Jack Steele has certainly let his footy do the talking early in 2026.

The Melbourne midfielder was pushed out by St Kilda in last year’s trade period despite being captain of the club.

Steele admitted he was still getting over his shock Saints exit after the Demons knocked them off in Round 1.

On the weekend the 30-year-old was one of his new team’s very best in their surprise 20-point win over flag fancies Gold Coast with 26 disposals, 11 clearances and eight tackles.

Demons great Garry Lyon and SEN Breakfast co-host Tim Watson discussed the Steele situation and how it’s already worked out for the Dees who identified a need and went after their man.

“He is the complementary piece and this is where we spoke about this last week,” Lyon said on SEN Breakfast.

“Your list management and your recruiters are just about the most important people in your whole setup because they’ve got Caleb Windsor, we've got Koltyn Tholstrup who plays in a different way than I thought he was capable of, Harvey Langford is going to get fitter and he'll run better, Xavier Lindsay can (run), Joey Culley's an athlete.

“But gee, we needed some edge, we needed some experience. And they go and get Jack Steele.

“Patrick Cripps is a danger, so Steele goes to Cripps. Matty Rowell is a danger, Steele goes to Rowell. So you're identifying that.”

Watson described it as somewhat of a conundrum given the Saints opted to offload their skipper.

“This is the football conundrum, right? So you've got St Kilda over here who had a captain, a great individual too,” he said.

“You talk to anybody around football that knows Jack Steele, they'll tell you what a quality human being he is. So he's their captain, he's also a great individual, he's a guy that puts everything into his football.

“They literally push him out the door, and am I right in saying that they're still paying part of his contract from last year?”

Lyon added: “They're paying for the next two years, this year and next.”

Watson continued: “So that's how much they didn't want him in the team and he’s gone.

“A lot of it's been around the negativity about him, that he's slow-legged, he can't sprint, he can't split (from stoppage), he can't surge nearly quickly enough.

“Yet he's able to be an accompany type player in a team that wants to play really hard and fast.”

However, Lyon can see it from St Kilda’s point of view that sometimes a player needs a fresh environment to get the best out of himself.

Lyon added: “Yeah, all that is true, but this is what happens, right. So when you're at a footy club for a long period of time, someone sees what you can't do and they stop seeing what you can do, that happens everywhere.

“And you go, okay, if he goes somewhere else then he goes somewhere else. And Melbourne are paying Clayton Oliver to play somewhere else, St Kilda are paying Steele to play somewhere else, so the net gain for Melbourne…”

Watson added: “It's a little bit different though because this is a bloke that didn't want to go, those other two players (Oliver and Christian Petracca) wanted to go.

“This is Jack Steele who was dirty about the fact that he was pushed out of his football club.”

Steele has had a great start to life as a Demon, averaging 25 disposals, nine tackles and seven clearance in four outings in the red and blue.