Meg, Jimmy, welcome to the second edition of Saints Spotlight! Thank you for joining me today. To kick things off for us, what have you both ordered from Linton Street today?

 Meg: I usually go for a strong oat latte, but I’m being sensible today because I’ve already had a coffee, so just an oat latte for me.

Jimmy: I normally enjoy my ice coffees but it’s a bit cold so I’ve gone a mocha, needed something a little sweet today.

Tell us about your role, regular tasks and responsibilities?

Meg: As the sports dietician, I usually arrive a little before the players to make sure their pre-training nutrition is ready to go when they arrive. Then the rest of the morning includes making sure their nutrition and hydration is covered during training and post-training.

The afternoons usually provide an opportunity for me to catch up with the players one-on-one to go through any diet history, meal plans or education sessions such as cooking classes for the 1-4 years.

There’s a large food service component to the role as well from liaising with the chef, our volunteers ‘The Angels’, placing orders with outside providers to making sure everything food related is all set up when we travel.

Come game day, it’s a similar sort of thing when it comes to setting up pre-game, during game and post-game nutrition. I sit on the bench during the match to ensure their hydration it all up to scratch.

Jimmy: Meg you’ve really set the bar high with that answer, that’s going to be a hard one to follow…

As the Head of Finance, I oversee all the financial functions from payroll and budgeting to player contracts and the soft cap.

Once budgets are set through the year, I spend time forecasting to make sure we’re tracking well and pulling up different heads of the business and budget owners when they look like they're getting a bit out of line with expenses.

I spend a lot of time with our recruitment team on total player payment, salary caps and looking to future years as to who we can bring into the club with the space we have in the salary cap.

What are two great things about working at the Saints?

Meg: I love that we’re all working together towards a common goal and feel lucky to have a direct impact with our players. We’re all looking to get the best out of them as they strive towards the ultimate success.

The second would be that there’s never a dull moment! I’m always on my feet and I love the variety it brings.

Jimmy: It might be a bit obvious but the people. Having been here seven years now I’ve certainly made some lifelong friends - I’ve just been to Bali with Corey, our old photographer. Meg and I got together a mixed netball team last year with some Saints people, so it’s been good to create friendships I can take outside of this place as well.

As you can imagine finance can sometimes be a bit rigid, so I love being able to have the opportunity to get involved in the footy side of things, like running water for the AFL and AFLW teams and jumping in the mascot suit; things you wouldn’t usually get to do in another industry.

What’s one thing about your job that would surprise people?

Meg: I think people assume the role of a dietician is very much face-to-face with people all the time, writing out meal plans etc, but there’s a lot of admin that goes on behind the scenes from placing orders to controlling budgets.

Jimmy: One thing that surprises people financially is how much things cost. I run a fun quiz for all the new starters (well I think it’s fun because it’s finance) as part of their induction and get them to try guess the top six revenue generators for the club and how much things cost and it’s amazing the answers you get. One of the questions is ‘how much do all the assets on Linton St cost?’ It’s a bit over $60M and you get people guessing $2-3m!

What’s been your biggest highlight from working at the Saints?

Meg: It’s hard to pick but probably the anticipation of the last few rounds of the men’s season and the build-up to finals last year. Even though we didn’t win, the hope each week was exciting. Also, working at the 150-year anniversary match.

Jimmy: I can’t pick so I’m also going to give you two as well. The first was moving to Moorabbin and the first game we ever played at Moorabbin against the Hawks. There were eight thousand people here, we ran out of beer at half time, we were in the back page of the paper the next day!

The second was running water for the boys during Covid at Optus Stadium. It was a full crowd and probably Max King’s best game to date. I was in the forward line, so it was pretty surreal to get to run on after each goal.

Oh and a third, it was short lived but when the girls won the last game of the season in 2023 and had a chance of making finals!

Meg: That was exciting, would’ve been amazing if we just scraped in the eight. 

It’s been so nice to reminisce with you guys and get a better understanding of your roles! I’m going to hand it over to our employee choice questions staff submissions to finish off the interview.

Meg, what’s it like sitting on the bench during the game?

Sitting on the bench is a great way for me to be able to monitor what players are doing from a nutritional perspective and observe if they’re putting some of my advice into practise. I take stock of the amount of fluid they’re having to the consumption of any additional energy sources, such as gels and lollies throughout the game.

If someone's cramping, I’ll provide pickle juice and take note to follow up later in the week to see if there’s anything nutritionally that could be done to counteract that in the future.

Overall, it’s a pretty cool and unique experience to better understand the dynamics between coaches and players as messages get fed down from the box. It can be hectic at times, especially when there are injuries and close games!

Jimmy, how long before the Saints will be out of debt? What do you plan to do when the club gets out of debt?

The hope is that we can get out of debt in the next four years. It’ll be challenging and things will have to go our way for that to happen, but that would be really exciting for the club, and I hope I’m here when that happens. Also, because I plan to throw the biggest party the club has ever seen if we get out of debt that may put us back in debt…just joking!

Meg: Can’t wait to be there.