St Kilda never fell out of love with Ross Lyon. In a modern rarity of coaching he sacked them, he wasn’t sacked by them.
It is now an even rarer modern coaching love story: he has been hired back again by the club he walked out on.
While the sacking of Brett Ratten blindsided everyone except those who had been on Lindsay Fox’s yacht, this appointment blindsides no-one, and yet it is a truly remarkable change.
Ross Lyon with St Kilda president Andrew Bassat.Credit:Getty Images
It has had the feel of a rom-com about it; St Kilda courting Lyon again, and Lyon blushing at having his heart opened up. On Monday he spoke of how he surprised himself at becoming emotional when the reality of making this reconnection with the club that had changed the course of his life suddenly looked likely.
He had never lost touch with significant people from the time he was there. And now he is back they will be the ones he again leans on most. Lenny Hayes is back there as an assistant and Robert Harvey will be announced within days. Nick Dal Santo coaches the women’s team. Nick Riewoldt has been a constant close friend turned gentle matchmaker for his former club and coach.
The Saints have had time enough to move on from Ross Lyon walking out on them to get over it. Time enough to churn through other coaches who could not take them where Ross Lyon took them, and to reflect that if maybe they got their old coach back they could also get back to where they were when he was coaching them.
Geoff Walsh spoke candidly when he was appointed as the new footy general manager that the Saints were irrelevant. He was being honest and accurate. That he was provocative was a bonus.
Clearly he had made the same unvarnished comment in his job interview, and it resonated with St Kilda given they have since spoken about wanting to be relevant again. They feel the last time they were relevant in footy was when Grant Thomas and then Ross were coaching. That is a bit harsh on the first half of this year, when the team was 8-3 and in the top four, but the more telling point about relevance was how little the meek surrender of the second half of their season registered in the footy conversation.
Happy days: Lyon said he was put through a “solid” process before taking on the top job.Credit:Penny Stephens
Walsh was not the architect of this coaching change. He did not review this footy department (it was one of the few club reviews in the last year he did not do), and so did not have his fingerprints on the decision to sack Ratten. Indeed, he had coffee with Ratten to talk about the year ahead and changes they might make just the day before the coach was sacked. He will have had a sense of the review and the possibility of the board making a change, but it was not a change at his instigation.
Walsh and Lyon both arrive in the job as very senior figures in the game, and yet their paths had barely previously crossed. They had fractious moments when Walsh was at Collingwood and Lyon as St Kilda coach resisted the trade of Luke Ball, and later when the Saints were keen on Sharrod Wellingham. They were little more than regular football squabbles, forgotten as quickly as they blaze up.
The question of relevance for St Kilda is an interesting one. The Saints had to wonder if Lyon’s game style, itself, was now irrelevant. It was a fair question because Lyon had asked himself the same question.
This was the moment on Monday where the signs of a different Ross Lyon were most apparent. Ordinarily a combative character, Lyon was true to his promise of being more open and honest. The modern game was played differently and he couldn’t seek to overlay what he had done before on this St Kilda team.
He would coach people differently – delegate more – and he would coach a slightly different style of game. What would not be different were the uncompromising standards and the drilled understanding of what that game would be.
Lyon can quote statistics on why criticism of his game as too defensive is unfair, but refreshingly, in the same breath, he undid his own argument by quoting a figure that when his teams were first for defence, they had also been eighth for attack and that sort of imbalance is unsustainable.
He admits the game his team will play will not be the game his sides previously played. It will not be Lyon-ball. He is pleased his new side can run and that is something that works in modern footy and what he wants to cultivate.
Some of the current St Kilda playing cohort arrive to watch Ross Lyon’s press conference.Credit:Getty Images
Just how they do that is the most crucial next part, and this is where the real shift in Lyon is. He will not walk in the door with his gameplan and tell the players how they are going to play. He will not sit his assistants down and hand out a manila folder with what to do.
Instead, he intends to hear what his assistants – Hayes, Corey Enright, and Harvey – tell him about the game that will best suit his players and the modern style of game, and tailor something from that. In coaching, a football philosophy is very different to game style or tactics. Lyon will always have a defensive philosophy that his assistants understand, but the tactics will change.
Jack Sinclair was a shining light for St Kilda during a tough 2022 season.Credit:AFL Photos
This all sounds a bit like Kevin Bartlett promising to handball more, but Lyon does a persuasive job of selling the message that the biggest shift in his thinking in his time away from the game has been an appreciation that he wants to bring all people with him on the journey, not just a few, and that a key part of that journey is listening and delegating.
Repeatedly, Lyon spoke at his press conference of not being stuck “in the weeds”. He also admits that “dropping the curtain” on the outside world and keeping the media and the fans the other side of that curtain was a mistake in the past.
This was part of understanding that he was not suddenly “Cuddly Ross” (his words) but he was at least ‘Different Ross’; more open-minded about his own shortcomings and where he could be better. Lyon II.
When he arrived at St Kilda the first time he took over a team that had also been in the finals, further than this team, but the club then, like now, felt it needed a coach to take them further.
When he arrived at St Kilda that first time he also took over a vastly better list of players: Nick Riewoldt and Lenny Hayes were their best players, with Brendon Goddard, Sam Fisher, Nick Dal Santo, Leigh Montagna and Stephen Milne among the A-grade talent. Some were already stars when he got there, and others became A-graders.
This time he has a team of uncertain elite quality. Jack Steele is an A grader, Max King should be, and Jack Sinclair, as an All-Australian this year, probably already is. Then there are some like Jade Gresham who has the scope to be at that level, Rohan Marshall who continues to improve, and then serviceable role players.
Lyon was dismissive of list analysis, insisting he didn’t do it at St Kilda or Fremantle before taking either of those jobs, and had not done it second time around at St Kilda. He was more concerned with putting the right people in place to make decisions, and then things could turn quickly. Besides, Tom Atkins at Geelong was the perfect example of how perceptions and players can change. Twelve months ago he was no one’s idea of a midfielder and now, in the space of a year, he has rewarded Chris Scott by becoming a key midfielder in a premiership team.
