St Kilda is again a club in flux with reports of coach Brett Ratten being sacked emerging on Thursday night.
The Saints recently completed a review of their football department with Ratten’s seemingly untenable upon its completion.
With Ratten’s departure coinciding with Geoff Walsh’s appointment as the Saints’ new head of football, SEN’s David King pondered whether it was the veteran administrator who made the big call.
If it wasn’t Walsh’s call and the decision was made some time ago, King believes that’s “even worse” considering players would’ve been fed a false narrative during the recently completed trade period.
“I just wonder where Geoff Walsh sits in this, and we won’t know for a couple of hours,” King said on SEN Breakfast.
“Did the review reach a point where he had to say, ‘Look, we’ve got to act here’, or was the decision already made?
“The fact they’ve made the decision five minutes after the trade period – if the decision was already made two weeks ago but they didn’t want the player purge – then in my opinion that’s even worse.
“That’s just misleading a whole football club while taking them down a path you know is false.
“The sell to the playing group and the players you’re trying to attract is 100 per cent misleading, so I’m interested in the timing.”
Walsh earlier this year completed a review at North Melbourne which led to David Noble parting ways with the club, and King believes his ability to hold those in charge accountable may be exactly what St Kilda needs.
“The man that really fascinates me in all of this is Geoff Walsh,” King said.
“If there’s one thing you don’t want, it’s the knock on the door and it’s Geoff, you’d think, ‘I’m in trouble here’.
“I think Geoff is a wonderful acquisition for St Kilda right now, he suffers no fools, he preaches from the bible of accountability, he has a great bullsh-t radar, one NASA would be proud of I reckon … that’s what they need.
“People get angry with you when you’re critical of St Kilda, I think they meander along and at some point, Chris Scott said it this year perfectly, you’ve got to take a risk on having it work big, or fail big, I don’t think they’ve done that.
“It is a gamble, isn’t it? It’s a tough competition, you don’t have to do a lot wrong to fail.
“I just don’t think they’ve ever been able to land a big fish or superstar and in the draft when they’ve had those picks, they’ve got it wrong.
St Kilda are yet to officially announce the decision, but that is expected to come at a press conference on Friday morning (AEDT).