1. Ross Lyon was born on 8 November 1966 and is a former Australian rules football player and the current senior coach of the St Kilda Football Club in the Australian Football League.
28 Facts About Ross Lyon
1. 2.
Ross Lyon previously coached St Kilda from 2007 to 2011 and the Fremantle Football Club from 2012 to 2019.
3.
Ross Lyon played for Fitzroy and the Brisbane Bears from 1985 to 1995.
4.
Ross Lyon returned to play 19 games in 1988 and ended up playing 127 games over the next ten years until the end of the 1994 season.
5.
Ross Lyon played for Fitzroy from 1985 until 1994 for a total of 127 games and kicked 112 goals.
6.
Ross Lyon played two games with the Brisbane Bears in 1995 before retiring due to a knee problem.
7.
Ross Lyon spent three years at Carlton both as an assistant coach and as the club's VFL coach where he worked under senior coaches David Parkin, Wayne Brittain and Denis Pagan.
8.
In 2004, Ross Lyon joined the Sydney Swans in an assistant coaching position as midfield coach, working under senior coach Paul Roos his former Fitzroy teammate.
9.
Ross Lyon was instrumental in helping the Swans reach consecutive grand finals in 2005 and 2006, triumphing in the former year.
10.
Ross Lyon beat 52 candidates for the job, including favourite John Longmire.
11.
Ross Lyon succeeded Grant Thomas as St Kilda's senior coach who had been sacked a week after the Saints were defeated in an elimination final by Melbourne in the 2006 finals series.
12.
Ross Lyon helped lure highly rated fitness coach David Misson to the club from Sydney.
13.
Ross Lyon began his first season as senior coach with a victory against Melbourne in Round 1 of 2007 and the Saints then won four of their first seven games.
14.
Ross Lyon was criticised for flooding excessively and many became angry with the more defensive style of St Kilda over the subsequent weeks.
15.
Ross Lyon became only the third coach to lead the club to a grand final since World War Two.
16.
Former captain Luke Ball signed with rival club Collingwood and Ross Lyon was criticised for failing to keep Ball and not gaining any compensation in return.
17.
Ross Lyon became the only coach apart from Allan Jeans to lead St Kilda to multiple grand final appearances.
18.
Ross Lyon left St Kilda with the best winning percentage of any other Saints coach in the club's history and became the first person to coach the Saints to four consecutive finals series.
19.
Ross Lyon was then replaced by Scott Watters as St Kilda's senior coach.
20.
The Dockers under Ross Lyon lost to Hawthorn in the 2013 AFL Grand Final by a margin of 15 points, with the final score Hawthorn 11.11 to Fremantle 8.14.
21.
Ross Lyon coached Fremantle to its first minor premiership in 2015, after winning 12 of the first 13 games of the season.
22.
Ross Lyon was then replaced by assistant coach David Hale as caretaker senior coach for the final game of the 2019 season.
23.
At both St Kilda and Fremantle, Ross Lyon was noted for enacting the most structured and defensive game plans in the league, with a particularly strong emphasis on the entire team applying defensive pressure when the opponent has the ball.
24.
Ross Lyon has been criticised, including by former St Kilda coach Scott Watters, for sticking to his game plan at the expense of having an effective forward structure.
25.
Ross Lyon grew up in the northern Melbourne suburb of Reservoir with his four sisters and parents Maurie and Louise Ross Lyon.
26.
Ross Lyon attended Lakeside High School and in 1984 was selected to tour Ireland with the Australian schoolboys team.
27.
Ross Lyon's father played four games for South Melbourne in the 1953 VFL season.
28.
The incident occurred at a club Christmas function, where Ross Lyon commented on the woman's attire.