Look at how easy it was

Round 8, 2021
Gold Coast Suns 1.4, 3.7, 7.9, 7.12 (54)
St Kilda 0.3, 3.7, 4.12, 8.15 (63)
Crowd: 9,271 at Metricon Stadium, Saturday, May 8th at 1.45pm

Saturdays and Sundays (rarely Fridays) throughout the Richo era usually meant one thing – watching the footy in a lounge room or at a bar while the Saints fumbled and scrambled their way to an uncomfortable loss. The game was usually over at quarter time or half-time, with the respective sirens followed by a few seconds of shared bitter silence.

Given the nomadic nature of 2020, we really only copped a proper refresher at the Adelaide Oval a fortnight ago. At Carrara on Saturday afternoon, we were again treated to all sorts of curious moments with the ball, missing midfields, and spurned shots at goal from rushed kicks and tight angles. Except this time, we…won. All those things were there, but…we won. We just…won.

“Winning ugly” is often used in terms of a good team, or a team on the rise. “You’ve got to win ugly sometimes”, “good teams find a way”, all those sorts of comments are associated with games that won’t be replayed for any real reason other than to back up any paperwork lodged to the AFL. This was a long way from the Thursday night in August last year in which we went to bed second on the ladder after what was genuinely one of the better games of the year. But neither team had been in the barnstorming pandemic-depths form going into this one. It showed. Without a bead of sweat formed, short kicks coming off half-back consistently stretched a teammate or said teammate simply dropped the ball, both acts unbecoming of anyone earning hundreds of thousands dollars at any time, let alone during a pandemic. It was like watching heaps of sensationally fit guys who aren’t too familiar with an Australian Rules football had just been told to get out there and play. Was there some weird sunscreen being used 26-degree heat? It afflicted most of the team, from relative topliners down – Billings, Hill, Membrey and Webster were all involved in some way at some point.

Hill, Crouch and Jones were all picking up disposals early again, but unlike last week the ball wasn’t doing much forward of centre. Both sides were probably guilty of this, but the Suns were at least doing it more regularly and Wilkie (he’s back!), Howard and even Darragh Joyce at times keeping the air competitive. One goal to none at the first break, and Ben King (come home, Ben)’s second came from a lazy Brad Hill kick along the wing, and the ball being ominously given up on the ground for a fast slingshot goal. Moments later, Steele snapped an excellent goal around the corner for our first. Even in the GT and Ross eras we didn’t really have midfielders that regularly kicked barnstorming goals. It was our first and it was 11 minutes into the second quarter.

The Suns stretched the lead again with another easy rebound goal, concerning because it was so easy and also because it had happened again – Weller out in space on the wing finding Izak Rankine, who threatens to become a Paul Chapman-style figure of opposition arrogance and skill in the future. After the troubles he gave us last year, he was involved in the Suns’ early goals and later boxed lightly (and comically) on Steele’s chest as the game tightened and the tension rose. Those hits will get bigger over the years.

(Max) King eventually got involved later in the quarter as the share of possession shifted. Some fast hands at ground level led to Billings’ curling snap (shortly after Higgins’ comically high and wide snap from the opposite flank), and then Max slotted a lovely set shot from near 50 on a tough angle before hitting the post from an easier one. I’m not sure if he dislikes holding onto marks near goal, or kicking goals from set shots, or if he’s a massive fan of the Paddy McCartin Three-Goal Maximum, but he’s constantly just a couple of moments or metres from grabbing hold of a game that little bit more aggressively.

That we had landed a few highlights-worthy shots at goal said something about the skill of Steele and Billings and King, sure, but it also said more about the weight of numbers of the scoring shots. Some of them inevitably had to land, and a 30% strike rate (of those that actually registered a score) was a flattering return. There was a lot of Richo-era hallmarks in the anxiety-riddled aesthetics of the ball movement, but a lot of it was a reprise of post-Gold Coast win 2020. Mostly, no clean enough ball movement to get decent and deep entries, and slower movement that meant if it did land in attack there was high traffic that created haphazard shots on goal that never felt threatening because they were rushed or coming from all sorts of angles.

