The recent VFL off-season has proved a period of great transition for the Sandringham Football Club.
Premiership heroes Chad Liddell, Ezra Poyas and Chris Lamb all departed as the club entered into a new AFL-alignment with St Kilda.
After last year's disappointing ninth-place finish, president Gerry Ryan belives the building blocks are in place for a new era of success at Trevor Barker Beach Oval.
"We had a really good look at ourselves and how we were going to improve," Ryan told Casey 3SER at half-time of yesterday's Sandringham and Casey match.
"We lost three of our senior players so we recuited Simon Clark (Geelong) and Stefan Garubba (Casey). It was sad to see them (Liddell, Poyas and Lamb) all go but their time had come and gone and they were lucky enough to play in premierships.
"We have got some really good young kids and we believe they can go to the next level, Rennie Gilchrist's a prime example. We work exceptionally hard to develop the yong kids coming though on our list.
"It's very important to give young kids an opportunity to come and play senior football. At the same time, we acknoweldge the need for senior VFL players to help develop our players and help to develop the St Kilda players. It's getting that balance right."
The new alignment with St Kilda had been a boon for the club, Ryan said.
"We had a fantastic nine-year alignment with the Melbourne Football Club winning four premirships. They had to say had to say goodbye to us because of their financial problems and issues and they had to go in a different direction," Ryan said.
"We've had a lot to do with Archie Fraser (ex-St Kilda CEO), Greg Westway (St Kilda president) and the board putting the alignment together and they have been absolutely fantastic to deal with and made the alignment so much easier.
"One of the things they saw in us was that wining culture and they were keen to inherit that winning culture."
Ryan enthused that Sandringham was the best of the VFL-AFL club partnerships.
"We spoke to both Melbourne and St Kilda and several AFL clubs back in 1999. The best offer given to us was made by Melbourne and as a board we decided to go with Melbourne," he recalled.
"The document that we put together in 1999 has been reviewed three or four times but it was the same document we took into our alignment with St Kilda. Very little has changed.
"Sandringham was the first club to go into an AFL alignment and no one sort of knew had to marry that up and I think we showed the way, same as we're showing the way with our alignment with St Kilda."
Ryan has a busy off-field schedule, combining his presidency with Victoria Police, his employer for the past 39 years.
"I have learnt a lot out of being invoved in football. This is my 20th year with the Sandirngham Football Club and i've been on the board all that time," Ryan told Casey 3SER.
"There's a lot of similarities between running a football club and running an area of police. It's about managing people and about making sure great values and beliefs and everyone abides by that."
While there was hope for renewed fortunes on the field, off the field, the club had several new developments to look forward too, Ryan said.
"We've got new light towers going in and they'll be put in position on Wednesday. Our social club will be redeveloped at the end of the year - that's a $1 million redevelopment," he said.
"It's all about what we can do for the comunity. It's not just Sandringham Football Club.
"The (TAC Cup Sandringham) Dragons train here and we want to incoprate them into one club. We've got a number of other club and communities we want to include here."
Last Modified on 13/04/2009 15:50