Month: September 2020

Round 18, 2020
St Kilda 3.3, 5.5, 8.9. 12.10 (82)
GWS Giants 1.5, 3.8, 3.10, 3.12 (30)
Crowd: Some humans at the Gabba, Friday, September 18th at 7.50pm

This time of year is usually the beginning of Grand Final Week. Enjoy the weather. Relax. The hard work is done. Reminisce during a week that is often about reflection and places in history, made or to be made. During the eight days between the loss to West Coast and Friday night, my body clock (calendar) said to me, well, St Kilda isn’t usually playing at this time of year, and it would therefore follow that we would lose to GWS, Melbourne would make up the necessary margin against a floundering Essendon, before the in-form Bulldogs disposed of Fremantle on the Sunday night. A magic three-step process over three magical Melbourne spring days.

You’d be right to have been worried about a GWS loss and Melbourne catapulting themselves in with a hefty win over the Bombers. We’d done a similar job on Essendon in the final home and away game of 2008 to fly into fourth after a string of other results that weekend went our way. There had hardly been – if at all – a sustained period within a game since the Gold Coast win during which we’d had the game on our terms, or were at our most efficient, or at our boldest and best. During which we played how we want to play. With every uncertain movement forward, with every high dump kick into the forward line and rushed shot at goal from an unfamiliarly wide angle, those secret thoughts of “What if?” gave way bit by bit to missing the finals – including the mechanisms required over the last round – feeling right and normal. But fuck a duck, it’s a long way from second on the ladder after Round 10.

The games had become smaller. The upside was less remarkable. From a top of the table challenge on a Monday night against Geelong, to a top four battle against Brisbane, to an unimpressive finals-critical game against Melbourne, a finals confirmation test blown against the Eagles, and now, judging on both the Giants’ and our own recent form, a finals participation award on the line. GWS weren’t the shadows formed over the MCG by their 2019 selves 50 weeks and six days earlier. We hadn’t been convincing since getting light-headed while sitting up at second on the ladder. Who wants to draw out this long year even further?

*** 

For all the ongoing Max King missed shots and the threat of a Jeremy Cameron return to form, the game’s setting never really deviated from the start. The Giants’ ball movement was uneasy, and their goal kicking was our Richo-era levels of poor. Another un-St Kilda-like tactical in-game win, this time Josh Battle blanketing Haynes, took away one of their weapons to go with Battle’s incredibly slick goal on the run from 50, the kind that good players in good teams in important games pull off. Lonie fell into a mark while in the hands of a trainer, and after a difficult last quarter in which he spurned a potentially match-sealing chance and then had ignominy of giving away a free kick in front of goal on the siren and having the Eagles players pile on in front of him, Brad Hill took the tight set shot kick and made no mistake.

We’d forgotten what it’s like to ask the question, “What if we win?” Our history doesn’t encourage it. Since 2011 we haven’t really been in a position to ask it at all. In a game between two teams playing in which they both must win, there is something irrepressible about a team making a match-defining break in the third quarter. This time, it was us.

Paddy Ryder back-heeled a hit-out to set up Marshall for a (questionable) mark in front of goal, and kick starting his huge third quarter. Turnovers across the middle third of the ground became expected. The confidence of a steady St Kilda hand about to appear on-screen returned. Howard got caught in a manic forward-50 sprint to the goal line for the second consecutive week and won. Coniglio was swamped near goal and caught holding the ball. Clark confidently wheeled around going forward and Butler tapping onto Lonie running into goal. Billings pinched the ball off hands at the top of the goal square. Max King broke his run of behinds. Ryder casually and confidently took the advantage off the ground after a huge Lonie tackle. Jack Steele had minted three Brownlow votes, the Trevor Barker Award and possibly the captaincy with another huge performance and a great long-range snap goal, and capped it off with a second from close range in the final minutes. His celebration was big and brash; the kind the players introduced at the beginning of 2019. Now they meant something. They were being used in a must-win game, and these players were wearing St Kilda jumpers.

