Month: April 2022

Round 6, 2022
GWS Giants 3.4, 7.7, 7.9, 8.12 (60)
St Kilda 4.5, 5.8, 9.12, 10.17 (77)
Crowd: 11,207 at Manuka Oval, Friday, April 22nd at 7.50pm

Anything can be a banana peel if you’re the St Kilda Football Club. Going in 4-1 against an opposition whose premiership window is slamming shut, their coach under the pump and all the media hype surrounding the return of a game-changing bad boy? Banana peel. A 19-0 start with three middling-to-poor teams to come in the final three weeks of the year before finals? Banana peel.

This wasn’t quite the same week on media street as the flurry leading up to the Gold Coast the previous Saturday (I neglected to mention Peter Ryan’s “Saints’ King-dom come” on game day), at least, right until AFL.com.au on Friday ran with a headline mentioning the f-word – no, not the M-rated “finals”, and not even the MA-rated “four”, but the XXX-rated “flag”. The last time we were 4-1 and made it to game day The Age called us “the story of the year”. We lost, and Richo was sacked three months later.

Really, all the build-up this week was around Leon Cameron and Toby Greene. Cameron almost gave up the job mid-interview on 360 on the Monday, and Gerard and Robbo spent the next two nights discussing it, with the show giving the story the moody vignette treatment on Wednesday. Summing it all up, should Cameron go, Gerard posed of the Giants, “What was the point of 2022?”. To make St Kilda supporters nervous, I suggested from my couch.

Toby Greene was given a whole 35 minutes one-on-one with Derm in Fox Footy’s new Face to Face program, which was probably both a lazy production decision and also a reflection of 2022 demands for Content All of the Time and broadcasters’ and the media’s thirst for players to become celebrities so they can feel aggrandised themselves. A bog-standard quote becomes a news item or an intense and moody graphic on social media and then a whole Twitter conversation. I don’t know if Jimmy Webster selling his house would have quite been the news item in years past.

Toby’s six-match suspension finished just in time for him to take on the Saints. No conspiracy there, of course, just something that would happen to the Saints, much like the overcorrection from the Match Review Panel and Paddy’s bump. The extended Channel 7 intro to the main broadcast was all about Toby, including a quick mention of his assault suit played as a bad boy character quirk.

A chance for St Kilda redemption in the Friday night slot after Round 1 likely spelled more calamity given our lack of prime-time wins in recent years. Not helping was Jones out with the Health and Safety Protocols, and then Joey during the week decided to give Lachie Whitfield a rocket; he literally said “he’s doing nothing”. Just in time for him to take on the Saints.

***

After four wins on the trot that began with giving up the first two goals (three in the Freo match), we went with the bold move to not only win the centre clearance and kick the wrong way out of the middle via Brad Crouch, but also kick the first goal, through Rowan Marshall drawing a free kick against human-as-mountain Braydon Preuss. It was part of a big opening for Marshall, including a huge leap in a ruck contest and laying a big tackle, picking up where he left off from his season-best game against Gold Coast. Perhaps we’d be ok without Paddy for a second week.

Things started looking a bit dodgy not soon after when Higgins blasted a point from near the top of the square after a deft wobbler from Butler. Up the other end Greene made an instant impact, of course, recovering from a marking contest while Dougal was slipping and sliding behind Idun and his high kick to the goal square somehow ended with Bobby Hill beating all of Webster, Dougal and D-Mac. 

Higgins had a shot at redemption soon after a lucky high-tackle free as he stayed low and decided to kick around the corner. Again, he tried to kick it into Lake Burley Griffin but missed another from close range (10 months later, BT ran with the Missy Higgins gag). Kicking the first goal and Higgins missing easy shots sounded a lot like the Round 1 misadventure. The ball went up the other end for Greene to find space on Wilkie, gather, turn and just miss. He was already looking dangerous.

We didn’t look like a team that warranted any of the f-words until Long’s switch in defence and an excellent kick from Battle hit Paton, who went short to Crouch and passed perfectly to Haye, who took a classic arms-out-in-front strong mark on the lead. He went back and kicked it from decent range.

Preuss himself loomed as a banana peel. Swamp pointed out during the week we have the largest number of Rising Star nominations against in the competition. Preuss doesn’t actually qualify, but in just his 21^st game this would be the perfect chance for him to get his big break. We’re only happy to make anyone else’s dreams come true. A goal and a big mark put him on the radar.

Gresham picked up where he left off from the previous week and snapped through an awesome banana goal that was more at home on The 90s: The Decade that Delivered. We were kicking the harder ones, it seemed, but it was immediately undone as we couldn’t work with our numbers from the bounce Ward punished the clumsiness from outside 50.

