Neil McCauley lived by one rule: “don’t have anything in your life that you can’t walk away from in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner”.
That’s a bad rule in life but a good rule for a bank robber. It’s also one that Neil abandoned time and again, particularly to save Chris during the bank robbery and to kill Waingro.
Neil didn’t stick to his own rules.
With their spending spree in this past offseason, adding Tom De Koning, Jack Silvagni, Sam Flanders, and Liam Ryan the Saints have abandoned their rule as well.
The Saints were less explicit than Neil in what their rule was, but you could feel them building into a Geelong-lite prioritising rangy athletes and speed across the ground. Ross Lyon and the Saints brass specifically targeted guys like Darcy Wilson to try and remake their team as one full of thoroughbreds, beating teams on the spread as a matter of course.
Even the way that they moved the ball was a little different last year compared to 2024, with the Saints getting about 30 more metres by handball per game and taking about 10 fewer marks per game from 2024 to 2025.
It was becoming about run.
It’s a good plan, especially coming from the stale and stodgy way that the Saints have played for…about as long as I can remember.
It’s also, crucially, a change from Ross Lyon.
Lyon likes and wants to be a defensive team that wins the ball in the back half and transitions from there.
They still were that to an extent last year, especially toward the end of the season where Ross reverted to his own base principles sitting third in fewest points allowed over the last five weeks and just 11th in time in forward half.
However, their season long numbers tell a story of a coach trying to adapt. They tried to be more aggressive with their player positioning and, in large part because of injuries, got hurt defensively conceding the sixth most points of the season.
The best example of this is the deployment of Nasiah Wangeen-Milera, who was increasingly used as an attacking player rather than a quarterback out of the back half. Of the 30 disposals he averaged for the season, about 57% came in D50 or defensive midfield.
However, if you isolate the last 10 games as he really ascended, of his 32 disposals that number shrunk to about 52%. In particular, he massively increased his forward 50 disposals.
The fact that he was trying to make such sweeping changes speaks to the cache he holds in the organisation as an established Saints legend, and also the extra capital he bought himself by making the finals in his first year.
Even the way the forward line functioned made sense given the personnel, and is ready to drop in a real key forward whenever they can find one like when the Chiefs built a team then dropped in Patrick Mahomes.
With no Max King, who just had another surgery this offseason, the Saints were kicking it to Mitch Owens and a mosquito fleet led by Jack Higgins. Particularly against taller backlines, they were able to enter 50 dirtily and those smalls gave the big backlines fits.
The whole approach smacked of Ross Lyon running the organisation like Nile Jarvis getting Clare Danes to like him. He knew he had time, and he had a clear goal
In this offseason, that shifted.
It went from a team methodically rebuilding through the draft and through sharp player acquisition, to a team trying to microwave their rebuild like they’re suddenly in a rush.
It’s Ray Shoesmith starting to answer questions. It’s abandoning the plan.
And you know, maybe it works.
Maybe Sam Flanders, who has never been a permanent midfielder in his entire career can play midfield. The fact that it seems to be a carbon copy of the Zac Williams mistake that Stephen Silvagni saw happen at Carlton might not matter. Granted, SOS was flat out this offseason so maybe he forgot.
Maybe Jack Silvagni does stiffen a surprisingly leaky defence and lets Ross devote fewer human resources to just clogging up lanes because he doesn’t have enough individual winners.
And finally, maybe Tom De Koning can also transform the midfield in a way that almost literally no other ruckman in the last 25 years has done.
Maybe his likely rotation with Rowan Marshall leads to an approximation of acceptable key forward play, even if using a genuine ruck as a key forward hasn’t worked for a whole season since probably Paul Salmon.
Maybe all of that happens.
But to try and microwave it after three years of being methodical feels rash. Even after all that, the Saints best case scenario is probably sixth and the most likely scenario is probably eighth or tenth this year and getting worse as the bills come due.
It’s like saving to buy a house, then buying a car because in passing your boss said that she’s leaving and might recommend you for a promotion.
To my eye it looks like they went from patiently bad, but building to expensively mediocre.
I don’t know why the Saints abandoned the plan.