ROD BUTTERSS' childish outburst early yesterday against his one-time best friend and now worst enemy, Grant Thomas, did more than further destabilise the already shaky St Kilda Football Club.

Butterss' attack upon Thomas appeared a genuine bid to rid the Saints of what their president regards as a disease that continues to infect Moorabbin, nine months after the sacked coach's departure.

In truth, he might as well have been writing his own resignation.

It is not only Thomas whose legacy is hurting St Kilda but the Thomas-Butterss partnership, its dissolution and all that it stood for. Last year it was apparent that one of them had to go. Now it is clear they both must.

Butterss and his group tossed out Andrew Plympton almost seven years ago after the Tim Watson appointment failed.

The brash new president sold his message to Malcolm Blight with a group of footballers, some expensive wine and a million-dollar cheque. Remember that million-dollar figure. It continues to cause trouble for Butterss.

The Blight experiment was brief but costly, its fall-out spectacular.

During the dramatic days that led to Blight's sacking, Thomas, too, threatened to resign, making it clear that this was the start of another famous power struggle.

Acting again upon instinct, Butterss appointed Thomas as coach.

Surely the Butterss' regime has run out of chances. Returning from overseas on the weekend the president joked at the Saints' pre-game function that last week's "We are leaving Moorabbin" story had been a ploy to keep new coach Ross Lyon and his team's performances off the back page.

The joke fell a little flat given that chief executive Archie Fraser's pronouncements now appear a little hollow thanks to the president's contradictory remarks.

Yesterday's attack on Thomas, launched on breakfast radio on SEN, reeked of an excuse for a team that has lost more games this year than it has won, delivered by a president who sacked a coach after three consecutive finals appearances.

Butterss was the wrong man to be firing the bullets, as he is suing Thomas over an alleged unpaid million-dollar debt.

For all his charm, good intentions and success, Butterss no longer has credibility as a football club president.

His behaviour is bordering on paranoid where Thomas is concerned. Thomas is allegedly guilty of remaining inside the heads of the players, calling them from local watering holes with or without former sidekick Matt Rendell and demanding they join him for a drink.

He has allegedly taken too keen an interest in Nick Riewoldt's new contract offer and spread nasty private rumours about Butterss.

He denies most of it but has strangely chosen to remain publicly silent but privately active, according to the club.

The financial settlement between the two parties was struck on the basis that Thomas, who has yet to find a full-time position elsewhere, agree not to undermine the club. An estimated $100,000 is still outstanding and the club appears determined now that it will never be paid.

What looked to be a swift, clean sacking last September now looks like a protracted and messy fall-out.

And St Kilda? The club looked outside itself for advice and appointed Lyon, a popular and highly regarded assistant coach who must be wondering what hit him. From the start, Lyon, 41, who got his chance after a decade as an assistant, has appeared defensive not only about his own lack of experience, but also his team and its record. It is early days for him and he doesn't need this.

Having appointed his own assistants, but significantly not his football operations manager — the board took yet another risk in choosing Ken Sheldon before it picked Lyon — the new coach lost his head fitness man at Christmas and has been plagued by the same injury-management issues that haunted Thomas.

Lyon, like Thomas, has already publicly pointed the finger at his medical team and was later moved to apologise for it.

Butterss' non-specific attack on Thomas yesterday is another distraction St Kilda does not need. If the former coach has cast a curse on the club then it is working. And Butterss' sloppy attempt to remove it yesterday failed. Now, for the good of the club, he needs look to a succession plan.