***

The scenes at the end of the game were of celebration, and were as big as you could get in a time in which no one apart from the players, coaches and core staff are allowed in the rooms. They were as much a celebration of creating a new period for the club as relief that we are no longer in the shadow of the GT and Ross eras. A new coach, a return to Moorabbin christened at the beginning of the year, the weight of expectation and responsibility on different players, almost all of them young or new recruits.

Making the finals doesn’t mean the past is wiped and all sins are forgiven, of course. Brett Ratten quickly and rightly went out of his way to say this is not the destination. Part of why we celebrate is because we do very much remember and still feel the weight of Grand Finals lost and drawn, of promises all but made, but never kept. This is a long game. As the 10-year anniversary of the Draw ticks by this week, we may finally be starting to live a real chance to make some of those demons go away (or least find some new ones). 

St Kilda supporters are used to barnstorming entries into finals series and nearly-fairytale runs. A fourth-place finish in 1991. The dizzying 1997 run. The peak of the GT era began with a pre-season premiership and 10 wins to start the year, and a one goal loss in an all-timer Preliminary Final. Ross Lyon’s maiden finals appearance followed a pre-season premiership, fourth-place and another Preliminary Final. These haven’t been done in half-measures. Chances are this won’t quite be those. There is something a litlte terrifying about sustained mid-table mediocrity, as Demonblog so excellently describes it. We hope that the 2020 appearance in the finals, however long or short, is a Bulldogs 2015 Elimination Final appearance, or a Hawthorn’s 2007 Semi-Final foray, or Sydney’s Semi-Finals of 2010 and 2011, rather than the fleeting Essendon 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2019 or Carlton’s 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013 appearance that yielded Semi Final losses for an entire generation of players at best.

Front page on the Herald Sun, owning the back page of The Age, Off the Bench opening with the St Kilda song (The Fable Singers’ version, of course), goodwill overflowing across the media and football world for Brett Ratten over the entire weekend. Double-page spread on celebrity Saints fans talking about St Kilda returning to the finals. What life was like when the Saints won a premiership. St Kilda, for a few days at least, is fashionable again.

***

I spent the last quarter very quietly enjoying what was happening. A St Kilda team had handsomely risen to a challenge with the weight of history against it. A team that had been rightly criticised for not putting the foot to the throat of its opponents smothered last year’s Grand Finalists.

There was quiet relief. The spectre of the GT and Ross eras will remain, but we hail a new era. Quiet sadness, too. Footy has almost become an island in the pandemic. But not quite entirely. For all the bluster at the beginning of the season around what footy meant to people during wars the Great Depression, we were only going to become attached to this season as a journey and narrative developed. Empty seats and novelty venues have reinforced the extraordinary nature of the situation. Moments like Friday were what we’d seek throughout a year, perhaps a decade. Sharing the same space and atmosphere with people close to us. But they did it all on TV! They didn’t need us to be there! This is a whole lot of things co-existing. We were different people nine years ago, and we were different people nine months ago. If a pandemic wasn’t enough, yes, this is a different time.

Round 17, 2020
St Kilda 3.5, 3.5, 3.9, 6.14 (50)
West Coast Eagles 2.1, 5.6, 5.9, 9.11 (65)
Crowd: At least several humans at the Gabba, Thursday, September 10th at 7.10pm

Even at this very, very late stage of a lengthened season, St Kilda is creating new and horrifying novelty ways to lose games. In the newest, most 2020-flavoured edition, we get run over by a wildly depleted team playing its 5th game in 19 days, one of their few remaining top-line players injured, and on a ground at least two states and/or territories away from both sides.

Need to create some heroes? Create your own legends? The St Kilda Football Club is your canvas. The St Kilda Football Club is the centre of our footballing world, but when you see even just a few seconds of Adam Simpson’s press conference we’re reminded that we’re just the jumper in the background of players and teams celebrating big moments. Simpson said it was one of the best wins in his time at the club; this is a team that was made two Grand Finals and won a premiership in that period.

