I’d happily target Seb Ross in a trade. A BBM but doesn’t come with a star price.
Correct, she insulates and protects them while indiscriminately throwing around “boys club”, “boys club” to anyone who dares criticize her. She has done a very effective job at using her gender as a weapon, while at the same time reinforcing the structures that prevent the AFL from achieving anything other than superficial diversity.
She is a narcissist
Can’t take criticism and attacks others.
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Rules for running a football club
- Don’t leak ■■■■ to the media criticising your own players
- If a media identity unduly has a crack at your players, go in to bat for them hard.
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And immediately plays the gender card whenever anything comes back her way…
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- Run meaningful spreadsheets of player payments ( and injection schedules)
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CC: Xavier
RE: Irish.
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That would get him a statue!
More likely, Ross for a 3rd.
Wonder how Paddy feels now, I know there would not have been many who would have wanted him back, me included, but he had an opportunity to try and fix things with us, instead he chose that farkin toilet of a club probably for a bigger contract. Karma much!
St Kilda Football Media 101
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Hopefully Dodoro is in Seb’s ear reminding him that we let Conor go home mid season for his brother’s wedding.
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Ross is a UFA I think.
You are 100% correct.
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Thing is, she’s not ENTIRELY incorrect. The boys club is a real thing, and she’s not exactly on the inside of it and in fact has sometimes found herself on the wrong end of it. But still she retains a good relationship with most people inside it.
Here’s a handy MS Paint diagram which might help understand how things work…
Replace one of the 'Auld’s with a ‘Hutchison,’ because my typing skillz are teh pitz.
There’s two overlapping groups in play. There’s the Club, the inner circle of influence, where power is wielded. All the AFL bigwigs are in that one, and so is Wilson. They cooperate and coordinate and strategise in there. That’s where the BIG corruption happens. they scratch each others’ backs. Wilson gets juicy AFL-approved leaks, and in return McLachlan and the rest know they can rely on her to publish their line without asking inconvenient questions.
The there’s the Boys. The Everyday Knockabout Blokes Who Might Stuff Up Sometimes But Who You’d Love To Have A Beer With ™, or at least that’s how they’re generally marketed. This group is more of a get-out-of-jail free card than anything else. It gives you a certain amount of immunity to consequences for being a bogan, but you can’t actually influence matters or wield power without also being in the Club. Most media ex-players are in this group, but there’s a lot of crossover. The big difference is that if you’re in the Boys but not the Club, you can be sacrificed if you stuff up badly enough, if you’re in the Club, you’ll be protected. Mark Robinson is another one you could put in here. He has zero influence over the big decisions the AFL makes, but his status as One Of The Boys prevents him getting sacked despite his widely-known and plainly obvious habit of turning up to work drunk. Hands up anyone who reckons they’d still be employed if they’d turned up to their job ■■■■■■ as often as ol’ Robbo has? That’s what being one of the Boys will get you. But what it WON’T do is protect you if you ever step out of your lane and go up against the Boys’ Club.
Examples:
Matt Rendell vs Eddie McGuire. Both made comments about indigenous players - Eddie’s was by far the more gratuitous and insulting. Both are Boys, but Eddie is also in the Club so he gets away with it while Rendell loses his job.
Lethlean vs Carey. Both have rather gross extramarital adventures. Carey is one of the Boys, but this really is a step too far so he’s ostracised for years. Lethlean is in the Club, so the AFL gently and immediately parachutes him into a cushy role running a client club. Wilson, from memory, wrote a fawning profile of his at the time, bewailing the cruelty of fate that led to such a transcendent administrative genius with a bright future having his career so tragically derailed (as if his own actions had nothing to do with it at all)
Tim Watson vs McLachlan. Watson is a legendary player and has a reasonable media profile, and at the time of the Saga his son was the reigning Brownlow medallist. But he was never part of the Boy’s Club, so when he tried to go up against the AFL over the Saga, he was put back in his box hard, and he achieved nothing.
It’s worth remembering this when thinking about how Wilson’s reporting is formed. She is legit ostracised from some of the Boys circles. All those jokes about drowning her that Eddie etc got away with scot-free. She’ll never be a part of that group, and she will butt heads with the Boys over some matters. But in the end, she’s a creature of power and access journalism and she’ll line up hard alongside the established power base of the Club.
What we’re seeing now is Lethlean/Finnis and Wilson, fellow members of the Club, who worked together to plant this story about Membrey and Ross in the first place as some sort of bullshit power play. Now, however, it’s blown back and Wilson is being cut adrift by whoever it was who leaked the info to her in the first place. Cos in the end, she’s not in the Boys’ Club, and they’ll sacrifice her in a second if they have to in order to protect themselves. And there’s not really much she can do about it, cos turning on her sources would legit risk her being cast out of the Club too, and that’d be very close to ending her career.
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It’s probably an unfair assessment but Seb Ross strikes me as one of the more ‘meh’ mids in the comp. Not terrible obviously, he’s definitely a passable AFL level player but not sure that he’d help us too much.
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I don’t want Ross.
Too old. Takes too much time off work.
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Wasn’t that long ago that Saints fans were all “Caldwell is only picking Essendon for money, rather than success”.
Imaging picking St Kilda for success 
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Come to Essendon Seb and finish the job your cousin started.
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I’d take Ross on the cheap, will help our VFL flag tilt