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<\/p>\nIrrespective of how 17 clubs saw it, St Kilda people endorsed the great trade raid of 2025. They\u2019d had enough of muddling around the middle and lower middle, of meekly submitting to the draft\u2019s slow burn for teams in the ladder\u2019s eight-to-12 purgatory.<\/p>\n
Andrew Thompson, St Kilda\u2019s 200-game stalwart and ex-board member with strong links to the current crew (he converted close mate and former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan to the Saints too), is among those who viewed the massive splurge as timely and necessary. As a moment that the club stopped having sand kicked in its face.<\/p>\n
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Malcolm Blight and Ken Hinkley coaching St Kilda in 2001.Credit: Mark Dadswell<\/p>\n
\u201cAt last, they\u2019re not going to be pushed around,\u201d said Thompson, who summed up the club\u2019s new attitude thus: \u201cThe belief feels genuine, as opposed to [just] hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the first time St Kilda have acted as a disrupter in the marketplace, making offers that were deemed irresponsible.<\/p>\n
A quarter-century earlier, Thompson was among a posse of players and officials who went up to Jupiter\u2019s Casino on the Gold Coast to importune Malcolm Blight, in the hope of persuading the eccentric ex-champion and coaching great to sign on.<\/p>\n
Rod Butters, St Kilda\u2019s maverick president, passed a napkin to Blight with an offer scribbled on it \u2013 $1 million a year, lunatic lucre in that era. Blight, who had been reluctant, was thus persuaded to coach the club, in a union that lasted 15 games.<\/p>\n
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Andrew Thompson and Fraser Gehrig chaired off the ground by Saints teammates in 2007.Credit: John Donegan<\/p>\n
The mercurial coach\u2019s presence gave the bottom-of-ladder Saints the pheromone scent that out-of-contract players couldn\u2019t withstand. Fraser Gehrig, the prodigiously gifted spearhead who had been in the bag for Collingwood, switched to the Saints, while Aaron Hamill, an emerging gun forward at Carlton, signed on for five years; both deals were considered exorbitant.<\/p>\n
The Blues were filthy at losing a good player to the Saints, the club that Carlton had treated as a dumping ground for cast-off players back in the \u201980s.<\/p>\n
Steven Lawrence, a Brisbane Lion with Saints heritage via his father Barry, also jumped on the St Kilda train, as did Brett Voss (Lions), North\u2019s Matthew Capuano and Docker Craig Callaghan. Player agent and ex-North Melbourne powerbroker Ron Joseph<\/a>, who managed Gehrig and knew Blight well from Arden Street, was a key orchestrator of the dealings, as was football manager and later chief executive Brian Waldron.<\/p>\n Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera has emerged as one of the competition\u2019s best players.Credit: AFL Photos<\/p>\n More crucially, the Saints had a priority draft pick, and used picks one and two to draft teenage key forwards Nick Riewoldt and Justin Koschitzke.<\/p>\n Thompson sees parallels between the revolution of 2000, which continued under Grant Thomas, Blight\u2019s forceful, unorthodox replacement, into the early 2000s, when Nick Dal Santo, Leigh Montagna, Luke Ball, Brendon Goddard and others arrived as teens.<\/p>\n The 2026 Saints, though, have assembled the young talent first, then embarked on the splurge, having drafted Darcy Wilson, Alix Tauru, Mitch Owens, Mattaes Phillipou, Marcus Windhager and their new messiah, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera<\/a>, who enters 2026 as the AFL\u2019s highest-paid player after he spurned a leviathan offer from Port Adelaide.<\/p>\n The revolution of 2000 succeeded, in the sense that the Saints did garner sex appeal and a more tenacious culture, becoming a top-four team five times from 2004 until 2010. They might have won the flag three times \u2013 in 2004 (they lost the preliminary final by a kick to eventual premiers Port Adelaide), then the grand final near misses of 2009 and 2010 under Lyon.<\/p>\n Gehrig booted more than 100 goals in 2004, and won Coleman Medals in \u201904 and \u201905. Hamill, whose body did not hold up over his five-year deal, was nonetheless, an important influence in the locker room and as leader.<\/p>\n The four horsemen of 2025\u2019s post-season have created a similar buzz to the millennial version. The nature of their deployment \u2013 and output \u2013 will be followed intensely.<\/p>\n Sam Flanders (right) played 89 games for Gold Coast.Credit: AFL Photos<\/p>\n The Suns rated Flanders as a quality player, whom they couldn\u2019t accommodate in that loaded midfield, and his former club expects that he will perform well as a mid for the Saints.<\/p>\n Loading<\/p>\n![\"Nasiah](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/3fcd026a3c2e9c2872e1e897b6c31678cc33b221.jpeg\")
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