ST KILDA has called in 1966 premiership hero and academic Ross Smith to help solve the riddle of its persistent injury crises.

Smith, the 1967 Brownlow medallist and a Saints hall of famer, is chairing a research committee looking into the issue as the club tries to cobble a respectable record in the face of another injury blight.

He is one of Australia's leading lights in the field, having a doctorate in philosophy and served as director of sports science at the Australian Institute of Sport for several years.

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon this week said the club's problems with soft tissue injuries were not merely bad luck but the result of poor management. Lyon said St Kilda needed to bring itself to the point of clubs such as Sydney and West Coast in terms of having players available.

Club president Rod Butterss said Smith and others would seek advice from other sporting bodies. "It's a committee that will seek to build relationships with organisations farther and wider, at the elite level, both contact sports and Olympics sports. We want to see if we can't get the best minds and the best experience, if not globally then certainly nationally, to assist," Butterss said.

In Lyon's time at Sydney, the Swans adopted a rehabilitation and conditioning program favoured by the Italian soccer giant AC Milan with great success. Butterss said the process would be evolutionary.

"We've spent a lot of money resurfacing the ground, bringing in additional personnel, we re-equipped the gym and we engaged a world-class dietitian. But it's like a lot of problems. There's typically not one obvious solution.

"We have to work through it, attract the best people to combat it. But there's a very positive attitude down there led by (football director) Ken Sheldon and Ross and supported by the medical staff, to simply get better."