Ross Lyon appears on the brink of becoming the next coach of St Kilda, though a couple of “hurdles” reportedly remain.
The former Saints coach held a two-hour meeting with the club’s board at their Moorabbin headquarters on Wednesday, following chats on Monday and Tuesday as well.
He has appeared to be the club’s No.1, and potentially only, candidate ever since the sacking of Brett Ratten last week.
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“Ross Lyon left Saints HQ a short time ago – CEO Simon Lethlean departed a few minutes later,” Fox Sports News’ Drew Jones tweeted on Wednesday evening.
“Lyon had further meetings today regarding the head coaching role. Announcement appears to be getting closer.”
Seven’s Tom Browne reported Lyon is set to be named coach.
“I believe Ross Lyon will be officially unveiled as St Kilda’s new coach in coming days,” he said.
“St Kilda’s position tonight is they’re still going through the process and working on it.”
The Age reported there were still a couple of “hurdles” to overcome.
If Lyon does return to St Kilda, he will become the first coach since David Parkin to return to an AFL club for a second coaching stint. Parkin coached the Blues to two flags in the 80s and then came back in the early 90s, leading them to the 1995 premiership.
Lyon refused to be part of a full coaching search at Carlton last year, and did not go for the Essendon job either, but the Saints’ one-man search appears to have successfully landed the man who brought them to three Grand Finals over a decade ago.
His dramatic exit from St Kilda in late 2011 was one of the biggest AFL coaching bombshells in recent history, with even Lyon’s manager Craig Kelly unaware of the approach from Fremantle.
“There were some articles in the Herald Sun and The Age – because basically I’d made myself vulnerable because I’d committed – and then there was this: ‘Ross is being greedy, Ross has been offered $800,000’ – there’d been nothing to the point,” Lyon explained recently.
“I flipped out. I rang 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.’
“I said there’s an interstate club that’s interested. He said: ‘Are you sure? Are they tyre-kickers?’ I said ‘I don’t know, here’s the number’. Steve (Rosich) took the call … he spoke to (then president) Steve Harris and (then football boss) Craig Bond – no one else knew – and then they said ‘we’ll come back to you with an offer at 6am tomorrow morning’.
“They came back with the offer. They said no negotiations, I said I didn’t want any, it was fully guaranteed. And then the St Kilda offer came in, but mentally I was out because of what had occurred. That’s the exact truth.”
The Saints’ shock sacking of Ratten last week, which came just months after re-signing him on a multi-year deal, has seen the club widely savaged for its poor process.