This one had the same formula as most games following the Gold Coast win. Maximum effort for little reward. Hurried, anxious ball movement forward, few shots at goal in time or space, or from close range. At one stage we led 2.3 to 0.0, and aside from the early final quarter flurry, West Coast’s moments against the weight of momentum were more damaging. No Shuey, Yeo, Redden, or Sheed, and down McGovern. They always had an extra gear to go to. You need to repeat it to make you’re feeling the magnitude of the opportunity spurned. Maybe we’re tired. We’re definitely not good enough. This year has been long and exhausting. We don’t need 28 games next year.

***

At the final change, some of our bellwethers had made little impact. Butler had five touches in his Brent Guerra 2004 season, Marshall had his moments but just seven touches as the ruck battle truly has handed over to Nic Nat and Paddy (The Age already used up the names in the rhyme during the week), Battle had three, although twice putting his body on the line on the wing were among the best St Kilda moments of the game.

Really, that was the problem – not Battle so much, but that so rarely in the past several games have we had extended periods in which we play the we clearly want to, i.e. those irresistible patches up. Moments are sticking out just a little too much. There’s too much weight on them. They have to be right. We can’t rely on Lonie having to go a rushed banana on his left (in my head I’d already screamed “get a right”), Membrey missing the mark, Barrass missing the ball and Butler missing the kick on the line (BT during the review: “The guy in the goal square”, to go with “Jack Zones” and, after several months of calling St Kilda games, “Ben Payton”).

The rain came, but it didn’t really matter. Our turn in the third quarter lasted all of a couple of minutes – Hunter flunked a shot on the run, and then with a nearly calamitous turnover Battle gave us a Flyin’ Ryan vs Dougal Howard dash that echoed Eric Mackenzie vs Beau Maister in the dying minutes of a very dark 2013 afternoon.

From the beginning of the final term Sinclair added to an already creative with a mark going back with the flight. Steele’s kick to a Membrey lead was good, Sinclair at the fall of the ball at that next ball, and his quick kick forward was expertly crumbed by Ross. Two minutes later Butler took a touch in the goal square and soccered another through. The rush had started. The Eagles looked tired. The weight of five games in 19 days and losing one of their most important players was going to be the difference. A first finals appearance in nine years.

Marshall bobbed up with a typically calm head, taking the extra second and small piece of space he knew had parted around him to balance himself and snap the goal. We had the game on our terms and were vaguely playing how we wanted to play, but the entries forward were taken for granted. Still high, still manic, and for all the good forward pressure the cluttered defence meant any half-shots were just that. There were just more of them. Max King had made almost every contest he could during the night but had barely held one. He missed twice in a minute, including a set shot, taking his tally for the night 0.4. They took the margin to six points, and then seven. The margin should have been taken beyond two goals. Hill ran in with a hurried banana shot from close range and missed. Brett Ratten said in the press conference that that would probably have been the game. When BT said the Eagles didn’t look like getting it to their end from the resulting kick out you knew it was coming.

Some deft knock-ons had the ball race down the other end to Kennedy, who no one had bothered to pick up, and despite looking sore still made sure to take the opportunity. West Coast’s leaders stepped up. Nic Nat engineered the clearance, and Kelly made up for the one he missed before half-time. Just like that, the Eagles were back in front. They never really looked challenged from that points. Where did it go?

***

The inability to close out close games says more about the mechanics of the team rather than “if only x had happened”, in this case “if only Brad Hill had kicked the goal”. The sample size is much, much too big now. Repeated high dump kicks are rarely going to be a substitute for the quicker, slicker ball movement that allowed the talls and smalls just that little more space to work with earlier in the season. Max King had kicked 15.5 at the end of the Gold Coast game, when we sat second on the ladder. He’s kicked 4.9 since, which probably says more about the rushed high dump kicks forward. Across that same six-week block, we have kicked 4.10, 10.8, 6.14, 7.7, 11.14 and 6.14. At no point in those consecutive close losses to Brisbane and Melbourne did it feel as though we had real control of the game for that reason.

