Mood swings

Round 18, 2021
St Kilda 2.4, 3.5, 6.9, 8.13 (61)
Port Adelaide 1.0, 4.6, 7.11, 10.14 (74)
Crowd: Zero at Docklands, Saturday, 17th July at 1.45pm

Among the “prune juice iron” and “chicken liver pâté” tabs I can find yet another Google Docs draft that will feature too many words and too many long-winded sentences vaguely recounting a St Kilda loss brought about by poor ball use, some poor marking efforts, poor forward structure, and, of course, poor kicking at goal.

Zero goals from set shots, six behinds. Port themselves finished with a rangy 10.14 (enough to win us the 1966 premiership, mind you), but yet again it’s our mistakes with the ball in hand that are giving us grief.

Watching this felt like playing a 6pm (or perhaps 6.40) game of futsal and you still haven’t had time to get into weeknight warrior mode. Everyone had to double-check the start time close to the opening, no one knew who was going to turn up and when, nothing felt settled, no real cohesion, no sustained momentum. The only constants were not much space, and the ball being camp in one of the halves of the ground. Players couldn’t find each other or link up. It was high pressure, but not quite in the high-intensity finals way. This just needed to be played and put it in the books – yep, Port’s better than the Saints at the moment.

***

Last week may just have been a One Night Only atonement of sins committed through the season. This was the beginning of a new pile. Season on the line in the final minutes; Marshall misses a set shot, everyone drops a mark, Brad Hill does a weird dribbly kick thing twice. Two of those moments burned Leo Connolly producing the best pair of St Kilda field kicks this year, one from a turn against the boundary in the back pocket and a slashing 45-degree left-foot kick to open up the entire ground, the other from the sharpest of deliveries to a leading forward.

Just as we did earlier in the season, we’d banked some wins – the only team to win three out of three heading into this weekend – to feel as though we’d built up enough momentum to go head-to-head against a top four fancy on our home deck and win. The win over a breaking Brisbane was one better than the Max King game against the Cats, but we were going to need to do a lot more than that. All the results had gone our way by Monday night, and Thursday night saw a chunk taken out of Freo’s percentage. It was just like Round 22, 2008, when everyone lost and we beat Essendon by 108 points to finish the season in fourth. Except, it was the beginning of Round 18 and we’re ninth. Then Jack guided Richmond to a very big win and the reminder was there that not so fast – we still have to do stuff ourselves. And this week, not so lucky.

Feel the static air of a non-descript temperature on your face. Bask in the artificial lighting. No, you’re not in the glorified TV studio that is the Concrete Dome – it’s Lockdown V and you’re in your lounge room watching the Saints play another home game in front of zero people. Dwayne is doing some of what he does best – calling games played in front of low crowds. Music doesn’t work after goals at the ground, nor on the broadcast. D-Mac was adding another strong game to his career resurgence and put on a huge tackle on in defence, and was rewarded with a concussion, Georgiades landing on his chest, and a Port Adelaide goal, and having it all broadcast in high definition with some public domain up-tempo, inoffensive dance music over the top.

That was probably the moment I quietly accepted that it just wasn’t going to happen. The first quarter was dominant, in that the ball lived in our front half. Steele and Butler cut through the noise with snap goals out of traffic, and in true St Kilda fashion Port made one meaningful foray and goaled. But there was no clear purpose to a lot of touches.

King was in all sorts of contests – pushed out, outbodied, a touched ball, and then finally grabbed one and missed. Long again appeared to have more of a presence in the forward line. Butler decided to turn up for a bit. That and a 2.4 to 1.0 quarter-time scoreline was promising, if only just to show that we were still keeping the opposition to restricted scores.

But the second quarter was a mirror image of the first. Port had all the play, and made a little more of it. Their seven-point margin at the main change felt much, much bigger. Their talls were creating problems, despite Charlie Dixon being reduced to a hobble at some points, and we were sure to fast-track the rise of Mitch Georgiades, even if it meant leaving him unattended at the back of a pack three metres out from goal for him take a simple chest mark. Or giving him the honours of knocking out D-Mac.

Out only major came from a great contested Ben Long mark and a wild shanked kick as good as his 2.7 record for the season suggested. So much so, the kick was never near registering any score, but of course, Paddy Ryder (*more depressed voice than usual*: in a St Kilda jumper) crumbed the pack and goaled. Of course. Callum Wilkie could have turned the novelty dial up to 11 but missed his set shot.

By half-time, Trent McKenzie – you know, the absolutely not full-back guy – was all over Max King, capped off with a free on half time. The nature of the game made it a certainty that Steele and Crouch again were most prominent, joined by Luke Dunstan. Brad Hill was doing what he could off half-back (and there were plenty of opportunities given Port’s territorial dominance). While the game never quite broke open, Port always seemed to be the next goal away from exactly that happening. 

***

Marshall accidentally kicked a goal from the pocket in the third but the next couple to Port saw the margin out to 20 points. Webster won an important one-on-one out wide as they looked to land what would have really been a finishing blow, and then found himself with the ball just a few moments later on 50 and utilised his left boot in a way that hasn’t happened enough. Game on? It was time to show the footy world what we do best – poor skills and weird bits. On the break with numbers, the ball to a two-on-one to a small forward (Long) who was rightfully pissed. Butler was on very good terms with himself and at the fall of the ball in the final seconds of the quarter dished an over-the-shoulder handball towards goal, and I like to think of his face still looking composed for a moment while the ball trickled away behind him. Ryan Burton was a big presence for the Power all game but made the curious mistake of soccering off the ground backwards to McKenzie in the goal square. King was right with him, found the right positioning and kicked it off the ground himself for a goal.

Going over the game again I was surprised that we were actually in front halfway through the last quarter. I barely remember it. Naturally, the result colours how you see the rest of the game but I’m as convinced of the inevitability of the result as I was during the last quarter. Much like the back end of last year – namely ill-fated late charges against the Lions and the Lions – nothing drastically changed in the way we were playing the game; we were just doing it a little better. Marshall’s snap goal at the beginning of the quarter was huge, his late set shot miss equally so.

What else stands out? The Seb Ross nothing kick deep into the forward line, Crouch’s miss on the run, and Butler running into an open forward line, not seeing or ignoring Hill running with him, no-one leading to him, and he deciding not to kick anywhere near the advantage of the one-on-ones but to two Port Adelaide players 30 metres out from goal. Hill’s two kicks off half-back within moments of each other, which are pretty funny when I watch them over.

If we’re going to be reductive, these may be the hinge moments of a season that from the beginning hasn’t been convincing. It has not found any genuine momentum, or rhythm, or whatever you want to call it. Much like St Kilda’s own, the broader season has been played in social conditions lumpy at best. We could be about to embark on an indifferent and stumbling end to the season. There’s a very good chance we’re 13^th by the end of next weekend.

***

The Fox Footy production team, in another failure to read the lounge room, had Eddie and co talking over the top of the scenes after the final siren, rather than let the song play and the players’ reactions speak for themselves, and to give us a few moments to take in what had just happened and (depending on who you follow) experience the highs and lows of what it means for the afternoon, for your season, or for your lockdown. I know we can’t really go anywhere or do anything at the moment, but just give us a second.