WHEN the 2007 season ended for St Kilda, the club was considered to have underachieved. Upon reassessment, given all the dirty laundry and division that clearly has haunted the club for much of the year, it seems a miracle Ross Lyon and his team were still a chance to play finals into round 22.

You have to feel for Lyon. He has been around football clubs, including feuding ones, for many years but his previous job was at Sydney during that club's most united and successful era. How he must be missing it now.

Lyon replaced a coach who had fallen out with his president in a feud that was not only financial but became legal. The board handed him a football operations boss in Ken Sheldon who Lyon initially had his doubts about but determined to make the relationship work.

In the meantime, the president, Rod Butterss — a likeable but unpredictable leader who destabilised the club with his ill-timed attack on former coach and ex-best friend Grant Thomas back in June — fell out with chief executive Archie Fraser, who in turn appeared to have issues with the football manager. The two couldn't seem to agree on anything.

Early in the season, Fraser fell foul of the AFL's new human resources set-up because he had been too tough on several staff members — all of whom seemed stressed and overworked because there were so few of them. Fraser also fell out with his deputy James van Beek, who had some issues of his own with staff members.

Van Beek departed to work for Concept Sports — a company several St Kilda directors own shares in. And still the Saints kept getting injured. Despite their bad injury record for most of Thomas' tenure, only a year ago did the club get serious about tackling it. The latest in a long list of fitness and conditioning managers, Craig Starcevich, departed over summer for personal reasons.

Meanwhile, the club's vice-president, Ross Levin, fell out with Butterss and his inner sanctum of Glenn Casey, who used to employ Sheldon at Nylex, and football director Mark Kellett. Seasoned board campaigner Ray King also fell out with the rebel directors.

Levin, who is the only director the new rebel group will keep on the board, and fellow board member John Gdanski, who has jumped ship to join the St Kilda Footy First ticket, appear aligned with Fraser but not Sheldon. The two rebel directors reportedly were horrified that Casey took $30,000 from the Saints to mentor Fraser last year when he was no longer required at Nylex.

They are both lawyers who apparently have done plenty of work for free for the club but who will receive five-figure sums this year for St Kilda legal work. Surely club directors are there to help the club for free, particularly when times are tight.

Enter on-field stalwart Andrew Thompson. He was approached by his former captain Nathan Burke, who not only sits on the AFL's match review panel but also recently helped Melbourne find its new senior coach.

This time last year, the St Kilda players were in shock over the Thomas fallout. Now they are heading off on an end-of-season trip with a teammate who suddenly has been transformed into a major player in an off-field power struggle.

Confused? It could be worse. You could be a St Kilda member who still believed your football club was above a dirty game of cowboys and Indians. Or Lyon, the rookie senior coach who thought he was being promoted into the big time at a united football club with the single purpose of winning a premiership. Not a rich boys' club.