‘It can’t be about one year’: St Kilda boss Matt Finnis explains why they parted ways with Alan Richardson

St Kilda CEO Matt Finnis has admitted Alan Richardson’s entire tenure as head coach was taken into account before making the decision to move him on.

Richardson fronted a press conference on Tuesday after parting ways with the club he’s coached for the last six years.

He failed to qualify for the finals at his time with the Saints.

Speaking on Sportsday, Finnis it was the “right time” to look at alternative options for their next coach.

“Alan and the coaching team on any measure would say they’ve done a commendable job in the face of a whole range of adversity,” he said.

“But we’ve got to judge this over six years and after six years the time is right for us to make a change.

“Our focus has been really clear on growth, improvement and competitiveness.

“For us, it can’t be about one year but the whole journey that we’re on and about the next journey we’re on which starts in 2020.”

Finnis said the club “expected” to play finals next year.

“We start every year hoping to play finals and we started this hoping to play finals,” he said.

“We expect to play finals in 2020 and anyone would expect our club to be aiming for that.

“We saw with some of our performances this year, not withstanding some of the challenges not having some of our best players on the park, that we were able to mix it with the best teams.

“Even on Saturday night down in Geelong playing the best team in the comp on their deck, we saw a team that was competitive.”

“We didn’t finish our work in the last quarter but beyond that, it gives us great confidence that we can turn these performances that have been a little bit inconsistent into the type of performances that gets you into finals.”

Click PLAY to hear the full interview on Sportsday