Month: October 2020

2nd Semi Final, 2020
Richmond 5.1, 9.1, 10.4, 12.8 (80)
St Kilda 2.2, 3.6, 5.11, 6.13 (49)
Crowd: 13,778 at Metricon Stadium, Friday, October 9th at 7.50pm

There is an element of inevitability about a season that ends with a finals loss like this. It colours the entire journey that is the season. Over time, any anger or frustration about Cotchin and Lynch, or our for missed shots on goal, or Paddy’s injury, Carlisle’s withdrawal and Long’s suspension will subside. We will likely be left with, well, Richmond is a great fucking team that uses intimidation and physicality to its benefit, and we ran into them in a Semi Final. There’s no magic nor conspiracy there.

There is always a bias to winning form going into Semi Final week. By nature of the current final eight system, Semi Finals pit a loser from the top four, all of a sudden now seen as vulnerable and maybe shown up, against an Elimination Final winner on a high, full of confidence. More Semi Finals have been won by teams in fifth to eighth over recent years, but the number is still in favour of the top four, and it says something that even in the most uncertain of seasons, the top four teams on the ladder have comfortably won through to the Preliminary Finals. They usually finish there for a reason. Finals footy is more uncompromising. Teams need to use any and all of their headroom; that extra gain they found when they needed it during the home and away season that won them games and put them near the top. There’s nothing more dangerous than a team that has been there before and is still hunting.

***

Usually the end of a season has been met with relief. The 2010s descended into something dire and dour. We haven’t had to face the mortality of a season like this for nine years, and even then the entire 2011 season was a cloud of football depression and hatred. But facing even an expected football mortality isn’t any easier when the Tigers go straight out of the centre square for a Lynch goal, an ominous sign featuring the night’s two biggest villains. When you realise that Richmond is very switched on. When Edwards and McIntosh seemingly start shitting out goals, and Bolton gets the right bounce while Paton is taking a shower in his own blood courtesy of going back with the flight into the path of an unapologetic and unflinching Lynch.

Maybe the team was tired (maybe it had tired at three-quarter time last week). Maybe, yes, Richmond is actually just that good. Our ball movement was haphazard from the start. There was no real clear rhyme or reason to the forward forays. Richmond’s defenders raced away with anything that went into the forward 50, so we had to go over them – Savage ran past Butler for a long ball that sailed, and sailed and sailed through, the type of goal we thought he’d be kicking regularly when we gave up Ben McEvoy. Another in due to injury, Marsh was one of the few making an impact, throwing his body around in a physical game that required a Saint, any Saints, to throw their body around. He’s unfashionable, but he was needed at all ends (and heights) of the ground during the night, and he put in a brave effort. The game might have been over a lot earlier without him.

At the fall of every hurried ball forward, Richmond players ran off half-back with ease, knowing exactly where the next player would be if the pressure or momentary dispute came. Cotchin slung Jones by the neck, after a free kick to Billings was awarded, knowing exactly what he was doing. Of course, no punishment, and when Geary was the only one who went to him he was moved on with disdain by Dusty, Castagna and Jayden Short, who had quickly joined Cotchin in the vicinity.

The panic sets in a little. What? No, wait. Give us a second. We’ve just got to sort our shit out. Wait, wait, wait. You trade down quickly. You start to wish for a dignified response. No sooner does that dignity arrive do you suddenly trade back up. No, I want more. I want to be in a Preliminary Final. You become more indignant when Kent gets pushed in the back off the ball in the pocket while Marsh is lining up on the boundary. After all the extra elbows. The umpire saying “bad luck” to Butler about a deliberate out of bounds free paid against. You just want some sort of justice. A fair hearing, especially when it’s all on video, there to review.

***

This should have got 90,000 at the MCG on a Friday night in that early-to-mid September period (even if just on the account of Richmond playing alone). I think I spent all week recovering from the final quarter the week before. There didn’t appear to be as much of a chance to build the anticipation when you don’t have the St Kilda scarves randomly spotted around town. The fresh experience of having been at the MCG on the weekend before for the Elimination Final.

