Every AFL club has a network of influencers who make things happen through their wealth, fame or political connections. As part of our series on AFL club powerbrokers, we examine the star power at St Kilda.
Gerry Ryan, Eric Bana, Lindsay Fox, David Russell, and Nick Riewoldt. Credit: Nathan Perri
The first game in the second season of Ross Lyon’s second coming at St Kilda didn’t pan out as the coach hoped.
In what he described as an “erratic” performance, his Saints were put to the sword by the Crows at Adelaide Oval.
The performance had the vultures circling, but in the days after the heavy defeat, the coach’s phone rang. On the other end was one of the Saints’ biggest powerbrokers: Gerry Ryan. He had a simple message.
“Stick to the plan, Ross.”
Whether it’s cycling, basketball, rugby league, Australian rules or caravans, when Ryan speaks, people listen.
“I said to him: Ross, stick to the plan. Don’t change things after the first hurdle.
“And the other things is, did you really have that marked down as a win? All you need to do is stick to the plan.
“Put it up on the board. Look at it realistically. It’s one game. What is your goal? How can you get in front of the 50-50 win-loss ratio? Winning takes time. Building culture takes time. We are building to long-term, sustainable success.”
Success tends to follow Ryan around, both in business and the business of sport. The owner and founder of Jayco caravans remains the biggest sponsor of Australian professional road and track cycling through the success of the GreenEDGE team and has been a part-owner of the Melbourne Storm since 2013. The Storm have played in five grand finals in that time. But it’s yet to rub off on St Kilda, who are still searching for their second premiership and have the unfortunate distinction of holding the longest flag drought in the game (59 years).
That’s despite possessing serious star power on and off the field. Moorabbin has been home to some of the game’s greats – the late Trevor Barker, the heroic Nicky Winmar, Brownlow medallists Tony Lockett and Robert Harvey, modern champion Nick Riewoldt. Heavy hitters in the stands boast “Plugger”-like power and/or fame – trucking magnate Lindsay Fox, the late Shane Warne and movie star Eric Bana, to name a few. When Ed Sheeran was in town for his concert tour, he popped in to St Kilda training.
St Kilda great Tony Lockett.Credit: The Age
After nearly 40 years of being involved with the Saints, both in an official and unofficial capacity, Ryan and Lyon have become friends.
“I think with Ross it’s taken him a couple of years to come in and undo what the previous management had done, and I was critical of the organisational structure of the club.”
Lyon, with more than 350 games of coaching experience, leans on Ryan as a sounding board.
“I don’t take it for granted, I can tell you that. I’m so fortunate,” Lyon said.
“I do call him and we do catch up. He’s very successful and strong in his views and to be honest, it’s great to have a St Kilda person who’s aligned to the vision and the strategy. Because there are clubs that have people of Gerry’s influence and if they’re not aligned culturally, they can do the opposite.
Jayco founder Gerry Ryan was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.
“It’s nice to be fortified when seas get a bit rough and to have someone who’s unwavering in strategy and belief to build something.”
Ryan served as vice president of St Kilda in the ’90s and was pivotal in helping the club survive. According to multiple club sources he continues to donate upwards of $250,000 per year. That’s not to say there are no strings attached.
“He likes to know where that money is going,” said a club source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given their position at the Saints. “And that’s OK because the club is always happy to tell him.”
Ryan thinks St Kilda’s two biggest mistakes were moving to Seaford and allowing Lyon to leave abruptly in 2011.
“Seaford was just wrong. It never should have happened.”
It was in then CEO Michael Nettlefold’s office in Seaford in September 2011 that contract negotiations between Lyon and the Saints fell apart.
“I flipped out,” Lyon recalled in a radio interview in 2022.
“I rang [his then manager] Craig Kelly in the morning and said: ‘They can’t be trusted, I’ve had enough, I’m out. I would rather dig ditches.’ He goes: ‘Settle down, settle down, settle down.’
“So I went into my lawyer and said: ‘Mate, I’m done here’ – and on the way in, that’s when an offer came in interestingly enough … from St Kilda, which I didn’t even look at. I said: ‘This is what’s happened, I’ve had a gutful, I’ve done the right thing, I feel like I’ve been turned on, so I’m sort of, in my head, done.’”
Lyon then led the Dockers to four consecutive finals series – including the 2013 grand final.
For the Saints, the opposite happened. Having played in the previous four finals series, including three grand finals and coming within one cruel bounce of a flag in the 2010 drawn decider, they went on to miss the top eight for the next eight years.
