Good old Saints still infighting and calling each other names lol---------------------------------------
Former St Kilda president Rod Butterss's salvo for Saints
Jackie Epstein | October 19, 2008
FORMER St Kilda president Rod Butterss has slammed the club and its board, saying they have no direction and plan for the future.
Ousted by Greg Westaway's Footy First ticket, Butterss also said the club would struggle to recruit Ben Cousins because there was no strategy in place.
"Ben's a quality player, but you've got to have a plan, a strategy," he said. "One thing I know about football and footy clubs is you must have a plan, a clearly identifiable plan of how you're going to achieve your goals.
"We always had a position on recruiting that was very simple: will the person we're about to recruit play in our next premiership side?
"If you genuinely believe he is, then you recruit him. If you think you're far off, then you're better off going with kids.
"Having said that, I just don't know what their plan is."
Butterss said the board contained no one with business experience and was led by an "ordinary performer" in Westaway.
He labelled chief executive Archie Fraser "a goose" and blasted the club's move to Frankston.
"I have no idea where they see themselves and that's what they need to articulate to the market and their supporters," Butterss said.
"What is the plan? There's nobody on the board that's ever achieved anything in business. There's only one bloke on the board that's ever had his own business. The rest are wage and salary earners.
"They're clearly struggling. To have a financial turnaround of about $1.5 million (from more than $1 million profit last season, to a $400,00-plus loss this season) and when you take into account the $400,000 bonus for winning the pre-season competition it's effectively a $1.8 million turnaround from last year, that's just incompetence.
"I think it's a terrible decision (to move to Frankston). How many players do you know live in Frankston or want to live in Frankston or desire to?
"They all live around bayside in Elwood, Middle Park, Albert Park, that's where they want to be. But that's Archie. He'd pick a fight with a blowfly. He's just a goose."
Before he came to power, Westaway referred to drug taking and alcohol consumption by board members, saying the new regime would employ a policy against it.
Butterss said the claims were mystifying and unfounded.
"I found Greg's comments just to be quite distasteful," he said.
"I didn't take Greg's comments personally last year, I just thought it was a slight on the board and it was just a silly utterance of a very inexperienced person who was getting involved with something he didn't understand.
"I just thought he was a pretty ordinary performer, really."
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,24517196-19742,00.html
