Welcome to the new world

The slow-motion train wreck that is the St Kilda Football Club delivered one of its biggest surprises last night, albeit not of its own hands.

After two oh-so-close brushes with a second Premiership Cup for the Saints, it is being suggested that coach Ross Lyon departed a dysfunctional club culture and copped a decent pay rise into the bargain. AussieRulesBlog knows of one super-keen Saints supporter who washed their hands of the club in the wake of the so-called St Kilda schoolgirl scandals. Lyon would have been front row centre for the spectacle and it’s not hard to imagine that he found the whole business distasteful.

The undercover nature of Lyon’s negotiations with Fremantle has more than a slight smell of fish around it. The contrast with Neil Craig’s departure from Adelaide, albeit in significantly-different circumstances, cannot be overlooked.

The truth is that AFL is now at least as much a business as it is a sport. Notions of loyalty and ‘team’ are going to be increasingly strained as the competition moves, inexorably it seems, to free agency. Ask Matthew Knights, Dean Bailey and now Mark Harvey, about loyalty. A coaching contract is now officially about as valuable, morally, as a square of Sorbent poo ticket. Knights and Harvey at least have the pleasure of accepting the balance of their contract money, but that can hardly be equivalent to the significant damage done to their brand and their careers in football.