Ahead of their clash with the Collingwood Magpies, the St Kilda Saints have shown they won’t be pushed around following the acquisitions of Tom De Koning, Jack Silvagni and Liam Ryan
Regardless of how the 17 clubs see it, the St Kildans have confirmed a massive 2025 swap swoop. They were tired of shuffling around the middle and lower middle, meekly submitting to the slow burn of the draft for teams eight through 12 in the standings.
St Kilda 200-game stalwart Andrew Thompson, a former board member with strong ties to the current squad (he also converted close friend and former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan to the Saints), is among those who see this massive splurge as timely and necessary. Suddenly the club stopped kicking sand in his face.
Malcolm Blight and Ken Hinkley were coaching St Kilda in 2001.Credit: Mark Dadswell
“Finally they won’t be pushed around,” said Thompson, summing up the club’s new attitude: “Faith feels like reality, on the contrary [just] hope.”
This is not the first time St Kilda has played a disruptive role in the market, making offers that were deemed irresponsible.
A quarter of a century ago Thompson was among a group of players and officials who traveled to Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast to persuade Malcolm Blight in the hope of convincing and coaching the eccentric former champion.
St Kilda’s maverick chairman Rod Butters handed Blight a napkin with an offer written on it: $1 million a year, a crazy amount of money at the time. A reluctant Blight was thus persuaded to coach the club in a stint that lasted 15 matches.
Andrew Thompson and Fraser Gehrig presided over Saints teammates in 2007.Credit: John Donegan
The quicksilver coach’s presence has given the Saints at the bottom of the ladder a pheromone scent that players out of contract cannot resist. The immensely talented frontman Fraser Gehrig, who was in Collingwood’s bag, has moved to the Saints, while Aaron Hamill, an emerging forward weapon at Carlton, has been signed for five years; both deals were considered exorbitant.
The Blues were very dirty for losing a good player to the Saints, the club that Carlton saw as a dumping ground for abandoned players in the 80s.
Steven Lawrence, a Brisbane Lion with Saints heritage through his father Barry, also jumped on the St Kilda train, as did Brett Voss (Lions), North’s Matthew Capuano and Docker Craig Callaghan. Player manager and former North Melbourne power broker Ron Joseph, who managed Gehrig and knew Blight well from Arden Street, was a key organizer of the deals, as was football manager and later CEO Brian Waldron.
Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera emerged as one of the best players in the competition.Credit: AFL Pictures
More importantly, the Saints had the primary draft pick and used the first and second picks to select young forwards Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke.
Thompson sees parallels between the 2000 revolution, which continued into the early 2000s when Nick Dal Santo, Leigh Montagna, Luke Ball, Brendon Goddard and others arrived in their teens under Blight’s powerful and unorthodox replacement, Grant Thomas.
But the 2026 Saints first brought in young talent, then embarked on a splurge by selecting Darcy Wilson, Alix Tauru, Mitch Owens, Mattaes Phillipou, Marcus Windhager and their new messiah Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, who enters 2026 as the AFL’s highest-paid player after rejecting a huge offer from Port Adelaide.
The 2000 revolution was successful in the sense that the Saints gained sex appeal and a more hard-nosed culture and were among the top four teams five times from 2004 to 2010. They could win the flag three times – in 2004 (they lost the preliminary final by a kick to Port Adelaide, their first win), then narrowly escaped the grand final under Lyon in 2009 and 2010.
Gehrig scored more than 100 goals in 2004 and won the Coleman Medal in ’04 and ’05. Hamill, whose body could not survive the five-year deal, still had a significant impact in the locker room and as a leader.
The four horsemen of the 2025 season have created a similar buzz to the millennial version. The nature of their distribution and output will be intensively monitored.
Sam Flanders (right) played 89 games for Gold Coast.Credit: AFL Pictures
The Suns rate Flanders as a quality player whom they cannot fit into this loaded midfield and his former club expect him to perform well as a midfielder for the Saints.
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De Koning trains a bum whose hopes are bolstered by the new kicking rule favoring jumpers over wrestlers. However, the opposite may be true for Rowan Marshall, whom the Saints are doggedly holding on to despite his request for a trade to Geelong.
Marshall is capable of playing forward in Max King’s absence, as he will be this weekend.
The question for Silvagni, who showed marked improvement when he moved into the key defender role at Carlton last year, will be whether he can avoid the injuries that have plagued him of late in the family business. Ryan has less career runway left. Can he regain the luster he lost on a dismal West Coast team?
Whatever happens in 2026, the Saints have moved from off-Broadway to Times Square. They have increased the risk dramatically.
If the stairs can’t carry the Saints to the clouds, the hires in the checkbook may sink like a lead zeppelin.
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