Fraser, who Butterss described over the weekend as ‘a goose’ and a person who would ‘pick a fight with a blowfly’, said he had no idea why the former president had criticised him so heavily.
“I’m really not sure. I picked up the paper yesterday morning, getting ready to go have a game of golf and I read the article with Rod. It really came out of the blue. There was nothing to stir it up and I’m not sure where it came from,” Fraser told radio station SEN.
Fraser admitted the Saints would post a financial loss this season, but said a focus on football department spending, the court case with former coach Grant Thomas and a new club sponsor payment arrangement, meant the expected loss of somewhere between $300,000 and $400,000 was not a sign of a poorly run administration.
“We’re certainly not out of the woods but the place is run pretty well and we’ve got a pretty competent board and pretty good administration. Football clubs in Melbourne aren’t exactly easy places to run but you’ve got to make sure you spend the money in the right places and we think we’ve done that,” he said.
Fraser said that the politics and fallings that has been part of the St Kilda culture was being stamped out by the new regime led by president Greg Westaway.
“We’ve had a history at the Saints of doing this stuff and I know the current board and administration are keen to try and get the whole place aligned,” he said.
“We’ve really worked hard to bring back a lot of the past players in the last 12 months to president’s functions and making sure they’re part of the football club because we think that alignment hasn’t been as good as it could have been over the last few years.”
The CEO said the Saints were still keen on former West Coast star Ben Cousins and had put forward arrangements for helping him deal with his drug addiction.
“With Ben we’ve made no secret that we’ve kept it open we’re in the race. As we all know there is still a lot of work to do and until the AFL commission sign off on Ben we think there is little point on doing work on it until then,” Fraser said.
“But we’ve got a strategy and Ricky (Nixon, Cousins’ manager) came out last week and alluded to some of the thinking we’ve gone through to try and put ourselves in the right position if Ben becomes fully available.
