Month: June 2021

Round 15, 2021
Richmond 0.5, 1.6, 2.7, 2.10 (22)
St Kilda 3.2, 5.3, 8.7, 9.8 (62)
Crowd: 14,787 at the MCG, Friday, June 25th at 7.50pm

Sometimes you just know.

“I think we are going to win tonight” was a much-too positive message to receive on a Friday morning after I’d gone the Whinge Royale about the Saints the previous weekend..

“Dunstan Ross Steele crouch in the wet”

Nah, still not feeling it. An 86-point loss last time they met, and that one was coming off a stirring comeback win we had all of five days to enjoy. We’ve barely built any momentum this year and this didn’t appear to be the time to do it. How many honest feedback sessions can you have after another pasting or embarrassing loss before it all becomes kind of dull?

However.

That morning I did get the auto-generated on-this-day notification on Facebook. It was a photo Dad had tagged me in – a shot of Roo and some other players going to the fans after the three-point win against the top-of-the-ladder Cats on a Saturday night that helped take us from 2-6 from a 103-point loss earlier in the year to winning eight of the last 11 and missing finals by percentage.

I wrote after the Gold Coast game about that gut feeling, intuition, whatever you want to call it. We all have it to some degree, positive or negative or anything else. Sometimes it’s easy to trace your expectations to form, or history, or opposition. It happens during the season, during the week, during a match. Matt piped up at three-quarter time of the Gold Coast match that we’d pull it out of the fire. In hindsight I shared the same feeling maybe a little. Not overly formed. On Friday, I think I can claim – certainly in hindsight! – I had something more peripheral. I certainly felt that we’d be competitive, but when Matt pressed me I couldn’t commit to anything greater than that. This was just meant to be the first game of the rest of the season.

***

As Friday night progressed that “feeling” turned into simply expecting and waiting for Richmond to come back. The whole stadium shared it, it seemed, to the point at which the Richmond crowd got up and about during the third quarter for no obvious reason (a throw-in from memory).

As soon as Mason Wood took us to five goals to nothing up (straight out of the middle after the fourth) I said to Matt “if we lose it’s a story” (met with an immediate “I understand.”). How else was this going to end? It was either St Kilda beats Richmond on a Friday night at the MCG, or Richmond beats St Kilda on a Friday night at the MCG (and everything that would go with it from that point). Another week of having to deal with the back pages, BigFooty Saints board ECO and 360 chat about the Saints throwing away a decent lead once things just got that little bit too tough. Within exactly 100 seconds, the players had resumed their positions, the between-goal break had run its course, Richmond took it out of the middle, Dustin Martin marked at full forward and kicked the Tigers’ first.

In the same way that the unconvincing, inaccurate and wobbly game style managed to just get the job done for no apparent reason against the Suns, the Richmond challenge just never came. It just…didn’t happen. Nothing changed during the game. The basic skill errors across the ground, missed kicks, slippery hands, they all kept happening. Dusty missed a shot with more time and space than he usually finds himself in. Jack Riewoldt missed Chol in the pocket with a kick that harmessly dribbled out of bounds. Aarts missed a running goal on the eve of half-time that surely would have triggered something, in the same way that Dunstan’s long miss, or Membrey’s wide set shot were the chances we just couldn’t afford to miss and were leaving the door ajar for the Tigers that they were going to bash down anyway.

But it never happened. That spectre of a Richmond comeback loomed at the same time that I quietly trusted Dougal Howard and Callum Wilkie and Tom Highmore every time the ball went into defence. Ryan Byrnes was always moving to the right spots. Mason Wood was a presence whenever he was near the ball. Luke Dunstan, who had been pantsed by everyone when we came back into the team against this opposition in Round 5, was right at home in the conditions. He played the commanding, grinding role we thought he would when we picked him up as South Australia’s Under 18s captain.

This was quietly comprehensive. The beginning was shaky, for sure. Richmond was dominant and on the occasions that we did go forward Rowan Marshall sprinted from one flank to another twice only to be served some very sad delivery. But soon enough it seemed as though Richmond were the ones working overtime for minimal reward. There were more groans of exasperation – and I’d add stunned gasps from Saints fans – than there were roars from what barely amounted to the interstate side-sized St Kilda crowd. 

Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda, dominated the air on a wet night that simply wasn’t made for talls. Rowan Marshall did everything he could at his size on a wet night. I don’t know how healthy it is, how much we appear to rely on the combination, but at the very least soak up every second we have of Paddy Ryder wearing a St Kilda jumper. King and Higgins nailed their early set shots. Murmurs McKenzie managed to kick the first, and Ben Long made much of a positive physical impact as a small forward and echoed Murmurs’ goal with his own off the deck (nutmegging Wood) in the third as the Saints pulled away. Murmurs all but sealed it heading into half-time with a set shot from just on 50 metres. 

***

Surely even just some junk time goals from Richmond would make the score board all the more respectable? Even they never arrived. The novelty goals number of two would stand, a novelty score line of 2.10. Teams kick three goals rarely but often enough in a heavily professionalised era. Let the records list run: Richmond’s lowest score since kicking 0.8 in 1961 (which, incidentally, was against St Kilda and remains the last time a VFL/AFL side was held goalless). Richmond’s lowest score at the MCG since the 1927 Grand Final. St Kilda’s lowest score conceded since 1971.

A night of novelty indeed. Luke Dunstan best on ground, and featuring in “Who was your player of the round?” social media polls. St Kilda dominating on a Friday night at the MCG, dominating the reigning premiers no less. Leo Connolly, just generally. Dan McKenzie kicking the same number of goals as the opposition.

Maddie’s Match in 2017 inadvertently began the Tigers’ reign, and we might well have ended it in a 14% full MCG. The story since Friday night has been all about Richmond. St Kilda is not really a part of the story of the season, much less the last few years in the way the Tigers have, and if the Saints are their character arc has played out. The expectations, the frustrations, the inconsistency, which felt like it came to a head against the Crows and now this. “Where has that been all year?” This record-setting win against the reigning premiers defines this year and team just as much as the ridiculous loss to the reigning wooden spooners in the previous match.

Sometimes it’s your night, and it’s one of those nights for the opposition. This ended up having a feel of somewhere in between the St Kilda vs Geelong and St Kilda vs Bulldogs matches just a few weeks apart in 2016. Balta and Broad went down with serious injuries. Sinclair had energy for one last dance around an opponent tight on the boundary line in the final moments. Footy has been fickle for all fans since the beginning of last year. St Kilda has certainly been fickle for Saints fans. A contradiction. While another season faces its mortality, we have a few days to enjoy this result.

Round 13, 2021
St Kilda 4.3, 7.6, 8.9, 8.12 (60)
Adelaide Crows 0.0, 2.6, 6.6, 9.12 (66)
Crowd: 5,969 at Cazalys Stadium, Saturday, June 12th at 7.25pm

What started as the weekly whinge masquerading as a match “review”, like this is Pitchfork or something, ended up being a de facto mid-season review, or, just really a chance to collect my thoughts about what the hell has happened this year.

Taking a step back reveals an uglier picture than being in the weekly washing machine of lurching between pastings and moments of redemption. The West Coast win planted a seed into our heads that for every 86-point loss on a Thursday night there might be some sort of redemption just a week later; for every Max King or Jack Higgins miss that frittered away a chance to beat a premiership fancy (or similar) we may just be goal kicking practice away from solving all our issues (insert 2009 Grand Final inaccuracy reference here).

Much like we did against very unfancied North Melbourne and Fremantle last year (the latter with almost identical margin flips), we reannounced ourselves last Saturday night as a team with a flat-track bully streak. The Geelong, Sydney and West Coast (and GWS) performances aren’t enough to outweigh all the evidence to the contrary – we really CBF when things get tough. We’re back to playing like millionaires, exactly what we did when Brad Hill adorned the front page of the AFL Record heading into the Fremantle match last year as we emerged as a potential glamour and destination team.

The club again shrouded in questions about the mental – and perhaps physical – fortitude of the side that were asked earlier in the year, or at least it was before the week descended into a circus around Seb Ross and Tim Membrey and then whether what happened to Hunter Clark’s head was more within the laws of the than it was of legal consequence to the AFL in the years to come.

