Round 11, 2021
St Kilda 3.6, 7.11, 11.14, 12.16 (88)
North Melbourne 1.0, 3.4, 5.7, 10.8 (68)
Crowd: Zero at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, May 29th at 4.35pm
Good on Jarryn Geary for jolting us back into coherence in the last quarter. His courageous mark going back with the flight was one of the rare flashpoints in the day that reminded you we were witnessing an AFL game – one that actually counts; you get four points and everything.
On countless occasions this year we’ve heard mention of “Saints footy” from various players and coaches alike. Eleven games in, and it’s hard to tell whether the playing group as a collective have actually settled on what “Saints footy” is. I’ve seen so many milestone jumper presentations over the first eleven rounds it’s not even funny. Those videos have become somewhat comical. What’s actually being said and heard? Well, if it’s being said by a current player too – then is it just hot air?
“Saints footy” actually became a somewhat known term (brand?) through the 00s somewhere amidst the GT and Ross Lyon eras. Relentless pressure; unwavering team defence; 100% effort 100% of the time; “getting the fingernail in”; playing your role no matter who you were. These were KPIs that weren’t just there to look good on slides. You saw them acted upon on a week to week basis, whether you were looking at Robert Eddy, Luke Ball, Steven Baker, Brett Voss or Sean Dempster.
Saturday reflected very little of those things. It smacked of immaturity, of just doing “enough”, and of a team that’s still short on confidence but more importantly well short on resolve and tenacity. We were indirectly promised a response, a statement, but I didn’t see one.
Obviously, toughness is enlivened with confidence. When you see a Melbourne or a Richmond player out there, even the smallest blokes on the ground would run over hot coals for the footy. That’s not the point though. This is professional football though, and the job is to boil the game down to what’s in your control. It’s the reason why there are dedicated psychological, performance, and conditioning staff as well as the bevy of coaches in the coaching panel.
At the end of the day, the Saints were a bit too organised, and just had more warm bodies and structure. The Roos, bless, kept running and chipping into cul de sacs. St Kilda made a habit of clogging up the spaces from their forward fifty and beyond, and the Roos were usually all too willing to cough up the ball in those areas.
Billings’ opener, after being on the end of a succulent diagonal pass from Skunk, was a relief. One small voice in your head believed that in effect that was the sealer; that St Kilda’s goal kicking demons were going to be the biggest threat to making this a genuine contest.
True to form, conversion was an issue over the four quarters though. At one point around 1/2 time the Saints had amassed 25 scoring shots from their first 34 or so inside 50s. It was the type of metric a coaching panel dreams of. Yet the scoreboard didn’t reflect this at all. Saints fans would not be able to breath out just yet.
The second half of the game meandered in circles and fits and starts. At least the first half had a sense of one team, at least structurally, outwitting and beating down on another. But the second felt like a lot of scrappy circle work.
Josh Battle’s free kick and shot at goal, all of three metres out, inches out from the goal square itself, with little angle to speak of, is possibly the most irritating and instructive moment of the year for me.
Josh indifferently grabbed the free kick, and without a thought, without a glance, having only had the ball in hand for a hot second, he wheeled onto his right foot and smacked a snap straight into the goalpost. Absolutely atrocious. It felt like a snapshot of not just the team’s overall form, but of the players’ lack of focus and intent.
The way the commentators lathered on the praise for Battle in the second half overall was kind of astounding but also pointed how desperate they were for any sort of talking point at all in the game. There were no disgruntled or disenchanted crowd members for the bored cameramen to wheel onto. No one reading books to pass the time either.
Jack Steele had a patch through the second half of the second term where he suddenly just seemed a class above everyone. Receiving handballs, gliding through traffic and also pumping the ball forward with an air of calm and control. Like a player that knew he had another two gears to go to.
Outside of that purple patch he was a bit of a peripheral figure. His right thigh heavily bandaged and with a noticeable padding of sorts on it. The last three weeks or so, I definitely don’t think he’s had that bite to his attack on the footy or the man, like we had become accustomed to over the last 12 months. And just today I’ve heard again that he’s being managed through training this week. I don’t want to talk about it too much.
I’ve set sail off of Billings Island. I’ve used the last several weeks to clunk together enough planks of wood, husks, sticks, empty plastic Dare Ice Coffee bottles and spit and have launched off the island Tom Hanks style at the mercy of the ocean.
The stats sheet will probably tell you had 25 touches (21 in fact). This happens every week. He may be the biggest Empty Stats player I’ve witnessed pull on the guernsey. No doubt, Latte has some natural kicking skills and flair that a lot of players would envy, but after 8 years it’s time to accept what he is.
Granted, Latte did his planta fascia earlier this year (prior to the Bombers game I believe). But the fact of the matter is that we’re eight years on, and all the shortcomings are still present loud and clear. He looks okay in the forward line, only because it gives us less time to see him in the actual crossfire of the midfield where he disintegrates into nothingness. If there was to be a GIF that encapsulated his year it would be him leading into space at half back and just holding onto the chest mark and then taking one hour to turn around and survey his options.
There were points in time where you could justify his indifference with “oh but he had four shots on goal”. But that’s not enough.
The truth is AFL footy these days is about team defence and ferocity around the contest more than ever. Billings doesn’t come to that party at all. He’s not the only one of course. Hill, Higgins, Butler, Battle, Coffield, Ross. There’s just this swathe of players who exude no appetite to compete at the level of ferocity needed, all the time. I watched the Dogs versus Demons game on Friday night and it was like a different sport altogether.
The real challenge, and opportunity, in this second half of the year is determining which of those players across the list really has the hunger and capability to embrace that level of tenacity, selflessness, and dedication to improvement.
The one positive note right now is that the cat is out of the bag: The Saints aren’t good. Throughout the first half of this year there has been a laundry list of injury excuses for Ratten and the hierarchy to reach for after every wayward performance. “We’ll get Jones back”, “We’ll get Marshall back”, “We’ll get Geary back” and on and on. Players have come in and gone out and yet there’s still been such a soft underbelly. Fans in the outer, and on their couch, aren’t usually privy at all to the actual machinations of game-by-game strategy and the intricacies of how they’re put together. Effort though is something else. Fans can recognise separate dog-hungry effort from comfortable effort.
The cat’s out of the bag. Yet, of course, one of the most telling things from the past week was how from Lethlean onwards, the most important thing for the week was to get four points.
Something has rotted to the core for this group at the moment. And now that that’s out there, and that there’s been nowhere to hide – even after a victory like Saturday’s – there is that gaping chance for real changes to be made, for bad apples to be filtered out, for stern conversations to be had. Unfortunately, that opportunity has been balked at so far. And I mean in terms of team selection as well as the media story through the week. The opportunity to draw a line in the sand culturally has been superseded by the need to make the Win-Loss ratio look nicer.
One thing I would tip my hat to is the transparency and openness by which president Andrew Bassat confessed to the state of play. And to an extent Lethlean wore that hat as well.
That aside, they definitely whiffed at the golden chance to really draw a line in the sand. Of course, the lengthy injury list does no doubt put some strain on what actual omissions can be made. But it’s kind of missing the point. When players are shown the jumper in the rooms, whether it’s for your first or last or 100th, that jumper needs to actually mean something other than your own personal journey.
My prediction going into the game was that we would chalk up a W after a nervy quarter or two. The fact that the flow of the game was almost the reverse almost twists the knife for me. If anything, I thought this group would relish some soft goals, some roadkill to drive over and ample chances to run ahead of the ball.