Saints axe ‘blindsided’ coach Brett Ratten with two years left on freshly-signed deal
St Kilda has sacked Brett Ratten in a sensational backflip, parting ways with the senior coach just over three months after he signed a contract extension — a decision the club admits it got wrong in hindsight.
The Saints recently completed a thorough a review of their football operations, with the findings indicating a change of leadership and voice in the senior coach position was needed. They insisted they hadn’t reached out to any potential replacements before Ratten’s dismissal.
Saints president Andrew Bassett and chief executive Simon Lethlean fronted a press conference at Moorabbin on Friday where they confirmed they’d informed Ratten of the cruel call, which was made at around 6pm (AEDT) on Thursday night.
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Bassat labelled it a “brutal process”, saying Ratten — who was given a vote of confidence by the club in July when he signed a two-year extension that committed him to the club until the end of 2024 — was “blindsided” by the club’s decision and had “no inkling” his position was under threat.
“This has been a very tough few weeks and the decision to part ways with Brett Ratten has been a very painful one for the club and of course incredibly disappointing for Brett and his family,” Bassat said.
“At the end of the day, our duty to members in the pursuit of success requires us to make the best decision for the club and for the members and not the individual.
“I will report back to members in the coming days with key components that review. But in summary, we’ve made big improvements across all areas of the club but there is a big gap between where we are now and where we want to be.
“We don‘t yet have the winning culture or ruthless commitment to football excellence that we need.
“We‘ve got pretty high conviction in what we need as a football club to close the considerable gap that we see and we’re committed to our members to do everything we can to close that gap, as harsh as this decision was.”
Ratten was previously the coach of Carlton between 2007 and 2012 before being shockingly sacked from that role following the 2012 season, where the Blues – like his Saints this year – finished 10th. He was also an assistant coach at Hawthorn from late 2012 until the end of 2018.
Lethlean said Ratten had “great respect” from Saints players, who’d been left “saddened by the decision because they‘re so close and love and respect Brett”.
“He was very disappointed. He wants to coach the club and that opportunity has been taken away from him in a decision that is designed to get this club out ‘middle of the road’ and get us to the top of the table — and we think we need to change to do so,” Lethlean said.
“But he received it in the matter you’d expect for a guy who is compassionate, passionate who deserved respect — and we did our best to have that conversation in that manner.”
Ratten only last week was at Marvel Stadium as part of the St Kilda team that interviewed AFL prospects at the 2022 national draft combine.
Lethlean and Ratten then had a meeting on Sunday night before another one on Monday, along with Bassat, where Ratten was told he’d have an an opportunity to convince the senior Saints leaders and the board he should stay on as coach. Bassat said all up he’d spent seven hours with Ratten this week discussing the review findings.
Lethlean said the Saints board “agonised” over the decision to retain Ratten or not on Thursday night before making the call to part ways. He insisted the Saints didn’t wait until the end of the trade period to make a call on Ratten who received the news with “dignity and class”.
“This process has taken a long time,” Lethlean said. “It’s created a lot of uncertainty in our football program, which is unfortunate but necessary.
“It took as long as it needed to take to, A) find out what we thought we needed and, B) give those involved the opportunity to respond, to listen to the findings, to give their view on how they can try and improve themselves in the program. That played out right until last night followed by a board meeting.
“Is the timing ideal? Maybe not, but we weren’t going to rush it in order to fit timings of other parts of the industry.”
Bassat insisted he went into the football department review with “no predetermined views”.
“The sorts of questions I was asking, to be frank, were are we genuinely on the path to contending or are we kidding ourselves? Are we had serious risk of getting stuck into the six-to-10 zone? All sorts of all sorts of questions related to that. And the answers I got were troubling in terms of our confidence to come up with a plan and conviction,” he said.
“To be entirely clear … there were a bunch of other things we need to get better in our program for us to be successful. This isn’t all about our coaching program and all about Brett. If we don‘t fix those things, the new coach will also struggle to be successful. So we’re really mindful of that and we’re going to fix all that.
“But we really felt that to maximise the chance of success, we needed a different syle of leadership.