I don’t know many teams have been 4.13 at any stage of a game and gone on to win. The Suns hadn’t put us away. Had the whole game just been us messing around? An arm wrestle for most of the third term actually felt a little in our favour without ever being convincing. In four minutes and 14 seconds the Suns all but broke the game open with three goals. Corbett finally got on the board, another turnover from just outside the defensive 50 arc – this time a wayward Bytel handball – meant another easy hit-up to a leading forward and a set shot goal from Holman. The Suns won the clearance and Weller got a 50-metre penalty for the now out-of-fashion infringement of breaching the protected zone around the mark.

***

In the weighty silence of three-quarter time in front of the screen at Arcadia, Matt looked up from his Carlton Draught.

“Guys, we’re going to do this.”

Matt is funny and empathetic. He follows St Kilda with the weight of what we’ve all experienced as Saints supporters, with a reverence for history and its minutiae, and with nostalgia. It means the serious and facetious are often inverted. It took me a few seconds to figure out if he was serious or not. He was serious.

Sometimes you just know. You might have the feeling during the week. On the tram on the way in to the game. Walking across the bridge to the Concrete Disney Store. Sometimes it’s just learned behaviour – the car trip to Matt’s or to a bar usually means I’m on the way to watch a loss interstate, so I wasn’t quite feeling it this week. In hindsight, part of me likes to think that I did feel there was still an escape route at that point, even if it had to defy the previous three quarters. I sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to offer a description of what it would look like.

Wilkie and Howard and Joyce had taken absolutely everything they could. Jack Steele willed himself into the contest when we needed goals, never mind a consistent presence around the contest, but he needed more. The entire midfield lifted in the final term, and it started in the air at centre bounces and stoppages with the high hand of Paddy Ryder, allowing Rowan Marshall to more reliably draw defenders and bring the ball to ground up forward. Billings started it on the scoreboard with another around-the-corner snap, stepping up again in front of goal at an important moment this season (and after King got down low again to a dirty spilled ball). Snags was not far behind but it took a rare moment of composure, with Zak Jones taking a second to run back out of the 50 metre arc and into space before turning around and delivering neatly to Snags on the lead. There was still 15 and a half minutes left at this point, and more than 10 minutes of messy football and wasted opportunities followed.

Surely we’d used up too much magic. This is the St Kilda Football Club; anything decent accomplished or sought is returned by the Footy Gods with something heavy (and if not, we’ll find a way to augment). We’d won four games in a row by less than a goal against the Suns, and winning a fifth by another single-digit margin surely means something is on its way. Why not go way too early? I get the same feeling from Rankine, Lukoscius, Ainsworth, Collins, Powell and Ben King (come home, Ben – was Tony Brown saying as much to him after the siren?). The drawn-out half-time scuffle said enough. I got that same feeling from Chapman, Bartel, Ablett, Johnson, Kelly, Mackie, Scarlett, et al. in the early 2000s. Saturday’s game would appear the last place you’d be looking for signs of your fate, or destiny.

For now, how is it that a team’s fortunes can so apparently hinge on the presence of a 33-year-old ruckman playing for his third club? Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda. Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper. This was the kind of situation that needed a player and a presence who is not of St Kilda, who can cut through the gravity of St Kilda. He’d hauled in a massive mark at half-forward, and while he didn’t nail the kick forward to King he was building ominously. We now have footage of the 10-minute plus goal drought being broken by Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, choosing to pull out of an already-started jump at a high entry, and stay down to collect the spilled ball and snap a high goal to put the Saints in front.

Moments later he won the hit-out with a soaring leap and artful tap straight down to Crouch, who quickly got low and gave out the hands out to Bytel (Bytel being given the responsibility in the middle at this point was notable in itself). Within seconds (and a Hunter Clark intercept and handball), the footy was back in Crouch’s hands on the 50 metre arc. Somehow we had breathing space.

Gold Coast weren’t going anywhere. I can’t imagine we’ll have many easy times with them. A frantic and brutal few minutes within 70 metres of the Suns’ goals somehow only ended with a wayward Markov shot. These aren’t the biggest bodies, and they were tired, but from both sides they were thrown at the ball as hard as any, and in a manner that suggested the margin was below a goal rather than a goal and a half.

Amid the frenzy, Darragh Joyce bodylined the ball in a way that Zak Jones would have been proud, collecting Holman on the way through. It illicited the immortal line from Jack Riewoldt in special comments, “Darragh Joyce came through like an absolute steam train”. Holman came off with less than 90 secons left. The tension had been taken out of the game. And as a small wink from Winx, finally, a held contested mark on the wing.