IT TOOK more than a decade before Shane Wakelin finally got closure from his surprise delisting at St Kilda.

After Malcolm Blight had been appointed Saints coach at the end of 2000, one of his first moves was to cut Wakelin who had struggled with an achilles injury throughout the previous season.

The axing was a surprise to many, not least of all Wakelin, who had heard the news through a third party and left the Saints without even meeting the new coach.

It had left a sour taste for Wakelin but a chance meeting with Blight at Tullamarine airport 11 years later helped give him a new respect for the man who brought his time at Moorabbin to a close.

“A couple of years ago I was commentating for SEN and I was in the Qantas flight lounge before flying to Brisbane. I walked in and I saw Blighty sitting by himself up the back corner,” Wakelin told saints.com.au.

“I saw him out the corner of my eye and I kept walking along but he made a beeline towards me. To this point I had never met him even though he was the one to make the decision do de-list me 11 years earlier. To his credit, he came up and apologised to me for making that decision. I thought it was nice that he had gone out of his way to make that apology.”

As it happened, Wakelin’s career soared after he left the Saints, playing a further 158 games for Collingwood including the 2002 and 2003 Grand Final losses to the Brisbane Lions.

But four years after his AFL career came to a close, Wakelin has returned to where it all began as the General Manager of Commercial Operations at the Saints.

Wakelin is excited about his role, which involves the delivery of hospitality and events, heading up key properties and creating commercial opportunities in New Zealand, where the Saints will play a game on Anzac Day on April 25.

He said he is impressed by how the club has grown in his 12-year absence.

“There are a lot of great things happening at the moment and I am focussed on helping change the perception of the club because the club has done some great things over time but we haven’t received the amount of respect we should have,” he said.

Wakelin’s history and knowledge of the Saints are obvious strong points but he also comes armed with a wealth of experience and education outside the AFL system.

The 38-year-old has spent the past four years working at financial company Deloitte after earning his MBA in accounting and finance.

“Ultimately it is one thing to have a football history but you need the professional acumen and be able to conduct yourself in a way that allows you to develop relationships, sell the club and articulate the journey we are on,” he said.

Wakelin is one of several former St Kilda players to return to the club in off-field roles over the past 12 months.

Former teammates Max Hudghton and Tony Brown have returned as a part-time assistant coach and player welfare manager respectively, while Aaron Hamill, who moved from Carlton to the Saints at the same time Wakelin was de-listed in 2000, is an assistant coach.

Wakelin said it was a positive that the Saints were welcoming back former players for key roles.

“I think it’s great. I’m good mates with Maxy and Browny. I think what it shows is the players love the club and see it as a way to give back to the club. Certainly never as a player did I think the club owed me anything after I left and I always thought I owed the club a hell of a lot for the opportunity,” he said.

“On a number of levels it is great having old teammates coming back to the club and it is great for supporters to see them coming back because that sends a strong message that there are more opportunities for players beyond playing football at the club.”

Wakelin still counts Hudghton and Brown as close friends as well as other teammates such as Stewart Loewe, Justin Peckett, Daniel Healy, Nathan Burke, Danny Frawley, Josh Kitchen and Robert Harvey. He is also godfather to Andrew Thompson’s daughter Eloise.

Not surprisingly, Wakelin’s best friend throughout his time at the Saints and his entire life is twin brother Darryl who is living in Adelaide working as a pharmacist.

While the Wakelin twins have not lived in the same city since Darryl was traded to Port Adelaide as part of that post-2000 cleanout, the pair is still as close as ever, recently attending the Boxing Day Test match together.

They may have been apart for 12 years but they are still tight enough to the point that Shane Wakelin rarely speaks about himself in the singular.

“It’s funny, because we’ve been best mates for so long and lived out of each other’s pockets for 25 out of 38 years, I always speak in the ‘we’ and I can’t get out of that habit,” he said.

Wakelin’s playing days at St Kilda brought him plenty of highlights, close friends, challenges and moments of despair.

But he looks back on his 94-game career in the red, white and black as crucial to his development, not just in football, but in all walks of life.

“I didn’t play finals in 1997 but the build-up to that was incredible. You remember a lot of things about it but the best lesson I’ll probably learn in life was missing that Grand Final. Who knows how it would have changed my life if the Saints had won? It would have been interesting to see how I would have responded,” he said.

“At the end of that year Jamie Shanahan moved to Melbourne but if he had have stayed, who knows if I would have got an opportunity as a key back because I played every game in 1998. It was a real sliding doors moment and it was the best decision I ever learnt from having a kick up the backside to make me realise how important footy was to me. Ultimately the most simple thing that I arrived at was that the only thing I wanted to be remembered for was respect for my footy.”