St Kilda and Collingwood players after the drawn 2010 AFL grand final.Credit: Paul Rovere
That period still haunts St Kilda supporters, including Ryan.
“Ross should never have left. Management stuffed that up. They didn’t treat him with respect.
“If we had kept Ross, we would have a premiership by now.”
Instead, the club hired Scott Watters, who, after two seasons and 44 games only had 17 wins to his name. He was moved on for Alan Richardson, the Collingwood premiership player. In the eyes of many, he fared better than his predecessor, but finished his St Kilda coaching career with a worse win/loss percentage and the same number of finals appearances: zero.
Enter the club’s 46th coach, Brett Ratten.
The former Carlton captain and coach was a much-loved figure wherever he went, including at Hawthorn where he served as an assistant coach under Alastair Clarkson, a period in which the Hawks completed an unthinkable three-peat.
Despite being sacked at Carlton, his coaching credentials appeared to have been re-written because of his success at Hawthorn.
The decision to hire him was vindicated in less than a year, with the Saints playing in and winning a final in his first full season in 2020.
But less than two years later, the team’s form fell apart and the tide began to turn against Ratten.
It was at this point, according to Ryan, that the media created a false narrative as to how the club changed coaches from Ratten to Lyon.
Gerry Ryan, Andrew Bassat and Lindsay Fox, who celebrated his birthday aboard the Seabourn Quest.Credit: Artwork: Nathan Perri
In early September 2022, days after Ratten’s Saints had been handed their third consecutive loss at the hands of Sydney, former St Kilda president and Linfox founder Fox hosted the country’s elite on a cruise from New York to Montreal.
It was an exclusive guest list capped at 400 people. On the boat were fellow billionaires Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and Solomon Lew, property billionaire John Gandel, former Carlton president Luke Sayers, infrastructure tsar Rod Eddington, former Melbourne mayor Sally Capp and entertainment mogul Eddie McGuire.
Guests had to pay their own way to New York, but Fox, who doesn’t have any personal association with St Kilda now (although one of his sons David still does), footed the bill once the vessel left the docks.
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, cruise experts said the rack rate on a 12-day cruise would cost from $10,000 per person.
The liner itself is valued at $US250 million ($390 million).
Reports emerged that the cruise was the scene of early discussions about making a change in the coaching position.
Ryan confirmed to this masthead that conversations did take place, but they weren’t about Ratten, and they weren’t on the 200-metre Seabourn Quest.
“It wasn’t on Lindsay’s boat, by the way, because I was there,” he said.
“But, some concerned St Kilda people got together and said that to the president. But during that conversation, we didn’t even talk about the coach and I questioned why we were leaving him out there by himself without any support.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Ryan said of Ratten.
St Kilda chief executive Carl Dilena’s office sits in the north-western corner of the main building at Moorabbin.
To get to it, you walk past reception and up a modest staircase, the wall of which is covered by plaques of club donors who contributed to the club’s home base.
Behind the plaques is a mural of the great Riewoldt, whose status is deeply ingrained in the club’s culture, and who remains close to Lyon as he pursues a media career with Channel Seven.
To Dilena’s left is the car park and to the right are his staff. It’s hardly a bayside penthouse but outside the coach’s box, this is the most important room at St Kilda.
For a team crying out for more ball-winning, inside midfielders, this is the Saints’ off-field engine room.
Dilena knows what it’s like to be the chief executive of a financially struggling football club. Between 2013 and 2019, he ran North Melbourne, overseeing Brad Scott’s reign as coach during which the Kangaroos played in consecutive preliminary finals. He also helped eradicate the club’s debilitating debt, which was weighing heavily on both the supporter base and the AFL.
Before taking on the Saints role in October 2022, Dilena decided to ask around. In his own words, he completed some “due diligence”.
What he heard wasn’t good.
“They’ll stuff something up then they’ll come back and ask to be bailed out,” he answered when asked what the AFL community’s opinion was.
“I don’t want the Saints to have that reputation any more. We shouldn’t have that reputation.”
But, like it or not, the Saints have for several years now been like Oliver Twist with his bowl. St Kilda ($26,102,000) and North Melbourne ($26,357,000) received the highest distributions from the AFL according to league’s 2024 annual report.
Which is why Dilena is so adamant the club’s $6.5 million bank debt will not be paid off by its rich and powerful supporters.
David Russell, for instance, could charter out his 75-metre yacht, Elena, for five weeks and use the proceeds to wipe the entire debt of the St Kilda Football Club.
