Allan Jeans was recruited to St Kilda after playing in
Finley Football Club's 1954
Murray Football League (MFL) senior premiership, and he was also runner-up in the 1954 MFL O’Dwyer Medal. After a modest 77-game playing career with the
St Kilda Football Club (1955–1959), Jeans, known as "Yabby", took the reins of the Saints in 1961 for a remarkable 16-year career as senior coach. He coached St Kilda to successive
grand finals, in
1965 and
1966, including the Saints' first (and only)
VFL premiership in 1966. He took the Saints to another grand final appearance in 1971. Claiming "burn-out", he retired from coaching the team at the end of 1976. In 1981, Jeans revived his coaching career when he was appointed coach for the
Hawthorn Football Club. He coached them until 1990 (excluding a year off in 1988 due to brain injury) establishing them as the dominant VFL team of the 1980s, with premierships in
1983,
1986 and
1989 from seven consecutive grand finals. Finally, he had a short-lived one-year stint at
Richmond in
1992, winning only five out of 22 games. ==Later life==