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Important SN update for SouthlandEssendon legend to St Kilda: The shock move that never happened
Andrew Slevison • May 29th, 2025 5:22 pm
We’ve heard of Tim Watson the St Kilda coach. What about Watson the Saints player?
Well, it almost happened.
The Essendon star had called time on his playing career at the end of the 1991 season and was going quietly about his post-footy life, nestled away in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Sandringham.
Now, the first part of this story has been well-documented.
Watson was ‘drafted’ by West Coast in the 1992 pre-season draft despite the fact he had never agreed to join the Eagles.
The Bombers great explained how that came about, including how the news was delivered by then-West Coast coach Mick Malthouse.
“It was the pre-season draft of 1992,” Watson said on SEN’s The Rabbit Hole podcast.
“I’m retired, I’m driving down Bridge Road in Richmond in my old 4WD car with the big no-hands-free phone, I got a call and the guy on the other end of the phone goes, ‘It’s Mick Malthouse here, we’ve just drafted you’.
“That was it, that’s how I found out. I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’. He said, ‘We’ve drafted you, we’ll be in touch’.
“About a week later a parcel arrived at our home in Sandringham, there had been no more communication with anyone from the West Coast Eagles, I opened it up and there was an Eagles bag with a tracksuit and a jumper with No.33.”
Watson joked: “I put the gear on and I thought, ‘Well, I’m a West Coast Eagles player, I might just go for a run down the main street of Sandringham’.
“No, it was sort of surreal. I was retired and I wasn’t coming out of retirement, I was never going to entertain the idea.”
Watson insists that what he heard on the Malthouse call was the only contact he had with the Eagles.
He believes that long-time Dons coach Kevin Sheedy still suspects it was a ruse from his old sparring partner Malthouse.
“There was no follow-up, hand on my heart there was no follow-up. There was no encouragement or inducement to (go there),” he added.
“‘Sheeds’ had a theory. He said to me later after Essendon drafted me back in 1993 that Mick was doing that to us because there was a lot of barbing back and forth between Essendon and the West Coast Eagles.
“But there was no correspondence (with the Eagles), none.”
Don’t think that’s it, because this fable gets better.
Watson did return to footy with great success after his initial '91 retirement and subsequent year off.
He was an integral member of the ‘Baby Bombers’ side that won the 1993 premiership against all odds.
But that sensational comeback almost never happened.
The four-time Bombers best and fairest found himself working in a coaching role at St Kilda who quickly showed interest in him as a player.
“I’d started working part-time as an assistant coach at St Kilda,” Watson said further.
“That was in the pre-season of 1993, post-Christmas. Ken Sheldon was the coach and Peter Hudson was the general manager of football.
“They said have you got time to come upstairs for a chat. Then ‘Huddo’ said to me out of the corner of his mouth, ‘What about the idea of coming and playing?’.”
Rabbit Hole co-host Garry Lyon chimed in: “So Peter Hudson then approached you having turned down the West Coast Eagles in the pre-season of ’93 to play for St Kilda?”
Watson replied: “Yes. He (Hudson) said, ‘The pre-season draft is coming up, what about the idea of coming back and training up?’.
“I still wasn’t in great condition. But I lived around the corner and all that type of thing.”
But the Bombers got a whiff of the potential shock move and would swiftly intervene, even after Watson’s not-so-public thoughts on Sheedy had become known.
St Kilda had been foiled at the final hurdle for Watson’s signature.
“I didn’t speak to anyone at Essendon, but Roger Hampson, the general manager of Essendon, turned up on my doorstep late one Monday night,” Watson added.
“Roger said, ‘We’re hearing that St Kilda have been talking to you and they might take you in the pre-season draft. We cannot have that happen. Are you thinking about it?’
“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m sort of thinking about it. I’ve had a year out, I’m a bit fresher now’.
“He said, ‘What about I organise a meeting at (president) David Shaw’s place’. There’d been a couple of things between Sheeds and I, I’d said something at a Williamstown luncheon. I said that he’d stayed too long.
“So we had to clear the air. I went to David Shaw’s and Roger was there, Sheeds was there, and they said we’ll let you two sort this out in the lounge room and we started talking.
“Essendon had a pick in the pre-season draft because they’d finished so badly in the ’92 season, so they had a pick before St Kilda.
“Otherwise I would have gone the other way.”
Watson played 16 games and kicked 26 goals under Sheedy in ’93 as the Dons scored their 15th flag before he finished up as a player for good in 1994.
There was some unfinished business of sorts for Watson and the Saints as he returned to Moorabbin for a stint as senior coach in 1999 and 2000.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
