Enter Friday, November 1, 2013 in the bulging AFL file labelled Only At St Kilda.
The club that brought you the schoolgirl, the burning dwarf and Ross Lyon’s stunning defection to Fremantle has done it again.
No one in the league does high drama – and sometimes low farce – quite like the Saints.
The day had a curious start when their under-pressure senior coach Scott Watters went on Melbourne radio station SEN just after 8am for an interview.
What raised the eyebrows was that for weeks, Watters had stayed silent as speculation raged about his future at the club.
There were constant rumblings about off-field issues.
This week, senior assistant Dean Laidley left for Carlton and earlier this month, high performance manager Bill Davoren went to Collingwood.
So all of a sudden here was Watters, saying the rumours about his poor relationship with football department boss Chris Pelchen was laughable.
Yes, he also had the board’s full support. Absolute. Very clear.
What was much more curious was that Watters rang up SEN, requesting the interview. And the Saints’ media department only found out it was happening about a minute before he went on air.
But even more importantly, at 8am the Saints board had started a meeting where Watters’ fate was sealed.
Within a couple of hours, the club announced he was sacked.
Watters’ dismissal after two years is clearly because of off-field issues; on-field the Saints are struggling, but he had a mandate to rebuild the team.
What stunned most people more than the decision itself was the timing, just three weeks before the national draft.
It was also only a few weeks since the Saints had effectively decided he would continue as coach next season following a a club review.
If that was all not berserk enough, high-profile commentator Dermott Brereton – a friend of Watters’ – went on SEN in the afternoon and held nothing back.
He tore into the club generally and Pelchen in particular.
Rarely has an AFL personality made such a scathing public criticism of someone else in the industry.
But minutes after Brereton’s extraordinary comments, former Saints player Brett Peake went on the same radio station and said the club had made the right call.
Regardless of the sharply-divided opinion over Watters sacking, one thing is clear.
Only three years ago, they were one lucky bounce of the ball – mere centimetres – away from their second premiership.
The gap is now a chasm and it grew that much wider on Friday.