The inability to get some fluid consistent movement of the ball meant another lot of Sherrins being bombed from high up onto a double- and triple-teamed Max. Again, he wasn’t losing contests but the ball use going forward was haphazard and not to anyone’s benefit. He finally found the run and jump at the end of the quarter and took a huge mark on 50, but his post-siren kick hit the woodwork. The signs otherwise were good – 24 tackles was our highest in a quarter this year – but we probably should have been up by more than seven points.

***

As soon as “Hayes suspected ACL” was mentioned on the commentary Tom Green cruised through and Matt Flynn took a huge grab in front of goal. Marshall would have to take Preuss on himself, and a forward target that could take some heat off Max was gone, but more importantly after just five-and-a-bit games we’d lost a player who’d earned the club’s respect for his work rate right across the ground, never mind the work he put in to get his career to this position. (Part of me was angry that he did the initial damage to his knee because Haynes’ forearm was being forced into his head with no repercussions). It was great to hear Ratts straight after game say he’ll be getting a new contract. He’s the kind of player that is the yardstick for effort; that you’d think that if everyone tried as hard as he did all the time we’d be nearly unstoppable.

Something was up. King took a great contested mark against Lachie Keeffe but missed again. D-Mac and NWM kicked balls out on the full, Windhager had some sloppy moments, Matt Flynn won a soft free and put GWS in front. Long slammed Bobby Hill into the turf off the ball in frustration. Toby Greene missed a shot but the ball came straight back and he made up for the miss.

The Giants had ramped up the pressure and we were -8 in ground ball gets at half-time. The running game had dried up and like Round 1, we were too often going long down the line hoping Max would bail us out with a big grab. Otherwise, if we tried holding on to the ball we were drawn into the short chip game as seen in the worst of the pre-season.

The GWS momentum was briefly broken when Crouch took it upon himself to banana a goal through from the boundary after a wayward Perryman pass. Again, it was the hard one that went through. GWS quickly got it back on their terms via some D-Mac umpire dissent for saying the ball hit the ground, and Ward cashed in immediately. The rule had been in the spotlight all week so even if the ball did hit the ground (which it didn’t) and regardless what you think of the rule as a player, just shut the fuck up for a second (we’d been lucky earlier when Ben Long was penalised for a blatant arms out). D-Mac’s reaction of controlled mild entertainment to the umpire giving the 50 was very funny.

Max finally got the jump in a one-on-one closer to goal next to Flynn and it was time for him to hit the scoreboard, but he missed with a limp shot that floated left (after putting some alpha bodywork into Flynn after he took the mark). Idun, who was creating problems in his move to the forward line, just missed a snap. The Giants were up and about and we were barely hanging on. At half-time, Hill and Gresham each had only five touches. GWS was winning score from stoppages 4.1 to 2.1 as Marshall was getting worked over (last week we’d won the stat by 40 points). Hill finally found the footy on the wing in an attacking position and went for a long run; he cut in to Max who gathered the ball on 50 and wheeled around and the ball floated wobbled in the air before falling on the wrong side of the post. This was a different type of Max King quarter.

***

It’s at this point we were face-to-face with 149 years of trust issues. During the week I’d dared to trust Max King to receive the ball from the air and to kick goals from all angles; to trust Seb Ross and Dan Butler to get arsey handballs out of traffic, to trust Nasiah to hit targets; to trust Jack Steele to lead all day and night; to trust Jack Sinclair to create, to trust Jade Gresham to both create and finish (also from all angles). But how many times have we seen Saints teams wobble like this interstate? This had all the hallmarks of those late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s losses where we appear to either outright lose the ability to play Australian Rules football on the plane or are overwhelmed by anxiety, and possibly some misfortune. Round 15 in Adelaide in 1997, Fremantle in 1998, Brisbane Lions in the last game of 1998, Sydney a week later in the Qualifying Final, Fremantle in 2002, losses in Tasmania to Port in 2004 in 2005, “Whispers in the Sky” against Freo in 2005, West Coast in the season opener of 2006, Freo twice in 2006, including Sirengate. That’s just some of them.

King opened the second half with another mark and another miss. Five kicks for 0.5 in just over 37 minutes of football. It didn’t help that a lot of the shots were from tough angles, but by the time he’d taken his night to an absurd 1.7 halfway through the last quarter you would have thought a few of them would have gone through given some the shots he’d kicked over the last few weeks (I think he becomes the first Saint to kick seven behinds since Stephen Milne kicked 4.7 in a draw against Richmond early in 2011). We found the ball back from the kick-out and Gresham wheeled around from 50, and Haynes touched the ball on the line. Our magic was running out.

But the moment came soon after. Preuss took the mark on the 50 from a quick GWS rebound, but rather than go long or assess his options, he quickly went for the handball to Green going past and completely missed him. Steele won the ball and got the handball out; he’d been taken high and Hill ran onto the ball and took the advantage along the wing. During the game and in the wash-up he was praised more for his hard running to stretch the field while we looked to move the footy (great interview with Brad Crouch on Saturday discussing it here), but here he had his moment with the ball in hand and deftly cut in to find Higgins by boot. Still inside the centre square and with no one in the forward line, he wheeled around without looking and blasted the ball again. The ball simply had to go through. The bounce wasn’t perfect, but it found its way. The Jack Higgins quarter had been activated.

