Finnis to step down as Saints chief, Lethlean to take over at season’s end

Simon Lethlean will succeed Matt Finnis as St Kilda chief executive at the end of the 2022 season.

The Saints announced the planned handover on Thursday with president Andrew Bassat paying tribute to Finnis, who has led the club for eight years after a nine-year tenure as chief executive of the AFL Players’ Association.

Finnis inherited a parlous financial situation at St Kilda when he joined as CEO in 2014, and said on Thursday that he expects the Saints will have halved their debts before he departs at season’s end, and have a “line of sight” on being debt free.

A report in The Age this week showed St Kilda received $156 million in funding from the AFL between 2012-2021, $17 million more than the next Victorian club, and more than $50 million more than other Victorian clubs Geelong, Collingwood and Hawthorn. They are still $9.5 million in debt after reducing it by $4.26 million last year.

The figures revealed St Kilda had been funded by the AFL over the past decade at the highest level, commensurate with the Brisbane Lions in the emerging Queensland market.

Queried on Wednesday about St Kilda’s disproportionately high funding, AFL chief executive Gill McLachlan said the Saints’ business had suffered through a hard 10 years.

“They have been on notice for some time. I said something publicly a few years ago that I think the club is operating at a very different capacity now than they did a few years ago financially,” McLachlan said.

“I think they got themselves into a bad shape and they are improving.

“There is a large difference between a 150-year-old established Melbourne club and a new start-up in an emerging market like Gold Coast or Western Sydney. St Kilda is certainly [funded] less than those start-up clubs. Have they got the most of the Victorian clubs? Yeah, they have.

“Clubs go through ebbs and flows. The last decade [for] St Kilda broadly has been a very tough period. They didn’t have the non-Victorian funding from Tasmania like North Melbourne did, or Ballarat and Queensland like the Bulldogs.”

St Kilda had been playing games in Tasmania and gained revenue from it, but the decision was made, under a previous regime, to stop playing games there.

The current contract with the Tasmanian government for Hawthorn to play games in Launceston has netted the Hawks about $4 million a year for four home-and-away matches a season and other practice games and visits.

The Saints also made an ill-fated and costly decision to relocate to new facilities in Seaford in 2011, only to return to a rebuilt Moorabbin less than a decade later. St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt said in 2018 that the Seaford move had “ripped the soul out of the club” and crushed the players.

The two moves were costly and contributed to the huge debt the club carried and the parlous financial position that Finnis inherited as CEO.

The succession plan also marks the return of Lethlean to a leadership role, moving up from the position of the club’s chief operating officer, having been initially hired as football head after quitting his job the AFL’s football operations head in 2017 over an inappropriate relationship.

“St Kilda owes Matt an enormous debt of gratitude for the leadership he has provided our club to date and the changes he has made will be long-lasting,” Bassat said in a statement.

“There will be a time to properly recognise his work at St Kilda, but suffice to say, when he joined the Saints back in 2014 we faced numerous challenges and the club he leaves at the end of 2022 will in many respects be unrecognisable from that time.

Finnis said he took pride in his time at the Saints. “The last couple of years have been incredibly challenging for so many, but I’m really proud that St Kilda will emerge from this period stronger on field and off,” he said.

“By the end of the year we expect to have cut our historical debt by half and have a genuine line of sight to a debt-free balance sheet, at the same time as fully financing our football programs commensurate with the league leaders.”

Bassat said the Saints had planned for Lethlean to succeed Finnis. “A process of succession planning and transition involving Matt and Simon was initiated some time ago and recently formalised via unanimous decision of the board,” he said.

“In Simon, we are extremely fortunate to have an incoming CEO who understands our club and shares our ambitious aspirations for St Kilda.”

Lethlean thanked Finnis for his support since he joined the Saints.

“I’m incredibly optimistic about the journey that we’re on here at St Kilda, and our supporters should know that I’ll be leaving no stone unturned in our mission to deliver the success they are rightly impatient to enjoy,” Lethlean said.

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