For a few moments this looked like it could be a repeat of the Port Adelaide finish, but it ended up being a horrible child produced by the St Kilda teams that played against Geelong and then Brisbane. Shown up when a top class team stepped up and showed off what they do, and heavily wasteful and anxiety-ridden when we had the glut of possession.

As usual, the joke’s on us. The tacky 1980s US hyper-capitalist Rock and Roll and Sport and Major Events aesthetic hangover that is the West Coast Eagles, complete with their college jocks line-up and WTF song had the last laugh. A massive pile-on with the boys, celebrating a goal on the siren from an arsey Perth Home Town Whistle-style free kick.

One more shot.

Round 16, 2020
St Kilda 4.4, 5.8, 7.13, 11.14 (80)
Hawthorn 5.1, 5.5, 6.6, 9.12 (66)
Crowd: Some humans at Metricon Stadium, Sunday, September 6th at 1.05pm

Daniel Cherny was absolutely not thinking about me when he noted that there were fans of then-second-placed St Kilda who were worried about how they might physically make it to the Grand Final given Victoria and state border restrictions ahead of a towelling to Geelong on a Monday night. However, I was absolutely feeling a small pang of cheeky guilt. This is St Kilda, and the most St Kilda thing possible would be to win a second premiership this year. Today, we learned that we might not even be allowed to watch the month-delayed Grand Final with more than one other human.

No matter. In the time following those heady few days and a string of Channel 7 games, the Travelling Dan Butler, Max King, Hunter Clark, and High Kickin’ Tim Membrey Show had conked out and disappeared from cultural reference points in a fast-deeping bog of slow ball movement, poor forward line entries, shots at goal from wide angles and close losses. A Soft 1998, if you will, the Saints falling from grace with some anxiety induced footy and a barrage of awkward losses interstate, except this one is (theoretically for now) at the beginning of this team’s arc, a marker of development and the development required, rather than marking the beginning of the end. We hope this is more of a return to brief anonymity than anything else.

Back to the depths of Fox Footy for a Round 16 game that meant no more and no less than fuck all to one participating team and to most neutrals. Harder to engage than most pandemic-era matches given the Dan Andrews press conference immediately before. Many St Kilda fans wouldn’t have noted we actually managed to sneak in a bye during the week. Anonymously anonymous.

***

I’m a sucker for novelty stats, scores and so on and Hawthorn really let down bored freaks like myself by allowing the Crows the chance to keep Fitzroy’s 1964 the most recent instance of a winless season. The Saints are probably the ideal team to make amends against, of course.

So maybe it wasn’t wildly horrifying that the first three goals went the Hawks’ way. This was going to be a long afternoon of shanked kicks forward and not much coherent footy, probably about as long as Metricon was playing music for after goals. “Get Lucky” after Jack Gunston blasted through Hawthorn’s second felt wildly out of place given most fans of the two Victorian teams had just been told they were going nowhere fast and facing a greater chance of psychological and financial trauma.

For much of the first quarter we really only had some pressure acts by Jack Lonie to feel good about, while the Hawks had Dylan Moore pulling off a neat one-two to run in for their third. The step taken from being encouraged by efforts or moments from inexperienced or younger guys, to being encouraged by matches and wins created by inexperienced or younger guys can be long and dour. The step back can be a very quick stumble, landing weirdly on your arse, and yes, everyone did see it. The inaccuracy, the hurried kicks. Marshall broke through with a strong mark on the lead and kick around the corner, and quickly this became a high-scoring match (by 2020 standards at the very least). But only in the way that this was two teams fumbling around at a pre-season intensity.