I’m still in a pandemic stupor of being here in mid-October, playing a Semi Final against Richmond on the Gold Coast. If anyone said to us a few years ago we’d be playing at this time of year you’d think we’d manage to play in another Grand Final Draw, and the Replay was drawn. There was still some of the usual finals time feature we just haven’t been used to, the cocktail of looking forward and having those from the past speak about what it would mean and what this year has already meant. Kosi spoke to Kane Cornes on SEN on the Friday morning – if the Saints and Cats won, then the Preliminary Finals would be the exact as 2004.

The Saints sitting on the front pages of the newspapers, including Dan Butler in the clash jumper with black home shorts on the front page of The Age. Shane Savage in the 2014 Stickman pre-season jumper used for team selections on The Age online. All of this after the non-stop chat. Ben Long going the Tribunal. Ben Long’s suspension. Ben Long’s appeal. Carlisle’s leaving the hub for bub. Ryder’s injury. Rowan Marshall’s parents painting cows

Would any of the questions end up mattering? So often finals are blowouts. The only ones who tipped us in the Herald Sun out of 27 were Nick Riewoldt and the Kiss of Death. Daniel Cherny said Richmond by 30. It was 14-0 in The Age.

All of those things can be wiped away in few minutes with some Cotchin and Dusty and lynch aggression and a few fast moments of Shai Bolton and Shane Edwards excellence. One half to pull off the probably impossible.

***

Elimination Finals and Semi Finals aren’t usually the domain of premiership teams, or premiership hopes. That specific thought doesn’t usually run through your head as you watch your team get bullied, but you can feel the gravity of the bottom half of the top eight when Geary drops an easy mark and Butler only just manages to sneak in his snap on the quarter-time siren. We were always going to need just a bit too much to go our way.

As the game went on, it became apparent that that those goals shat out in the first by the Tigers weren’t really shat out. In the second quarter, Edwards’ snap around the corner, Lynch’s set shot from a decent angle. Every time we kicked a goal, the Tigers ran away with the centre clearance. How we really did need Ben Long coming off the back of the centre square and making Dusty or Cotchin think a little about that next clearance. Jake Carlisle hitting back at and fucking around with Lynch off the ball. Paddy Ryder just getting Nankervis out of the fucking way. It’s easy to think they would have made some difference. Or to daydream about what could have been. But for all of the times the ball was vaguely contested, Tigers players were unrelenting. The body went in, the ball was knocked on, handballed, kicked, to a player moving in the right direction every time. Just about every Saint up to Ross and Geary were guilty of that moment of slightly-too-much assessment that immediately put the team on the wrong side of the contest. This wasn’t going to change with the ins and outs. That was a team playing on a different plane of footballing existence.

Like so many of the performances in the back-half of the year, periods of domination were punctuated with low-percentage, awkwardly-placed, high-anxiety entries forward or shots on goal. Extended periods of finding space and time with the ball in the first half of the second and third quarters made little to no impact on the scoreboard. If set shots weren’t taken from tough spots they were shanked. The returned Battle threatened, briefly, to turn the game. King was a presence but finished with 0.3. He and Marshall and Battle couldn’t take the chance to grab the momentum at different points. We kicked 3.6 in the first half, 3.7 in the second half. The goals we did kick required much too much effort. Savage had to kick the ball 60 metres, Butler had to beat the clock, Steele had to curl one in from the boundary, Butler, King and Kent almost fluffed one of the few chances we had right in front of goal. Even that came after a scramble in the square in which the ball ricocheted off Butler, into Battle, into the post.

There was a small, fleeting moment early in the last, Hunter Clark pulled off the best St Kilda move of game early in the last, driving the ball forward from the wing, running through to the contest where it fell, gathered without breaking stride, looked to give off the handball, realised he had more time and space and delivered the ball neatly on his right boot to Membrey, who quickly handballed back over his head to the Seb Ross in the goal square. Somehow it was 17 points. That was as close as it got. And just as you show proof of a pulse, Castagna turns up, Dusty snaps a goal we couldn’t have, and the ending is now just a countdown away.

