Sandringham and St Kilda will meet this Sunday for the first time since the decision was made to split their alignment at the conclusion of the 2025 season.
For both clubs, it is their first time going it alone since 2000.
St Kilda’s decision to move its VFL program in-house ends 25 years as an aligned-team, beginning with Springvale, then Sandringham.
For the Zebras, they have spent more than two decades working first with Melbourne, then from 2009 with the Saints.
During Sandringham’s time partnered with Melbourne, Daniel Ward was a Demon.
Through that alignment he pulled on the Zebras guernsey and was the Norm Goss medallist in the club’s 2005 Grand Final win – the second flag in Sandringham’s famous threepeat.
Fast forward two decades and ‘Wardy’ is back at Trevor Barker Beach Oval as coach.
His success in the coaches box across the past decade saw him take Old Haileybury to multiple premierships and promotion up the grades in the VAFA.
He was a standout candidate when the Zebras advertised the senior coach role for the 2026 season.
“The feedback is that I aligned with what they were trying to achieve,” Ward told the State of Play podcast.
“I thought I’d go through the process to get the experience and have a bit of professional development.
“It moved pretty quickly, you end up down to the last two and by then you really do want it.
“I know the history and the people around the place, and I’m really rapt with what we’ve put together.”
It’s been a decade since Sandringham last featured in the VFL finals.
As a premiership player during the club’s golden era, Ward knows what it takes to be a winner in this competition and part of his coaching criteria is reinstating the Zebras back to those dominant days.
“The culture (in the early ‘00s) was fantastic… It was a great culture, largely driven by Neale Daniher and Mark Williams,” Ward said.
“That was part of wanting to come back and be part of the process in building that again as a standalone club. Having community support around you and building a place where players want to come and families want to be involved and be part of a successful organisation in the future.”
Building a new playing list when 497 responded to an expression of interest in late September was no easy task.
Ward and Zebras football manager Tia Pastore set about whittling the number down using specific metrics. Across multiple cuts in the pre-season, the Zebras settled on their final squad.
One name, Daniel Pinter, has been prominent in the opening six rounds of the season, featuring among the Coaches MVP Award votes in three of his first five matches.
During Sandringham’s talent search, he was just trying to get through each training session and each of the four cuts the club made.
Now, after spending time inside the walls of North Melbourne and Coburg’s VFL programs, Pinter has fought his way through and is an early contender for the Fothergill-Round-Mitchell Medal as the VFL’s most promising young talent.
“We wanted to cast the net far and wide. It was a lot of work,” Ward said. "
“Daniel Pinter was one of the 100 who started on day one of pre-season. He survived another four cuts and here he is our first ruck.”
This Sunday, adoring fans of the Zebras will cheer on their side in pursuit of their third win for the season.
Brendon Goddard, former coach of Sandringham, is in the opposing coaches box hoping to knock off the side where his coaching tenure began in earnest 12 months ago.
“There’s people around the footy club that probably have had this pencilled in their diary for a little bit,” Ward said.
“You’ll get guys coming up to you in the after-match and speak to you about how pleased they are about what we’re doing going standalone, and the effort, and intensity required (to wear the colours).”
For the history buffs, the last time Sandringham met St Kilda in the VFL was the 2000 qualifying final in 2000, where the Zebras prevailed by one point.
The faithful will be piling into Trevor Barker Beach Oval on Sunday hoping for a similar result.
You can watch Sandringham vs St Kilda on Sunday at 2:05pm on AFL.com.au and the AFL Live Official App