If St Kilda think a new coach will solve their problems, they need to think again. There are much deeper and more concerning issues at Moorabbin.
Women’s coach Nick Dal Santo will have a farewell game at Moorabbin on Saturday, having not been offered another contract for next season.
The club announced on Friday that Dal Santo would stand down, with an interim coach to lead the team for the final three games.
Perhaps the 18th-placed Saints are hoping his exit will spur the winless team on to victory against the Pies, in the bottom-of-the-ladder clash at RSEA Park.
The decision to part ways comes as no surprise, given they were just 40 seconds away from becoming the first AFLW team to endure a scoreless game last weekend. Not goalless, SCORELESS!
The team has gone backwards this year. You could argue only one player has improved, midfielder Tyanna Smith.
Teenage recruit Jade McLay has also been a positive. Other than that, it’s a mess.
There have been some baffling football decisions. Dal Santo was hired as a part-time coach, but has worked full-time hours. List manager Darius Wyatt comes from a cricket background in South Australia and, like Dal Santo, had no previous experience of women’s footy.
President Andrew Bassat said in a letter to members: “We are committed to giving our AFLW program every chance to succeed and to building something our members can be proud of.”
However, sources close to the club, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say female players at St Kilda feel like second-class citizens.
Some say that when they walk through the doors, they feel like they’re entering a space that’s not theirs. As one person said to me, “It feels like you’re tiptoeing around the men’s workspace.”
There’s reportedly little interaction with the men’s team.
Some female players feel there are unspoken rules. Put back everything where you found it. Be out of meeting rooms on the dot (while the men frequently go over time, leaving the women waiting for the use of a room or facility).
In the pre-season, some players were told they’d benefit from extra tackling sessions. But they’d have to pay for them out of their own pocket. At $50 a session, some players were left several hundreds of dollars out of pocket.
One source said the club chef cooks for the men’s team whenever they’re in the building, and only once a week for the women’s team – and only when the men’s team is also there.
Mind you, when a Gold Coast player was recently asked what’s the best thing Erin Phillips has brought to the Suns, she replied: “We can now access the chocolate milk in the fridge. Before it was just for the boys!” So, some of these issues are competition-wide.
Former Carlton footy boss Brad Lloyd has been called upon to run an independent review of the AFLW program. He’s done this previously at Carlton and Richmond.
No matter what Lloyd finds, will the players have any confidence of a full cultural overhaul? How do you instil the feeling of belonging that seems to be missing? St Kilda seems a long way behind the clubs that have built a “one club” culture.
This week Channel Seven football journalist Tom Morris questioned the media coverage of St Kilda’s woeful performance, calling for more former AFLW players in the media who could have bigger opinions.
Morris claims there are too many current AFLW players in the media, who can’t say what they really think about their own teams or their opponents.
I think there are reasons why.
Firstly, AFLW is only a decade old, so there’s only a small pool of former players. Many choose to return to full-time work or parenthood, rather than accepting relatively modest fees to commentate.
Fox Footy has made a deliberate decision to mentor a handful of current players, to help them become opinion-based ex-players in coming years. Some patience is needed.
Plus, we don’t expect the current players to offer opinions on other clubs. The men’s players hardly ever do it – just watch AFL360 players’ night. They’re careful with what they say.
Try being a woman with an opinion in footy. Especially when many fans still think women don’t understand the game, let alone have the capability to comment on it.
Go to the comments on social media when a woman has posted an opinion, and look at the trolling, the abuse, the death threats, the appearance-shaming and the hate. Then tell me if you’d like to be a woman with an opinion in sport. Just ask Seven’s Kate McCarthy. Or me.
Some former AFL players earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for their opinions. Excellent and accomplished former players like Lauren Arnell and Meg McDonald are not paid anywhere near that, and they hold down other jobs.
Does the AFLW even need its own Kane Cornes? The women’s game does need to be critically evaluated. But it doesn’t have to follow the playbook of the men’s code, which so often chases hot takes and tear downs. It’s early days. We’re trying to be positive about the league and critique it at the same time.
It’s a delicate balancing act.
And many players aren’t yet full-time professionals. More than half the mighty North Melbourne team still has a part-time job for a couple of days a week.
I remember netball champion Bianca Chatfield telling me: “I’d be happy to be criticised in the media, because then I’d know the game is finally professional.”
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