***

This was our time be taught a lesson. Our turn to literally get hit around. Feel that indignation. Have to sit on it with no on-field recourse until well into next year. Hardwick and Cotchin being fuckheads was something we could laugh at a little from a distance, watching the Cats and the Crows and the Giants all have to deal with it. Now it was our concern. It’s going to be our concern in the future. We’ve had a small taste. Of what “next week” means, and of having that opportunity that can just as easily be extinguished as realised in the same short two hours.

The last Brett Ratten post-match press conference. The last look at the stats for each player this year. The last look at this line-up representing this list of the St Kilda Football Club before the inevitable changes on and off-field. This is the most advanced this season became, a year in which we went to bed on a Thursday night at the beginning of August second on the ladder. Now it is past tense. This is how St Kilda fared during the pandemic. The longest season has reached its end.

2nd Elimination Final, 2020
St Kilda 2.2, 5.4, 9.6, 10.7 (67)
Western Bulldogs 3.1, 4.3, 5.6, 9.10 (64)
Crowd: Not sure, but they had the Finals bays for each team and everything, at the Gabba, Saturday, October 3rd, at 4.40pm

After a ghost Grand Final Day, the season more or less felt over. Well done everyone for coming along and performing. This is what I assume a Premier League season might feel like when the title is taken a month out from the end.

The body calendar is right out. September is famously and inextricably intertwined with this league. With the ambitions of clubs and supporters. This year, the last Saturday in September was empty, serendipitously but probably appropriately. A quiet day of mourning and acknowledgement for what has been lost this year.

But no, now it was time for the real thing. Match day brought extended coverage for a St Kilda game we hadn’t seen for nine years. 3,311 days to be exact. The Herald Sun offered a feature piece on Paddy “I Still Can’t Believe He Plays for St Kilda” Ryder. The Age had their spotlight on Jarryn Geary, the lowest profile and oftentimes the lowest-impact captain in the game. Both articles proved to be prophetic. A return to finals (or the pointy end) for a club means former players are wheeled out for comment. This week, it was Clint Jones, and we were reminded that time indeed moves on for those involved in the heady Ross and GT eras. Even the most baby-faced, puppy-like.

***

There’s something about a Saturday afternoon game in spring being broadcast live on Channel 7. The club ran out for its breakthrough final to the glorious, traditional version of the club song by The Fable Singers, but, uh, to a more-than-half-empty Gabba, with no banner, on October 3rd.

Josh Bruce snapping the first goal and grabbing his red, white and blue jumper was a rude welcome back to this part of the season. The imprint of these moments will be deeper. This is what the tape will look like. Gotta get shit right now.

Something to look out for was which players would be either willing or able to successfully bring their better traits to final. Ben Long almost knocked out Jack Macrae and then almost knocked out Dan Hannebery. Yes, it’s caused a whole lot of problems,but it’s still excellent to have a St Kilda player willing to throw their body around in a high-stakes game.

There was Max King moving high up the ground and pulling down a huge mark, and then another towering take at the top of the goal square against three opponents.

For the end-of-2000-style new coach and trade raid of last year, there are still so many players associated with the dark days of the 2010s. Now, we Jack Billings playing in a final. Seb Ross playing in a final. Tim Membrey playing in a final. Already, Ben Long, Hunter Clark, Nick Coffield, Ben Paton and Max King playing in a final. How I dearly would have loved to have a 70,000-plus MCG crowd roar for Max King’s towering mark against three Bulldogs opponents, or the reaction to Ben Long’s hits (and no doubt the cauldron it would have created), and, yes, Geary’s contested marks at full forward.

Geary reprised the early season role of one-on-one defensive forward, this time on Caleb Daniel. Geary’s place in the best 22 has been questioned this year, but his best performances have come in this role. This one was a little bit closer to his game on Sam Docherty. With his first contested mark at full-forward, he gave the ball off to Tim Membrey for St Kilda’s first goal in a final since Nick Dal Santo put through what wouldn’t even be classified as a consolation goal late in the 2nd Elimination Final against the Swans in 2011, the final act of the GT and Ross eras.

