When Darrel Baldock held the Victorian Football League premiership cup aloft at the Melbourne Cricket Ground late on the afternoon of September 1966 it represented the culmination of almost a century's worth of effort, dedication, determination and despair – mostly despair.
For if the history of the St. Kilda Football Club is illustrative of anything it is the fact that triumphant achievement in sport represents only a part – and as often as not a very small part – of the whole story.
St Kilda's dramatic single point win over Collingwood on that 'one day' in 1966 stands out like a beacon over a predominantly dour and gloomy terrain, and yet, in spite of repeated lack of success, the club today remains a key player on the national stage.
Aussies love an honest battler, as epitomised during the first world war by the tragic heroism of the defeated Australian forces at Gallipoli.
In the sometimes equally fraught environment of Australian football no club typifies the Gallipoli spirit better than St. Kilda.
Where other clubs boast of premierships, the Saints can point to an unparalleled collection of wooden spoons (twenty-seven in total).
Where a club like Essendon or Hawthorn would tend to panic on missing the finals for more than a couple of seasons in succession, St. Kilda have contested a finals series on only twenty-six occasions during a history lasting more than one and a quarter centuries.
Nevertheless, the club continues to prove popular and, arguably, to capture the imagination and engage the emotions like no other.