***

Who else can give up a game in which commentators are legitimately talking about the opposition being held scoreless for an entire half, and that record’s rare place in history? Adelaide’s 0.0 became of increasing interest as the second quarter furthered. They didn’t score until beyond the halfway mark of the second quarter, at all.

Until that point it all looked pretty slick. It felt right – you think it’s all working again, especially after another performance against a decent team in which only the goal kicking let you down. Mason Wood pulled out a couple of early goals with some slick moves, enough to prompt a teasing betting company-uses-meme Twitter post. Transition was slick. Dunstan pulled out the most direct and efficient single disposal of his career, a mark behind the centre circle, turn and long kick to the chest of Max King. Max had a couple of goals in the first half, including an excellent bit of body work at the top of the square and finesse to soccer through a goal.

Crouch was massive again. Steele is entering “needless to say” territory. Highmore was great across half back. Contested possession up by 20 at quarter time (we would end up losing it).

There were still moments of millionaire madness. Luke Darcy’s proclamation that Butler won’t miss was met with Butler missing. Lonie’s banana attempt at goal from a nothing angle. Higgins missed more set shots at goal, Max missed some too. All of this didn’t appear to matter while the Crows were still in the process of realising they were actually out on the ground. But once they did the result was two-and-a-half quarters in the making, never mind late goals in the second.

Yet again a St Kilda team was wiped away, or disappears. Maybe it chooses to, I don’t know. Maybe it chooses to just relax. There’s no killer instinct. The team wasn’t exhausted just beyond the midway point of the second quarter. Is it the effort? The effort (the lack of) seems to get a lot of the blame from the coaches. Do we just not try hard enough? Really, from the time Adelaide skittled through a few behinds, St Kilda was anonymous. Forward entries had no real design or intent, and any rare goals that slipped through (only three from that point, and none for the final hour) appeared to be met with relief.

This was going to be an Adelaide win, even if it took both of an umpire on the goal line saying “you tried to stop him from marking” to a defender, and a freak goal from a prodigy. The St Kilda extremes of bemusement and, well…bemusement. These things bend back on themselves and end up in a similar place.

And of course, the way it happens gives the opposition their own amazing highlight and hero. The Saints love making heroes of the opposition. Shane Ellen, Troy Wilson, Eric Mackenzie. The record will show Riley Thilthorpe kicked the last two goals of the game to win it off his own boot, including the winner over his head. McKay looks like a hero after Hamish had only reminded most of us early on in the broadcast that he still existed. Now he’s got more of a presence and profile than he ever did, lauded by his coach in the wash-up, free to play next week.

***

Our next game is a Friday night date with Richmond at the MCG (or, wherever it will be). We were destroyed by this team last time in a prime time slot; around that time we were drawn to play the Cats on a Friday night and considered a laughing stock by an annoyed public. We almost – almost – showed the football world we were better than that. But we didn’t, and we aren’t, and we are now in the midst of an internal review.

We’re also in the midst of a whole lot of mixed messaging and confusion. The club jumped at any going near a “Missy Higgins” headline, but behind closed doors was annoyed by Seb Ross and Tim Membrey spending time with their partners and newborns (and newborns-to-be). We want to be dynasty team, according to David Rath in the members’ forum held during the week, but after loading up at the last couple of trade periods the President’s letter from Andrew Basset suggested the “genuine window” would be open in 2022 more than 2021. Grant Thomas didn’t like like the revisionism,  saying it could easily be used – and, evidently, has been used – as a get-out-of-jail card. Do you hold an internal review if you feel like you’re on the brink? Only if you’re thinking some big changes will do it. Because a global pandemic won’t. A vaccine won’t. Not another lockdown.

Is it the name “St Kilda”? Should we have included “Moorabbin” in the club’s name as initially intended? We’d had 92 years without a premiership preceding the actual move to Moorabbin, so it’s not the plot of land at Linton Street. The red, yellow and black wasn’t wildly more successful than the usual red, white and black.