Who is Russell? A former banker with Macquarie who stepped into the renewables industry, selling his company into the US for $1.3 billion. He is a co-founder of Equis, an Asia-Pacific clean energy investor.
But money and energy come second and third to Russell’s greatest passion, the Saints. The billionaire grew up in Moorabbin and now lives in the Brighton house once owned by fellow Saints lover Warne.
Shane Warne and Eric Bana.Credit: Getty Images
At club functions, you would usually find Russell at table one, in front of the stage, alongside caravan tycoon Ryan, Fox and Paul Solomon, the stepson of the creators of global toy giant Moose, which has 700 employees (mostly in Melbourne) and an annual revenue of $1 billion.
We haven’t even got to the president, Andrew Bassat, yet. Along with his brother, AFL commissioner Paul, Bassat started job portal SEEK in 1997. It has just been valued at more than $9 billion.
If you’re ever lucky enough to wander into the Saints rooms after a win, you’ll almost certainly catch a glimpse of Hollywood actor Eric Bana.
The Hulk, Chopper and Troy star lives down the road from club headquarters in Brighton and is a close friend of Riewoldt and Bassat.
So how can it be that with several billionaire supporters, the club remains on the AFL drip feed?
“There’s a lot to be said for earning your stripes in the AFL,” Dilena said.
Nick Riewoldt with Lyon in his first stint as coach.Credit: Vince Caligiuri
“There are aspirations, for example, about playing in bigger marquee games. But you have to earn that right. You have to bring the big crowds, you have to play a strong brand of football, you have to be exciting to watch and that’s what we want to do.
“And off-field is the same thing. I don’t want to be putting my hand out to say, hey, get rid of this debt. I think we as a club and as the administration have to take that on ourselves.”
Ryan agrees. He’s been a strong financial contributor to the club for decades. He could probably find the money to pay off the debt behind his couch. But that’s not the point.
“You have to do it on your own. If you don’t, it breeds inefficient management. They’ve got to have a business plan and within that, a financial plan. There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of debt, as long as it’s being utilised and not wasted.
“But they are in as good a financial position as they have ever been, to be honest.
“The board … the management … it’s the best the club has had for a long time. Oh, and they have some money!
“At the end of the day, the clubs that have had the most money have won the most premierships.
“We’ve had so much success at [NRL club Melbourne] Storm, I just want to see that at the Saints now. And it’s all about getting the right people in. And we feel we’ve got them now.”
On a chilly Thursday autumn afternoon, inside a sunlit Prahran pub, business is being done.
At least, at that’s what it looks like.
St Kilda president Bassat, multimillionaire supporter Solomon, list strategist Graeme “Gubby” Allen and player manager Paul Connors sit in the middle of the restaurant, sharing a $240 bottle of Burgundy.
So, what’s on the agenda at the Mt Erica Hotel, other than expensive wine and scotch fillets?
“Definitely not business!” laughs Bassat, who turns white at the sight of a journalist appearing at the table.
It just so happens that Connors looks after out-of-contract Carlton star Tom De Koning, who is being heavily courted by the Saints.
Connors’ stable also manages the likes of Harley Reid and Luke Davies-Uniacke; the latter recently turned down a significant offer from the Saints.
The Saints of 2025 make no secret of their desire to become a destination club for superstar players in the quest to add to their solitary 1966 premiership.
There have also been mega offers for GWS talent Finn Callaghan and Carlton defender Jacob Weitering. They, too, re-signed with their clubs, but De Koning has before him an enticing offer of about $1.7 million a year to move to Moorabbin.
On the potential recruitment of “TDK” and others, Ryan did not pretend to exert influence but said: “Whatever they do it’s about bringing in the right person with ability, but more importantly, with character”.
Like Lyon, Dilena recognises how lucky he and the club are to have people such as Ryan on speed dial.
“It’s incredibly valuable. The business support you get … whether it’s Andrew Bassat the president, or other seriously influential business people, just being able to pick their brains.
“They’ve obviously been very influential in the past … a lot of them donated to the facility that we have here today and in bringing the Saints back to Moorabbin, which is a really important step in our history.
“If you boil it all down, it really is our No.1 mission: our next flag. That’s what we are gearing everything towards.
“A lot of work has gone into restructuring football, not only the playing list but off field and what Ross has brought to the table.
“We have to rectify our position and stabilise ourselves so that we are a sustainable business model and football club in the long term, not just putting our hand out.”
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