Breust won a free kick on the siren but kicked right into the man of the mark. Paddy Ryder made sure the celebration for that alone was big and tried getting the team up. He was able to break through and turn around a broken-down game against the Bombers. It was a rare moment of intiative.

***

High-scoring, free-wheelin’ footy was absolutely not going to last beyond the coaches’ first face to face interaction with the players. Not in 2020. A modern-day tale of Tiring Young Once-Challengers against Tiring Also-Rans was unfolding. It was going to be ugly. While the Hawks were kept to 1.5 over the second and third quarters, we could only manage 3.9 in that time. No frenetic pressure, no overly slick football, just occasions in which one team was slightly quicker and a little cleaner in traffic, enough to find someone on the outside, and if it went forward there wasn’t going to be anything overly clean.

Individuals rarely stood out. During the second quarter, Brad Hill took control of how the ball was moved with more creativity. In his best moment on the broadcast side he sliced through three Hawks players on the wing and cut inside with a neat kick that quickly found Lonie for the only goal of the quarter. Dan Butler showed off some of his own hard running. Ben Long won a hard ball and a free kick, also on the wing and a few moments later, floated across a park running hard across the ground and took a delightful mark. On the day of the first absence of Max King, Marshall played as a full-forward and deserved more than 2.2 for several strong grabs in attack – the type we’re hoping Max King will be taking in due course – as  well as his work up the ground.

For all of those, we also had Jack Steele prop up a neat pass straight to James Frawley, whose quick didn’t get past Steele’s reach, and Ed Philips’ handball (shortly after his calamity squirt on the left that trickled out of bounds) meant the Hawks were away. Breust took too long on his snap and a behind was the result.

Marshall and Battle loomed as a big threats after a run of behinds that took us to 5.12, but yielded mixed results. Dodgy set shots from all angles took the posters count to four (was it five?). Billings’ comically high snap on the siren wobbled its way through. He snuck the kick in just before the siren after the umpire called play on. A critical mass of small mercies and Dan Butler sprints and Nick Coffield intercepts would be the difference.

Hawthorn’s tilt really reached its end with four spurned shots on goal early in the last quarter. Mitchell Lewis’s kick from a big mark and was flipped to a Butler-generated goal to Battle, and three quick misses from different positions ended with Rowan Marshall minting his influence with a low collect and handball, and Jonathan Marsh contributing one of the better moments of the match, a bullocking burst away from two opponents and a handball that opened up the forward line and finished with Paddy Ryder on the goal line.

***

The absence of footy’s weekly grind this year was crowned during the week with confirmation that the Gabba would be hosting the Grand Final. (Tacky lightshow enthusiasts and “Because we need to be like US sports” fetishists were given some good news and bad news, with the game not being in Perth but probably at night. People with lots of money and no care at Channel 7 will do what they can to keep it that way, no matter how it actually plays out.)

I remember the day of the Grand Final Replay. The heat. The sun shining at an angle not usually seen when Collingwood and St Kilda are on the MCG. The exhaustion, obviously – not just the week before, but the everything that had happened through the GT and Ross era. I think about Bob Murphy’s rhythm of the season. The song has stopped by then. It felt like we’d maxed out, and by “we” I mean the footy community. We shouldn’t be at the MCG watching a game of footy at that time of year.

Footy frames the calendar year. In any other year this would be the first weekend of the finals series. We still might return to the finals in 2020, but this young team is tiring. We’ve been programmed to have been done with our St Kilda duties by now. Time to get on with our lives, or whatever, but usually familiarise ourselves with what two genuinely good teams going all out looks like. High pressure, decent footy, taken in pressure-free. Maybe even watch some VFL or VFLW or local footy finals, too. Soak up the changing of seasons. The sun shining at this angle usually tells me we’ve done what we need to do. We’ve made it through winter. Spring is here. This has been a long season. A long year. And it’s going to get longer.