We’re back to this just being a lifestyle. Any path that appeared to be laid out before us during last year has again become overgrown. Perhaps we’re experiencing a Melbourne-style blip; until we watch them end another long premiership drought, comparisons with Geelong 2006 and Richmond 2016 remain far-fetched. St Kilda playing is again something that just happens on the weekend. I learned that I could hate the club in 2018. The Road to 2018 was actually a road to 2020 (they didn’t need to not factor a pandemic into things to get this wrong), and made as a PR exercise in response to a bewildered fan base. They even changed the fucking song for fuck’s sake. 

The St Kilda circus rolls on. It’s hard to keep caring. The only willing I felt last Saturday night was for the game to end. We knew what the result was going to be, the only thing we were waiting for was to see what it actually physically looked like, recorded on camera in high-definition video and audio. It’s beyond “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”. The joke’s worn thin and there’s nothing else to lose.

Round 12, 2021
Sydney Swans 4.6, 6.7, 10.11, 13.14 (92)
St Kilda 3.4, 5.7, 9.7, 12.11 (83)
Crowd: The AFL is still releasing these later than usual at the SCG, Saturday, June 5th at 1.45pm

Amid going back into lockdown, the Northern Territory making its biggest noise for an AFL team, and a mid-season draft, we’d quietly hit the middle weekend of the 23-week home and away season.

Going by March’s season previews, the broader footy community expected the Saints to probably come in around where they were last year at best, while at the same time many pre-empted admonishment of the club saying that they should be taking a step forward, given the younger guys coming through and the addition of Crouch, Frawley and McKernan to Hill, Ryder, Hannebery, etc.

We probably weren’t expecting to be waking up on the first Saturday morning of June in another lockdown with the Demons having cemented their spot at the top of the ladder, while our mates from the 2013 and 2014 drafts the Bont and Trac run around as the competition’s best two players. Nick Hind and Tom Hickey are the recruits of the year, and we now have Richmond’s drafting of Matty Parker to add to the anxiety files (but also I hope he’s awesome there. Mid-season draft bonus: We don’t have two tall Kings – yet – but we do have two tall Maxes.)

The Geelong loss a month ago left me feeling flat as fuck. After a couple of weeks of sorting itself our, the team came out as if it was primed to take on a premiership fancy on the Friday night stage. In front of a home crowd, The Messiah played the kind of game we hoped he would deliver, roaming around and clunking marks, doing everything except kick straight, kicking us out of it in the process. We physically took the ground the week after at most, and then turned in an uninspiring performance last week.

We were due for our once every three or four weeks decent performance, and this one would be uncomfortably, so-unbelievably-it’s-believably similar in style to the Cats loss, except the protagonist was 10 inches shorter. By the time Buddy weaved his way through the forward pocket and a 50-metre penalty had taken Rowbottom to the goal line late on Saturday afternoon, there was no air left. We were just sacks of skin on the couch.

***

Jack Higgins has ridden a wave of goodwill during his Sainthood. Footage has been readily dug up of him on camera in the crowd as a happy young Saints fan during the club’s biggest win in its 148-year history (and in the peak several weeks of the GT era) and in the final quarter of the 2009 Preliminary Final (in the peak match of the Ross era). Today, in his role as the protagonist, he was a hero turned incredibly sympathetic antagonist, and there might be some thinking they were a bit harsh on Max in the fall-out a few weeks ago.

A quick coffee run at half-time to Code Black meant some in-car SEN analysis that included quick chat about Seb’s miss in the shadows of half-time. Justin Leppitsch said it wouldn’t be an issue for the players, because they would move on in the moment faster and be making their own mistakes, while it would take a lot more for a fan to let it go.

For the second time in a month we have a lifelong St Kilda supporter playing what for all intents and purposes is a their breakout game (at least in red, white and black), and a match-winning one at that. I have the feeling that no one would be more upset by this than Higgins (I’m basing this on armchair psychology and his reaction on the siren and post-match). Going by Max’s performances since then, nor is anyone more upset than he is that what happened against the Cats – notwithstanding his back injury issues heading into and during the game yesterday.

