Bringing the great Malcolm Blight to St Kilda as a senior coach in 2001 did not end well for the club but according to former CEO Brian Waldron it was not a total disaster.
Waldron joined St Kilda as general manager of football operations before being appointed as chief executive in that year when Blight was signed to a lucrative contract taking over from Tim Watson.
The two-time premiership coach at Adelaide was sacked after only 15 games in the job winning just three games with the Saints.
“This is the biggest problem they have is people won’t want to go to Brisbane or Richmond unless there is a massive change,” said Waldron on SEN radio.
“Hey, everyone looks back on our time at St Kilda and says Blight was a mistake.
“As a coach Malcolm might have been but culturally he wasn’t and I’ll tell you why because he enabled us to sell your club.
“We got Gehrig on the back of that, we got Hamill on the back of it being Malcolm Blight – you’ve got to be able to sell something.
“At the moment you can’t sell Justin Leppitsch and I’m sorry to say you can’t sell Damien Hardwick at the moment, you just can’t.
“You’ve got to give them a reason to come.”
He also touched on Ross Lyon’s stint as senior coach at the Saints that ended in Grand Final heartache and him jetting off to accept an offer from Fremantle.
One of the criticisms of Lyon was that he refused to play most of the young players on the list while vying for a premiership at St Kilda.
“Geelong had that policy when Scotty went there, you’ve got to play four players that have played less than 50 games every week,” explained Waldron.
“Under Ross Lyon though St Kilda didn’t play Geary or Armitage, they were on their list and he didn’t play them.
“I would say Steven too who has been there more than six years… no they didn’t like Tom Lynch either, he’s going okay now.”