Everyone loves a 'what if' scenario, and this one is no exception.
Saints fans are already long suffering, and stories like this makes looking back at history even more difficult for the hard luck club.
Dean Cox - All Australian, premiership player, best and fairest ruckman - was nearly a Saint.
At the end of the 2004 season, the West Coast Eagles were blessed to have star ruckman, Michael Gardiner, as well as a young up and comer by the name of Dean Cox.
At this stage of his career, Cox had played four seasons and was behind Gardiner in the pecking order. This is where St Kilda comes in.
After narrowly missing out on a Grand Final place, losing to Port Adelaide by a kick, the Saints must have felt they were close to the ultimate prize .
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At the time, former Lion, Trent Knobel was the primary ruckman for the Saints, with Justin Koschitzke and Jason Blake providing support around the ground. This was an area that the Saints were clearly looking to improve in, and Cox may have been the missing piece.
As St Kilda's Assistant Coach at the time, Matt Rendell tells ZeroHanger.com Cox was "happy to join us" and, if not for Gardiner requiring surgery on a ruptured PCL, may just have packed his bags and moved East to Moorabbin.
Would the Eagles have gone for it? Rendell seems to think it was more complex than that, but says "if Cox had wanted to go" the Saints would have made it happen.
The Eagles, however, were unsure of Gardiner's long term prospects. PCL (Posterior Cruciate Ligament) surgeries were still quite new at the time, and they were uncertain on Gardiner's future prospects, which dramatically changed those of Cox.
As fate and/or fortune would have it, Gardiner would be the one wearing Saints colours eventually.
"He (Cox) and his manager said 'we're happy to come to the Saints... I just want to go back to the club and find out where I sit', with Gardiner and myself," Rendell explained.
"He went back to the club and then rang us a few days later... and said "the club has assured me I'm going to be number one ruck next year, [West Coast] have grave fears for Gardiner and his knee... they've assured me I'm going to be the number one ruck next year, and I'm going to stay.
"We sort of knew that (if they confirmed the #1 ruck spot)... but we thought if they said "Gardiner's still going to be number one" we would have ended up getting him, I suppose."
"They hadn't done many operations on PCL's at the time..." is what led to Cox's decision to stay. A decision, that, upon review, was clearly the right one."
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The potential ramifications are interesting to consider. The Eagles went on to feature in both of the next two Grand Finals - winning it all in 2006 - off the back of Cox's outstanding ruck work.
He would be named All-Australian six times starting in 2005, the year the Saints lost to underdogs Sydney in the Preliminary Final.
It's easy to speculate in hindsight, however fantastical it may be. The Eagles - after 2004 - became a force in the league, widely acknowledged as having the best midfield in the competition, winning the flag in 2006.
That 2005 season would be Cox's coming of age, announcing his status to the competition as the premier ruckman, before going on to dominate the position for the best part of a decade.
As for the Saints? Consecutive preliminary final losses in 2004 and 2005, followed by a quick exit from the 2006 AFL finals series, sealed coach Grant Thomas' fate, paving the way for Ross Lyon at Moorabbin.
Despite making AFL Grand Final appearances in 2009 and 2010, the Saints never had a consistently dominant ruckman - a Dean Cox, if you will.
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Rendell doesn't like to speculate when asked what St Kilda's prospects might have looked like, finally musing, "Cox and 'Kosi' rucking together, boy, what a combination that would have been..."
As for the potential of the Saints winning the home preliminary final against the Swans in 2005, he is similarly unwilling to speculate, simply stating "we weren't quite fit enough, too many blokes [were] not quite right."
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Unsurprisingly in the world of AFL wheeling and dealing, the Cox trade wasn't the only audacious move the Saints attempted, as Rendell reflected on a couple of others during his time at the club:
"We were pretty keen to get (ruckman) [David] Hille from Essendon two or three years in a row... but they wouldn't let him go," he said.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation however, was that the Saints went after Cameron Mooney from Geelong.
"We nearly got Cameron Mooney as well.... we thought we had Cameron Mooney but we missed [out on] him."
Rendell doesn't quite remember the specifics these days, however he seems to think it was around a similar time as Thomas' charges chased Cox.
"They were on the up, like the Saints were... it might have been after 2005"
"We had a meeting at his manager's place," reflected Rendell, but the deal didn't get done, with Mooney opting to stay with the Cats.
When it's pointed out that Nick Riewoldt, Stephen Milne, Justin Koschitzke, Fraser Gehrig, Aaron Hamill and Cam Mooney would have been a pretty potent forward line, Rendell laughs.
"I don't know why [we were going after him]... we got greedy," he chuckled.
"I suppose we were thinking [Fraser] Gehrig's coming towards the end, and maybe [Aaron] Hamill as well, so we thought he'd be a good replacement to come in for them."
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Clearly, the Saints thought they were one or two pieces away from breaking their premiership drought, and it's easy to think that Cox, et al, may have gone a long way in that regard.
While it's fun to speculate, the reality is that discussions and negotiations like these go on incredibly often behind the scenes in the AFL industry.
Unfortunately for Saints fans, it just wasn't meant to be.
