lockdown that I’ve been able to sit down and smash out the editing. So in that last week I would have spent 20 hours on it, I reckon.
“A few of the boys commented saying they enjoyed it and it was good to bring back the memories.”
The name for the documentary comes from the inspiration St Mary’s took from the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
Saints co-coach Glenn Keast, who proudly sports a Boston cap during his interview for the project, reveals in the film that he was inspired by the story after reading a book while on holiday in Bali and embedded the World Series curse-breaking Red Sox tale into the Saints playing group.
Even as they saw their early lead dwindle in the GFL Grand Final against Colac, putting them at risk of their fourth consecutive grand final loss, the St Mary’s players yelled out “Boston” to keep their belief high.
The film includes grabs from The Benchwarmers —a weekly Geelong Advertiser local footy podcast — to help chart the comeback of the Saints after their horror start to the season when they slumped to 10th at 1-4 after
Round 5. A telling moment in the film comes from co-coach Travis Robertson as he reads instructions for Nick Connors ahead of the big day.
“Nick Connors: every week you contribute to what we ask. You will get varying opponents but just do your job and stay in the game just like you did until very late last week,” Robertson reads.
“It might take until then.” Raimondo said co-coaches Keast and Robertson were open in their interviews for the project.
“Keasty and Robbo, I probably could have put about 20 minutes of them speaking in and everything they said was gold,” Raimondo said.
“But that pretty much goes for everyone, it was pretty hard to cut out stuff.
“Everything everyone said was brilliant. Originally it actually went for about 31 minutes and I thought that was way too long so I had to be tough and cut some stuff out, but they all spoke really well.”
Having endured the project, Raimondo now has a renewed thirst for filmmaking.
“If you asked me about a month ago, I would have said I am never making another one again,” he said.
“But now it’s done I’m pretty happy with it, so I think I will have a crack at another one.”
The documentary can be viewed on YouTube.