Perhaps because of that injury, Higgins played the role of a tall roaming forward, the kind that he and Max would have enjoyed from another former number 12. Higgins took 12 marks as a lead-up target, repeatedly presenting up to the wings. No one else seemed to do it, or able to do within the framework of the team – especially once Wood was subbed out early after a promising start – while Membrey had his hands full in defence and Josh Battle anonymous for most of the match.

As the game wore on, Higgins appeared to rush his set shots in the way that Max appeared to, almost as if to not give a chance for any of those doubts that might have built up in his head to creep in before he’d taken the kick. But defeating your demons doesn’t mean avoiding them (I guess; I’m crippled by fear and anxiety and a lack of confidence).

King himself was mostly anonymous outside of some very prominent moments, understandable in the context of smashed confidence, and even more so given his back injury. He took a huge mark in the goalsquare in the final seconds of the first quarter, and then in the final quarter charged at the ball at ground level to a deep entry and gave off quick hands to Membrey for a goal, and winning a 50 metre penalty for Josh Battle and then a holding the ball free kick, both in curious circumstances, in the final quarter.

He missed the set shot from the latter.

Is it a St Kilda thing? Are we carrying the only two players in the competition who could dominate a game and kick 1.5 and 1.6 in a manner that would starkly change the result? Given this team’s troubles with goal kicking after several years (since the 2009 Grand Final?) I would say yes, yes it is a St Kilda thing.

***

SEN pre-match included some light-hearted discussion around Brett Ratten’s comments that we hadn’t played well and were still sitting at 5-6. We’ve certainly played two games against top eight teams that really left us wondering about the finishing rather than anything else. Again, there wasn’t a huge amount you’d change around the ground. There were some glaring moments that you’d expect from, well, any Saints team at any point in history. Messing around with the ball a little too much in the middle of the ground was costly (Dunstan a repeat offender, and Hill also featured in the missed handballs file), as well as some wayward forward entries (Byrnes right over the leading Membrey’s head in the third, Dunstan’s daisy-cutter early in the last).

Membrey again played a herculean performance in hostile territory interstate, only to have a close match slip away, by hook or by crook or by shank. He kicked big goals in the third and final quarters around the body, while also magically appearing at the other end of the ground to hold up the last line of defence multiple times.

Brad Hill set about rectifying the almost-funny six touches of the previous week and had 18 to half-time, although finished “only” with 25. Steele willed himself around the ground. Brad Crouch was everywhere, getting the ball and giving it to teammates, and finished with 38 touches and seven tackles. Along with Steele, he seemed to step up every time the Swans appeared to get the upper hand, Sinclair continued his very good season off half-back.

Highmore was used in defence, and then attack (he got very excited about Membrey’s goal in the third and celebrated into the goal umpire), and then the wing. Byrnes and Clavarino, and both had good moments, particularly Byrnes with a couple of goals, but the idea of getting games into them adds to the idea this season is slipping away into a manic slop.

***

The Fox Footy team did their utmost to wind up the not-so-seismic Sydney Swans vs St Kilda At the SCG fixture all they could. Footage of the one-point 2009 win to go 18-0, and Plugger’s 1994 demolition derby en route to one of the more famous comeback victories (and also by one point). (They did skip the stirring 1997 win in Round 19, as well as the Swans’ two-point victory in the 1998 Qualifying Final, following St Kilda’s 101-point win earlier in the year).

The small roar of the supporters of an interstate team on the charge is a distinct sound. “He thinks he’s Stewie Loewe!” was the cry from Garry Lyon as Higgins wheeled around for what would be his fifth point. Each of Higgins’ marks in the final minutes, with the excited roar of the St Kilda crowd, were dramatic – the lead-up high mark, and then a sliding mark several deep. Could haves. Should haves. Would haves, too. The moments they would have become, what they would have meant for this season, or for this playing group.

The final seconds of each quarter yielded notable happenings. King’s big mark in the goal square and goal in the first, Parker and Hayward’s goals in the third and last, and Seb’s wild miss running in goal face ahead of half-time. Seb Ross’s miss took us to 5.7, and by the end of the afternoon we were 5-7. We went 5-7 at the SCG in what was Ross Lyon’s second season and went on to finish in the top four and played in a Preliminary Final. I don’t think anyone is thinking we could, or should, be able to pull that off just yet.