At quarter-time, his performance had a couple of ticks and crosses. There were the marks, yes, but moments that he didn’t quite take – a chance to knock on a loose high ball near goal to a teammate waiting in space, but he didn’t have the nous, and then a missed set shot after the quarter-time siren. You’ve just gotta kick that.

***

This game didn’t have the uncompromising physical pressure on quality ball movement usually reserved in the first week of September for Qualifying Finals. Ball movement was undone by not-quite-excellent execution a little bit too often. Geary missed his shot from close range, Membrey let one slip right through his hands and shanked the good work of Hannebery.

But there was the pressure of this being a finals match. There was always the threat that a few goals either way would be enough to break it open, in the unmistakable way that applies to a match that only comes down to whether you win or lose. The second quarter had some moments that felt as though a break might be nearing. We weren’t entirely humming. Crozier and Wallis nailed excellent set shots. Steele was down. But Hannebery was up. King played one of his best halves of the season (Paddy McCartin two-goal limit still applies though), pulling down contested marks higher up the ground and again close to goal as we began to make a move late in the second. Ryder was prominent. Clark showed as much composure and as much willingness to step off opponents as he has all year. Carlisle, Howard and Coffield were patrolling and controlling the skies in defence.

The most impressive passage of the night might well have been the chain of Hannebery, Clark, Wilkie, a quick follow-up by Marshall and excellent ground ball work from Hill (after a whole ground sprint) and Kent on the flank, and a rare calm moment from Lonie to hit Paddy on the lead. I remember watching the 2nd Elimination Final between North Melbourne and Essendon in 2014 on my own in the top deck of the MCC. We’d finished on the bottom of the ladder. It was time to check out a decent game in front of a decent crowd. Late in the game, as North were finishing over the top, Paddy Ryder took a one-handed mark just inside 50 on a tight angle and very audaciously wheeled around for one of the better snap goals you’ll see. As soon as he took the mark from Lonie’s neat kick and angled himself, I became the most confident about a St Kilda player kicking a goal from a set shot since BJ in the Draw. Paddy fucking Ryder, wearing a fucking St Kilda jumper.

***

Ryder’s quick kick hit Membrey from a fast start to the second half. We could just see a small crack appearing. Dunkley’s classy turn for a quick reply quelled that for a few moments. Tim English had moved and the Dogs had a tall target finding space. Max King almost ripped it open with a small sprint through the forward line. The ball movement had loosened up. Howard’s contested mark in defence was honoured by Steele hard up against the boundary, a quick kick from Billings, King bringing the ball to ground, finesse from Sinclair to find Hannebery who’d worked hard to get forward, another moment of calm from Lonie and the set shot goal from the leading mark out of full forward from, uh, Jarry Geary.

The game had swung. Seb caught and dumped Bont at half-back. Howard again started off a chain with a desperate knock to Billings. He flushed the kick to Lonie, Marshall stood up in a contest at half-forward and Paddy and Max could raffle it 15 out.

Yet again, a scintillating rebound goal from half-back finished off by Dan Butler represented the peak. Paddy took the high mark in defence, and Steele kept the ball moving after not hearing the play on call, and Paton and Sinclair quickly sent the ball forward to the tall target in, uh, Jarryn Geary, and Butler breezed by. The margin was 26 points, and the run now read 6.3 to 1.2. English missed a long set shot, and then Hunter an easy chance after a questionable free kick and a questionable 50.

***

Butler’s goal was the first moment I thought that we should win. Not necessarily that we would win. Simply, if we’re worth anything in 2020, then yes, we should win an Elimination Final after being 26 points up late in the third quarter.

