ALAN Richardson says St Kilda had to think of its future when the club made the "bloody difficult decision" to trade Rhys Stanley.
In a hotly-debated move, the Saints offloaded the talented key forward to Geelong in exchange for pick No.21 in the NAB AFL Draft, which it used to secure 196cm defender Hugh Goddard.
At 24 years of age, Stanley's best football should be ahead of him, but Richardson said the Saints wanted to stick by their long-term strategy of rebuilding via the draft.
"(Trading Stanley to Geelong) was a bloody difficult decision,'' the St Kilda coach told the Herald Sun.
"But if you rate the draft and back your guys in list management, you sometimes have to make challenging decisions — and from the outside potentially surprising decisions — depending on what draft pick you can get back.
"Rhys was very much a required player, and we thought that his best games last season went to another level, but we just felt that there were players at that pick (21) that we rated really strongly.
"As it turns out we're incredibly pleased with who's come in the door, and although we didn't know who it was going to be, we rated that pool really strongly.
"We know that Rhys will still play some good footy, but it might end up being one of those win-win trades, and we hope it is.''
The Saints openly stated their ambition to wield three picks inside the top 20 in last year's draft.
However, it emerged after the trade period that they had knocked back Greater Western Sydney's offer to swap pick No. 1 for selections four and seven.
Richardson said the Saints refused to give up the prized first pick because they rated the top-three players – Paddy McCartin, Christian Petracca and Angus Brayshaw – higher than the other talent in the draft pool.
"Just because we've said we're out to get those three picks, we weren't going to give away a $10 player to get in $7.50 just because it fits into our model,'' he said.
Alan Richardson instructing his players during pre-season. Picture: AFL Media
The Saints chose power forward McCartin and used pick 21 on his Geelong Falcons teammate Goddard, shoring-up their key position stocks for the long-term.
St Kilda then secured Oakleigh Chargers midfielder Daniel McKenzie with the next pick, 22, and filled a need by bringing in small forward Jack Lonie from the Dandenong Stingrays with pick 41.
Meanwhile, Richardson has quashed suggestions former head of football Chris Pelchen was moved on due to a personality clash or because he held too much power at the Saints.
"Neither of those is true; in fact Chris and I had a fantastic working relationship and we still do,'' Richardson said.
"He was the first to text me with congratulations after the draft.
"I would think it's almost as simple as this: he is really strong and impressive with list building, but given that the club has Ameet Bains and Tony Elshaug who are so strong and experienced in list management, we became a bit top heavy in that area.
"There was an agreement that we needed bolstering in other areas, such as high performance.''
The Saints have since appointed ex-cricketer Jamie Cox as football manager and promoted assistant coach Danny Sexton to director of coaching and strategy.
