It’s time wewere seenas winners
Home truths spark Saints
DOUG AL Howard was only a matter of weeks into his new career at St Kilda when he delivered the home truths that lit the fuse for the Saints’ drought-breaking finals run.
It was the start of pre-season late last year and the Saints were on a week-long team bonding camp in Barwon Heads. There was no training, just a series of meetings to define the club’ s culture and align a playing list that had undergone a high level of turnover after the 2019 season.
In one session, the Saints’ five recruits — Brad Hill, Paddy Ryder, Dan Butler, Zak Jones and Howard, pictured – were asked to get up and, with unfiltered honesty, tell the group how other clubs viewed St Kilda. Howard didn’t mince words.
He said the Saints were highly respected as a club and as people; that they played an honest brand of footy and played fair. But, he asked, were they winners? Did they have the cutthroat edge that the great teams do? Were they happy being an up-and-down, middle-of-the-roadside?
Were they happy just being good blokes?
“That was such a brave thing to do,” retired teammate Nathan Brown recalled this week. “He was a young guy who had just come to the club from Port Adelaide and within the first couple of weeks, not knowing too many people, he was bringing that level of honesty. From the get-go you knew this guy was all in and it was really good to see .”
Brown remembered looking around the room inside their 13th Beach Golf Links resort. The atmosphere changed, as if it was the light-bulb moment that club needed to turn potential into its first finals appearance since 2011.
“You could tell a lot of f blokes took it personally, but in the right way ,” Brown said.
“People got up and spoke about how we have to build something different — that this was our 2020 group and we have got to change. Tim Membrey got up and you could see the passion in his eyes. The way he spoke in response to that. You could just tell that it was genuine and from the heart. It was about his love for the club and his love for his teammates – this playing group – and how he was sick of just being known as ‘good blokes’. “He wanted tow in. “Looking back on it now, it was a line-in-the-sand moment for the group .”
Brown referenced this moment when he spoke to the playing group last Friday, a day before the Saints’ stirring win over the Western Bulldogs in the elimination final. Coach Brett Ratten had called and wanted Brown to speak to the group. It was the first time he had addressed the team since leaving the hub mid-season.
Brown also reminded the players of the night in February that they camped at Butler’s family property in Ballarat, where they shared beer sand stories about the late Danny Frawley in the company of club greats Stewart Lo ewe and Tony Brown.
“That was another big moment for the club where we got even closer as a group,” Nathan Brown said.