Ambition is a funny thing. We will often complain about if our team doesn’t look at every potential free agent or trade under the sun, even if it makes no logical sense or if there’s no connection.
Christian Petracca isn’t going to be an Eagle. He’s too old for their rebuild and there’s literally no links whatever going there. That being said, there are going to be angry Eagles supporters demanding they, at the very least, ask the question, and Melbourne diehards demanding he go for no less than Pick One and Two in the draft.
The reason I bring this up is because the heavy hitters in this offseason will undoubtedly be St Kilda. We all know St Kilda, the ultimate underdog of Australian sports, with one of the worst records of any professional sports team.
But whether it’s their extensive spoon collection, their pain of not winning a flag in their last golden period 15 years ago, or having to count Scoops as a fan (I kid, I kid. I don’t want to get called out by him in one of his videos), St Kilda have had a recent reputation as the team with the cash to splash and not one big fish being attracted by the bait.
But while we acknowledge this, we also laugh at them whenever they make an effort to try to better themselves with a big signing when it inevitably backfired.
Players like Finn Callaghan, Luke Davies-Uniacke and Miles Bergman this year were courted by the Saints but elected to sign on with their current teams. In recent years, we saw players like Jordan De Goey, Dylan Shiel, Jacob Weitering and Andrew Brayshaw headhunted by the Saints and opt to go elsewhere.
To be honest, it is a hard sell. Players value money but also success and prestige, as well as clubs that will put emphasis on supporting their extended families. The latter is not a fault of St Kilda (to my knowledge), but it’s hard to put forward a compelling case that you’re on the road to success when you’re stuck in the quagmire as one of the smallest clubs in the state.
But a switch has flipped this year. The Saints aren’t just recruiting, but they’re landing them one after the other. Tom De Koning will arrive on a huge deal, Liam Ryan is going to come from the West to boost their small forward stocks, and both Leek Aleer and Jack Silvagni will bolster an already formidable backline. Sam Flanders has also just informed the Suns he would like a trade to the Saints.
Couple that with them still looking to get younger and better at the midfield level too, they may not even be done yet. Cam McKenzie is someone the team would love to lure from Hawthorn as a former Saints NGA product (St Kilda were prevented from matching the bid due to draft rules at the time as the AFL repeatedly kneejerks their ways around the issue thanks in no small part, ironically, to the Saints themselves).
Internally, it’s better too. Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera has rejected offers from SA teams for now and has essentially given the Saints two years to show why he should sign for the long term. Cal Wilkie was unsettled, but unlike some stars who just had enough (Petracca, Merrett, Curnow), the club smoothly solved the issue by giving him a well-deserved raise. Marcus Windhager was wooed by North, but the Saints upped their offer to keep the promising midfielder.
The one hiccup is Rowan Marshall, who seems unsettled by De Koning coming over and wants to go to Geelong. But if they can smooth that over and the combo ends up working, it could be a game changer. Even if it doesn’t, they could still get Geelong’s first round pick.
This new Saints is a more ruthless outfit. They’re not just throwing a big cheque, thinking it will net the fish, they’re making calculated ploys to get promising and proven players over. You can make the argument some players are being overpaid (De Koning certainly is) but the Saints have their spare money thanks to a combination of a rule allowing teams to ‘bank’ unused cap into future seasons, the included salary cap in general, and frontloading contracts which will allow cap flexibility when the cap increases again. They might as well use it.
It’s too soon to know if it works. Having too many new players can be a chemistry issue and while the players coming in will make them better, none of them can really be called a superstar (although I would say Sam Flanders has that potential).
Maybe it goes horribly wrong and blows up in their face, but the fact of the matter is this new Saints is a team sick of being the underdog and wants to be the destination club, not the feeder team that others try to poach from.
That, if nothing else, is worthy of respect and praise. I don’t know what 2026 holds for the Saints, but it’s clear that they’re getting more attention than they have in recent memory.
And this time, it’s the good sort of attention.
