St Kilda’s 150th anniversary is a celebration of a particular and perhaps unique form of saintliness.
In terms of what it’s all about, the Saints are a spectacularly unsuccessful club, with one premiership to show for their sesquicentennial labours. Hopefully their eyes were averted in round one as Geelong staff tried to work out how best to arrange four cups behind Joel Selwood on his retirement lap of honour at the MCG.
St Kilda captain Darrel Baldock (left) with the 1966 premiership cup. He had swapped jumpers with Collingwood’s Des Tuddenham.Credit:The Age
Yet St Kilda command the staunch loyalty of supporters and past players in a way that is nearly mystical. It’s not as if they have even relics to venerate. In the club’s small museum in the foyer at Moorabbin, the premiership artefacts consist of the 1966 cup, the ball and a goal umpire’s scorecard and … that’s about it.
In lieu of virtually annual premiership reunions enjoyed by, say, Hawthorn – who have two this year alone – the Saints past players host a kind of all-purpose get-together every November and in recent times have started to stage dinners by decades. This year, it’s the ’70s.
Yet still they come, and so do the fans. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe. And they are a legion.
Eminent jurist Jack Rush, KC, comes from a family so steeped in Collingwood tradition that a grandstand at Victoria Park bears a great uncle’s name, but he is a lifelong Saint who for the past 10 years has sat on the club’s board.
St Kilda 1966 premiership pillars, from left; Barry Breen, coach Allan Jeans, Ian Stewart and Kevin Neale at a reunion.Credit:Shaney Balcombe
Pondering Saintly stoicism, he says: “I look at our history and see we are a bit raffish! Maybe it’s from the old St Kilda, the Junction Oval, the bay, a different lifestyle, a bit mercurial.
“Sometimes hardship forges special bonds and a togetherness that is different, stronger than for those who have not experienced it. That is the way it is for Saints supporters.”
And always has been. In their 150 years, the Saints have rarely been a nose-to-the-winning-grindstone sort of outfit. “Two classes of men play football,” the Australasian reported in 1894. “With one, the pleasure of participating is more than sufficient recompense of defeat; the other class thinks the win is above everything else. To the first class, I think those happy, genial Saints belong.”
St Kilda lost their first 48 matches in the VFL and 99 of their first 101. One day against Geelong, they kicked 0.1, unsurprisingly still a record low. It’s a deadweight history that means that, to this day, the Saints have a better-than-breakeven record against only one other Victorian club; the Bulldogs, which they extended last week.
Coach Allan Killigrew urges St Kilda supporters on at the Junction Oval in 1956.Credit:Argus Collection
But there’s always been something about them. “St Kilda fluctuated between mediocrity and abject incompetence,” a reporter wrote in 1924, “a mix which paradoxically seemed to endear them to the public.” That year, they collected one of their 27 wooden spoons.
Allan Jeans straightened up the Saints in the ’60s, at last realising that fabled premiership. It was so long ago that although Bill Cannon was at the grand final, all he really remembers was that his grandfather kept producing chocolate bars.
Tony Lockett in his St Kilda pomp.Credit:Fairfax Photographic
“We won the granny, but I don’t have any memories of the game, just eating chocolate,” he said, “and piling into the back of a VW Beetle to go to get the Sporting Globe, singing ‘Oh, when the Saints’ . Cannon is from a long line of St Kilda followers. He grew up to play a senior game for the Saints and is now retired from a long career in sports media, all the while carrying a never-guttering candle for the Saints. There are many like him.
One son barracks for Geelong, after his mother, the other is a Saint. “Why?” he asks, as well he might. St Kilda’s drought is the longest in the competition again.
But despite many missteps, the Saints have almost never been threatened existentially as other clubs have. They’d pull games out of hats, sometimes whole seasons, too. This might be one.
Russell Holmesby can map it. Like his father before him, he bit his tongue through a near 20-year stretch without even a single finals appearance and did not waver. He’s St Kilda’s historian, also a past players committeeman, who has written many books on the Saints, including, as co-author, The Point Of It All on 1966, an inspired title (he also was responsible for naming The Animal Cage, a febrile area between the players’ races at Moorabbin).
“Sometimes hardship forges special bonds and a togetherness that is different, stronger than for those who have not experienced it. That is the way it is for Saints supporters.”
St Kilda board member, Jack Rush KC
“Right through history, there’s this thread that St Kilda gets up to win games where you just don’t expect them to,” he said. “There’s always this thing that they can still get up out of nowhere. There’s always a sense that something will happen.”
Midway through last year, they beat Geelong. After that, no-one else did. Last week, with a skeleton team, St Kilda thrashed the Bulldogs.
“There’s another thing,” said Holmesby. “We’ve had stars as good as any club in the competition. There’s always been a Baldock or a Barker or a Lockett or a Riewoldt.” It’s been disproportionately true since way back when. Early in the 20th century, Dave McNamara could verifiably kick the ball 80 metres, and later, Bill Mohr topped the club’s goalkicking 12 years in a row.
Tony Lockett kicked two-thirds of his league-record goal tally for St Kilda. Ian Stewart was in the AFL’s team of the 20th century, which did not have one Collingwood representative. St Kilda have won the most wooden spoons by far, but also the second most Brownlow Medals. Therein lies their distinctive characterisation. In 1986, Lockett kicked 60 goals and St Kilda won their fourth wooden spoon in a row.
Trevor Barker, another Saints superstar.Credit:Fairfax.
“We have never lacked quality champions,” said Rush, “and St Kilda champions become cult figures.”
That’s the half of it. The other is the born cult figures. Take your bows again Ditterich, Muir, Winmar, Gehrig, even much-loved “Wow” Jones, counterculturalists for football’s Bohemia. You will add your own favourites. Whatever St Kilda have lacked, it’s not characters. There’s always been someone to watch, and isn’t that the point? You see a premiership once a year, but you watch every week. “It’s never been dull, put it that way,” said Holmesby.
So for 150 years, the Saints have bonded in their own way. “Strength through loyalty” is their oft-quoted motto. It has to be; it’s not strength growing out of rampant success. Scoring their devotion always is a kind of wry self-awareness. Other clubs put out premiership videos. In 2004, St Kilda put out one to honour a 10-match winning streak.
The one thing St Kilda people of all descriptions won’t accept is to be patronised. Holmesby begs to be excused for an excursion into philosophy when he says that despite what the ledger may show, permanent subjugation is not St Kilda’s lot. That’s a construct willed onto the club by a cartel of bigger clubs to fortify their own standing.
St Kilda’s 2023 team has lodged two unexpected wins already.Credit:AFL Photos
“I don’t want people saying St Kilda is the second team,” Holmesby said. “That’s bullshit. I reckon traditionally other teams have seen our place as down the bottom. That’s our destiny. But you don’t have to accept your destiny. Ditterich and Lockett didn’t.”
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