“I‘m going to be frank, given there’s a bunch of things that we need to do better than that program, we can’t look back and say that Brett was absolutely set up for success. I can’t say that with honesty … that made this decision even harsher. But we still felt, taking that into account, that even with a better setup around him, we felt there were coaches potentially with different characteristics that gave us a far greater chance of being successful
“The alternative was to go ahead with our strong doubts, fail next year and lose the season – we thought that risk was too great, as harsh as that decision is.”
The timing of St Kilda’s decision will only heighten speculation the club may already have an idea on who Ratten’s replacement will be. Lethlean said it would be “unfair” to suggest the club already had specific candidate in mind, but said it knew the type of coach and “characteristics” needed. Bassat insisted he hadn’t spoken to any possible coaching contenders.
Highly-rated Melbourne assistant Adem Yze, who narrowly missed out on the Giants and Bombers coaching roles recently, is expected to be in the mix, while Saints favourite sons Robert Harvey and Lenny Hayes will also be considered along with Mark McVeigh and Ash Hansen. The Saints could also turn to experienced senior coaches like Leon Cameron, Nathan Buckley, James Hird or even back to Ross Lyon.
Asked bluntly if the club had spoken to Lyon, Lethlean said: “We haven’t ... We’re not going to talk about the next steps. Today is about showing the respect to Brett which has been a really tough decision for the club.
“We’ve made no decisions about our next coach.
“What I would say is between Andrew and myself and the board, we’ve uncovered what we need and our members need to know we’ll be swift and decisive and go and find the coach we need.”
Ratten was the Saints’ caretaker coach after the mid-season sacking of Alan Richardson in 2019 then, after being appointed full-time, led the Saints to the finals in his first season of 2020.
But since then they have failed to return to the top eight. This year they sat fourth after Round 11 with an 8-3 record, but then lost eight of their last 11 matches to miss finals before a concerningly quiet trade period.
Ratten in July signed a two-year contract that secured him to the Saints until at least the end of the 2024 season. Bassat at the time said Ratten’s ability to unite his coaches, players and staff in “a relentless quest for excellence makes Brett the best person to lead us towards our much longed-for second premiership”.
But he lost his job this week.
Asked if Ratten would still be at the club if the Saints had made finals, Lethlean said: “We can only deal in what happened.
“At mid-year, we were travelling pretty well. It was the right thing at that time for us to support and provide the certainty for Brett and the playing group to pursue the rest of the season with some certainty.
“If you crystal ball that now, maybe in hindsight that‘s the wrong decision. But the wrong decision now would be to keep going forward if we thought we needed to do better.
“We didn‘t make finals, so we are where we are. This is all about making a really tough decision to give ourselves the best chance of that going forward.”
Veteran AFL club administrator Geoff Walsh was appointed the club’s new football boss earlier this month following the review, and declared there had “been a degree of irrelevance” when it comes to St Kilda in the past.
Earlier this year Walsh helped conduct the review at North Melbourne which led to David Noble’s sacking, as well as the 2021 review which led to David Teague’s sacking from Carlton.
The sacking comes only a day after a quiet trade period ended — the Saints missed out on Jordan De Goey and only added free agent Zaine Cordy while giving up Ben Long for Pick 32 — and six weeks out from what looms as a critical national draft for the Saints.
North Melbourne champion David King told Fox Footy’s Trading Day this week he was worried the Saints were “recruiting to be competitive or make finals, not necessarily win a premiership”, adding: “They’ve got to be careful not to become the list clogger capital of Australia.”
But Lethlean said the club believes “there’s a fair bit of upside in the performance of our list”.
“We‘ve had two seasons … we’ve beaten some of the top sides, (but) we lack consistency. We lack our best players playing at their top end all the time.
“You would’ve seen from the 2021 draft, we‘ve got three or four young players coming through making impact. So we see the trajectory of this group. We don’t shy away from the fact we’ve got to add to that group. We’ll go to the draft in a month’s time with a full hand of three picks inside 32 and look to find that young talent again.
“But we‘ve got some work to do. We’ve acknowledged that.
“There’s no doubt list management decisions affect your performance. What I would say is we’ve come a long way back in lots of parts of our program.”
— with Max Laughton