Naughton’s goal didn’t come until just before the 10-minute mark. Richards missed a shot on the run. The game had changed. The throw-in was met by Paddy. The timing was exquisite; he palmed the ball down to Hannebery who had space and Butler flying past. Within a few seconds, Membrey had the ball in space in the forward pocket, and at full forward, by himself, was, uh, Jarryn Geary. He kicked the goal, and minted his best performance of the year.

That was the second moment I thought, well, we should win. My housemate (also Tom) proclaimed we had it safe multiple times from the third quarter onwards. As any St Kilda fan who witnessed the North Melbourne and Fremantle losses earlier this year (and St Kilda history generally( would, I met this with suspicion. (He is a Hawthorn fan, so rightly would believe any lead like that would be closed out.) St Kilda history is littered with things we should have done. It’s not littered with finals wins. We only had 21 of those coming into this year. Ten of those arrived between 1992 and 2010. The 10-year anniversary of both the 2010 Grand Final Draw and Replay passed int the lead-up to the game.

The third time that I thought, well, we should win, was Paddy’s big mark on the defensive side of the wing a few moments later. Seven minutes left. These moments were falling our way, or we were grabbing them.

Within a minute of play, Hunter had made up for his shank at the end of the third and it was back to 16 points with six minutes left. Billings couldn’t pull off a carbon copy of his late goal against the Lions hard up against the goal post, and the Dogs again took the ball straight up the end, but Dunkley just missed another shot.

No-one wanted to make the mistake. The movement was gone. Ryder got the clearance, roving his own ruck contest. Yet again the loose ball went the Dogs’ way. Caleb Daniel dived across Coffield’s boot. Wilkie’s next chance at a clearance went out on the full, Wallis drew the free kick. He missed – nine points now – but the next scoring shot wasn’t going to be ours. English took the mark, and Caleb Daniel went low and drew another free from Wilkie. Coffield, Long and and Seb Ross all cracked the shits and yelled at the umpire. Geary left the scene. Hunter Clark slumped to the ground in dismay. Caleb wasn’t going to miss this one.

***

Two minutes and five seconds left. Was 26 going to become the new 37 or 31? Was this how the season started and ended?

A Sinclair clearance and mark to Membrey helped eat up time, but as Membrey sent the ball forward out wide, Abbey Holmes announced Ryder had gone to the bench. Keath took the mark where he would have been. Duryea’s kick into attack was thumped down by Paton, who’d decided to leave his man in Wallis. Bruce grabbed Coffield high. 46 seconds. Marshall marked the perfectly-placed wide kick. Keath played for a soft free and got it at half-back for the Dogs, Steele tempted fate by not giving the ball back straight away. Paton was again there to meet it as the siren sounded.

Elimination Finals for St Kilda have marked the end of an era. After the 2004 and 2005 runs, the difficult 2006 season spluttered at the MCG on a Friday night, ending GT’s run. Similarly, the 2011 Elimination Final marked the end of Ross the Boss, bringing to a close a dark and depressed year after failed Grand Final attempts. This was a move forward, into a new era.

We’re not used to these kinds of scenes in recent history featuring St Kilda jumpers. And now, we have the footage and images of Jack Billings celebrating a finals win. Seb Ross celebrating a finals win. Tim Membrey celebrating a finals win. Already, Ben Long, Hunter Clark, Nick Coffield, Ben Paton and Max King celebrating a finals win. The Fable Singers thundered through the broadcast as the Saints players celebrated (and no, there is nothing quite like that). How I dearly would have loved to have been there, and to have the Channel 7 audio roar of an MCG crowd of 70,000-plus for the siren, with The Fable Singers playing the as the crowd and players celebrated, to have to watch it all back.

There was the Bulldogs players slumped together on the grass. Paddy Ryder with a towel over his teared face. Paddy fucking Ryder, best on ground for St Kilda in a final. Paddy fucking Ryder, in tears, in a St Kilda jumper. The legitimacy of this season has been questioned. Yes, this matters.

A knockout blow had never arrived. Or rather, it wasn’t the Saints that delivered one. It was simply time passing. Too much time, not enough time, just enough time. A year that has been longer than any other has given us the gift of another week.