Malcolm Blight - "it's not my book"
Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 8:52 pmHaving just read the recently released book about him by former Essendon champ Tim Watson and James Weston, I thought I'd bring up one of the biggest stories of recent years which is his sacking from St Kilda in 2001 which just surpasses the story of him being hired in the first place in 2000.
Blight touches on that there most likely would have been a cleanout of senior players if he had still been at the helm in the 2001/2002 offseason although he's at pains to point out that the one exception would have been Robert Harvey - "No, Never"
Grant Thomas - "Blighty, you'd better come up and face the music (referring to Blight's second last game in charge that they lost to eventual premier Brisbane in Brisbane by 57 points) upstairs with the supporters to which he replied 'yeah, yeah, righto mate, no worries' but he didn't come up and neither did Hinkley (assistant Ken) or Jonas (assistant Peter)".
On the night, but prior to his last game in charge against Adelaide, President Rod Butters approached Crows CEO Bill Sanders. "Rod said, how did we handle this guy? To which I replied 'With the greatest of respect, that's your issue - I think you should have done your homework better'". To Thomas' credit, he says that he was annoyed when he was called to a meeting with Butters, CEO Jim Watts, Football Manager Brian Waldron and longtime Blight ally Ron Joseph at the Flower Drum restaurant in Melbourne on the following Tuesday night to be told that they were terminating Malcolm Blight - "I'm the director of football for god's sake".
Aaron Hamill was as furious as he was stunned. " I remember Aaron being f***ing filthy, I thought he was going to tear my head off" remembered Butters. Lenny Hayes remembers Hamill speaking for the players "There would want to be a pretty good reason why it happened"
Aaron Hamill - "They had invested so much in him financially that I would think they would give him a fair tenure at the footy club. We needed a good kick in the arse as a footy club and as a playing list and Malcolm certainly delivered that but the powers that be didn't see it. Grant Thomas, Waldron and Butters were in a room upstairs. Malcolm stormed in and said . 'let's get this over with'. The playing group was in the theatre . Butters broke the news, said he didn't believe Malcolm was the one to nurture our younger list, or embrace what we wanted him to do. Then Malcolm departed, never to be seen again. The core of the playing group was pretty gutted. There were a lot of impressionable kids, but I assumed Burke, Harvey and Loewknew it was coming"
TBC
Blight touches on that there most likely would have been a cleanout of senior players if he had still been at the helm in the 2001/2002 offseason although he's at pains to point out that the one exception would have been Robert Harvey - "No, Never"
Grant Thomas - "Blighty, you'd better come up and face the music (referring to Blight's second last game in charge that they lost to eventual premier Brisbane in Brisbane by 57 points) upstairs with the supporters to which he replied 'yeah, yeah, righto mate, no worries' but he didn't come up and neither did Hinkley (assistant Ken) or Jonas (assistant Peter)".
On the night, but prior to his last game in charge against Adelaide, President Rod Butters approached Crows CEO Bill Sanders. "Rod said, how did we handle this guy? To which I replied 'With the greatest of respect, that's your issue - I think you should have done your homework better'". To Thomas' credit, he says that he was annoyed when he was called to a meeting with Butters, CEO Jim Watts, Football Manager Brian Waldron and longtime Blight ally Ron Joseph at the Flower Drum restaurant in Melbourne on the following Tuesday night to be told that they were terminating Malcolm Blight - "I'm the director of football for god's sake".
Aaron Hamill was as furious as he was stunned. " I remember Aaron being f***ing filthy, I thought he was going to tear my head off" remembered Butters. Lenny Hayes remembers Hamill speaking for the players "There would want to be a pretty good reason why it happened"
Aaron Hamill - "They had invested so much in him financially that I would think they would give him a fair tenure at the footy club. We needed a good kick in the arse as a footy club and as a playing list and Malcolm certainly delivered that but the powers that be didn't see it. Grant Thomas, Waldron and Butters were in a room upstairs. Malcolm stormed in and said . 'let's get this over with'. The playing group was in the theatre . Butters broke the news, said he didn't believe Malcolm was the one to nurture our younger list, or embrace what we wanted him to do. Then Malcolm departed, never to be seen again. The core of the playing group was pretty gutted. There were a lot of impressionable kids, but I assumed Burke, Harvey and Loewknew it was coming"
TBC