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White Ferns LIVE on SN Extra“Under their skin”: Saints laughing at outside criticism
Andrew Slevison • March 5th, 2026 10:27 am
St Kilda president Andrew Bassat remains steadfast and unapologetic regarding his club’s recruitment strategy.
The Saints paid massive money to lock Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera away for two more years while splashing the cash on Tom De Koning, Jack Silvagni, Sam Flanders and Liam Ryan in the trade period.
Their free agency and trade assault came after a block of drafting which allowed them to bring in talented youngsters including Mattaes Phillipou, Darcy Wilson, Tobie Travaglia and Alix Tauru, among others.
Living in a world of constant mediocrity compelled the Saints to act and they are now well stocked heading into the 2026 season under Ross Lyon.
But is the club sensitive to those who have criticised them for taking this path? Bassat isn’t worried about the naysayers with the Saints starting to creep under the skin of some.
“It’s laughable,” Bassat said on SEN’s Whateley.
“Yes, I do respond, I can’t help myself. If somebody has a slap you’ve got to slap back, maybe twice.
“But the truth is I think we’re getting under their skin because we’re getting somewhere as a football club.
“I think everyone liked us and no one criticised us when we were down the bottom of the ladder and we weren’t saying anything and taking our hits quietly.
“Now that we’ve really started to fight for this football club we’re starting to get under people’s skin. It shows we’re making some progress when they criticise us.
“We’re completely unrepentant. Laughing, mostly.
“Because most of the criticism, to be frank, has been nonsense.”
Bassat concedes the Saints have taken a big swing with their off-season recruiting.
But it has come out of necessity due to the nature of the market and because a high-risk strategy was required to lift themselves out of their ongoing funk.
“We don’t deliberately take big swings, we just try to come up with the right strategy to win,” he added.
“It’s an uneven competition. For us to really go from outside the top part of the competition to insiders and in contention, it is the only way you can hang onto players like Nasiah, it is the only way you can attract players.
“So we had to have a crack. We felt last year we were close enough.
“We’d love to underpay players and they’d still come to St Kilda, but that’s not where we are right now. So we had to put big contracts out there.
“We were delighted to not only keep Nasiah but to attract ‘TDK’, Silvagni, Ryan and Flanders. They’ve all shown they can make an enormous impact on our club.
“We had to do that. We feel really good about the fact that we’re now taking a step forward and hopefully we show it on the field.”
Are these measured or desperate swings?
“We’ve got some very smart and thoughtful people at our football club now,” the president said further.
“We want to win. If there was a low-risk strategy to winning of course we would have adopted it, but there’s not.
“This was, we thought, the right path. It was very much what we talked about when we did the review in 2022. We said we needed four years of drafting and then we need to go relatively hard on free agency and trades to fill any gaps, and to start using our salary cap.
“That’s exactly what we’ve done.”
There is a sense that the Saints have skewed the market given the reported money the club has paid to Wanganeen-Milera and their hand of recruits.
Bassat simply doesn’t agree with that notion.
“Have we skewed the market? I mean, what’s skewed the market is the crazy draft concessions,” Bassat said vehemently.
“Free agency skewed the market and the fact you can get players without paying for them etcetera. A bunch of things have skewed the market, we’ve just responded to it the only way we could.”
For Saints fans the 2026 season is one of anticipation and expectation. Excitement as well, no doubt.
And it all kicks off with a blockbuster MCG clash against Collingwood this Sunday night in which they are favourites. What a way to start.
