I don’t feel like going out today

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.