One of Australia’s oldest footy clubs is yet to modernise its governance

While ESG (environmental, social, and governance) has morphed from niche to mainstream in what seems like a hot minute, not all institutions have taken notice. AFL club St Kilda, for example, appears less concerned about the governance part.

When it comes to sporting horror stories, few challenge the sustained mediocrity of the foundation AFL club. While most long-running hoodoos have been broken in the past two decades — Boston’s Curse of the Bambino, Chicago’s Curse of Shoeless Joe, or, more locally, the droughts of Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs — St Kilda’s run continues. Its sole premiership, by one point, was in 1966. Since then, the club has remained a never-ending governance and financial nightmare.

Last week, just months after re-signing former coach Brett Ratten, the club announced his termination. While surprising, the move wasn’t especially controversial. Due to the continuing ineptitude of AFL clubs making significant termination payments to sacked coaches, the league recently introduced a maximum six-month payout clause in contracts.

Within days of Ratten’s dismissal, media leaks started appearing suggesting the return of controversial former coach Ross Lyon. On Monday it was confirmed he would be returning to the club. Lyon left the Saints in difficult circumstances in 2011 before an initially successful, but ultimately disastrous, tenure at Fremantle. After four terrible years onfield, Lyon departed Fremantle amid alleged sexual harassment claims.

In 2018, Fox reported that “a hush-money payment of more than $100,000 to a former female staff member, which included a non-disclosure agreement, to settle a sexual harassment complaint”. It has also been reported Lyon told the woman he liked her “budding boobs” during a Fremantle club function. The woman was two months pregnant. She has previously alleged she was sexually harassed by Lyon when the then 51-year-old reportedly followed her throughout the event and made a series of inappropriate and crude remarks. Lyon has also had less relevant but well-publicised marital and financial issues in recent years.

But Lyon’s previous off- and onfield issues were quietly ignored by the male-dominated AFL media. Within hours of Ratten’s firing, former St Kilda great and media personality Brendon Goddard said on SEN that “there was ‘no reason’ why Lyon couldn’t walk back into Moorabbin after his infamous defection to Fremantle back in 2011”. The Herald Sun quickly followed suit, giving more credibility to the rumour. A few days later, the Nine papers reported Lyon’s comments that he was “very close” to signing up after his “heart’s been opened” — whatever that means.

While most AFL clubs take months to appoint a coach — forming subcommittees and appointing expert search firms like Egon Zehnder — Lyon went from disgraced former Fremantle coach to returning hero in the space of… five days.

How did this happen?

Five weeks earlier, former St Kilda president Lindsay Fox held his 85th birthday on a luxury yacht, ferrying the 400-person strong guest list from New York to Montreal.

The guest list read as a who’s who of the Melbourne sporting, cultural and business elite. Attendees included property billionaire John Gandel, consultant and Carlton Football Club president Luke Sayers, infrastructure tsar Rod Eddington, Melbourne Mayor Sally Capp, Linfox board members Bill Kelty, Simon Crean and presenter Eddie McGuire. Also on board were current St Kilda president and popular SEEK founder and CEO Andrew Bassat, as well as St Kilda fan and large donor Gerry Ryan (who also shouted guests a private showing of his musical Moulin Rouge).

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Ratten’s tenure came to an end aboard that luxury yacht — with Ryan, Fox, Bassat and McGuire moving towards installing McGuire’s good mate Lyon (who also works for McGuire’s production business on the Footy Classified program). The media around the appointment was masterfully controlled by McGuire. Meanwhile, St Kilda’s newly appointed CEO overseeing the shambolic process is Simon Lethlean, himself no stranger to scandal.

The appointment of Lyon was even more controversial, given he had been overlooked for the coaching role at Collingwood, Essendon and Carlton — all three clubs undertook actual coaching professional independent appointment processes, but these didn’t take place on a six-star cruise charter.

While AFL football clubs are usually small in terms of revenue (most generate less than $100 million annually), their significant public presence has meant most have made strides towards professionalising their administration and governance. It appears that perennially struggling St Kilda remains the exception, where coaches are hired and fired by a cabal of elderly billionaires aboard a superyacht.