***

During the replay of the goal, the inset shot showed Marshall was off and into the rooms, with a corkie on top of the corkie he copped last week. This one was worse, and he’d spend most of the rest of the game on the exercise bike. Josh Battle would have to complete the set of positions he’s played on the ground and have to give away centimetres and kilograms against Preuss in playing as the ruck and effectively an extra midfielder. Soon after being thrust into the role he worked off Preuss to charge into defence and chase down Himmelberg as the Giants entered 50 on the rebound.

Higgins followed his goal just over a minute and a half later with a snap from 25 out after a tumbling Gresham kick found Keeffe, and Max pounced on him and forced a wayward handball that Snags was there to immediately deal with, and then gave some to Keeffe as the ball sailed through. A bit of swagger is creeping back. Seb Ross helped engineer Snags’ third in six minutes with some good bodywork on Whitfield who was trying to complete a mark, a steady gather and tidy enough pass on his non-preferred to Higgins on the 50; as he had against the Suns Higgins had read the play expertly and was already running into space. Like a number of important goals that this season has conjured up so far, this one would require an excellent individual effort. Snags turned his back on the play and rocketed the ball through.

Max finally broke through for his first of the match after winning a holding free in front of goal. A 13-point buffer had been opened up – all four goals were from turnover – and we really should have had more by the end of the third. Wood and Paton burned entries, Snags was smothered on the goal line, and Wood missed an easy shot under Taylor’s pressure. But we’d needed to change what we were doing within the game, effectively two men down, and it was happening. By game’s end we’d be 19 to the positive in ground ball gets.

***

GWS hadn’t won a final quarter this year. Really, all we had to do was break even, but that wasn’t going to be as comfortable as it sounds. We spent most of the quarter weathering an orange and charcoal storm. Repeated stoppages, repeated defensive 50 entries. The game finished with a comical hit-out count of 77 to 19, with Josh Battle playing one of the best one hit-out games from a ruckman you’ll ever see in really what could be a career-defining performance as he was repeatedly worked over by bigger bodies but competed and competed at the stoppages.

The Giants would win the stoppage clearance count but good opportunities in the final quarter were few and far between as Steele, Crouch, Ross, Gresham, Battle and even Windhager went to work in close. Preuss was consistently trying to create movement and clear the congested space by thumping the ball and it finally paid off when Whitfield ran onto a knock for a deep entry and Paton got caught holding the ball at the top of the square.

This was going to be a true grind. Marshall tried coming back on and planting himself in the goal square but Hill missed him. Max bobbed up with two more behinds – including a painfully close snap around the corner from another tough angle – and he and Gresham had opportunities to ice the game late. Wilkie dropped an easy mark at centre half-back to keep things interesting, but we also got help from the Giants. Flynn took a contested mark just 20 metres out on an easy angle but unnecessarily gave the ball off the Himmelberg, and his snap was lucky to be called a point. It bought the margin to 11 points, and a reverse Aussie Jones point against the Lions in 2004 ran through my mind. Gresham’s set shot from near 50 was thumped through for behind from an unmarked GWS defender who could have easily taken the mark, and took the margin back to an even two goals.

There was barely time to take a breath. BT and James Brayshaw started talking about the game as if it was a done deal in the final couple of minutes. I impolitely requested them to stop this from the couch, and there was just a little more to play out. Greene broke through a Webster tackle on the boundary line and Coniglio and Taranto worked through Sinclair; Coniglio could have hit up Whitfield or Flynn on a much better angle but he elected to go the banana. It clipped the inside of the post, and instead of a potential 2017 vs Port Adelaide-style finish we got something closer to Round 7, 2013 vs Carlton.

***

Games like this are often sealed when the team that has been weathering the storm find an opening late. Something breaks. Ours came from Butler’s pressure on the wing on Haynes and some quick hands from D-Mac, Max and Crouch that released Ross, and his pass was excellently-weighted to Higgins who again had worked forward to a great spot. Crouch had kept running, overtaking his opponent, and Higgins showed again how much he’d learned from Round 1 and gave off to Crouch for an easy goal. The game was done. Exhausted, victorious. We would be able to listen to The Fable Singers post-siren on the broadcast and watch all the Channel 7 prime time post-match faff about the Saints, including heartfelt questions from Richo to Jack Steele about what he’s liking about this team the most and BT asking Brad Hill about which pizza he wants. We would get through without Greene kicking four and being the story of the week, we would get through without GWS pulling their season out of the fire under all sorts of pressure against a team supposedly on the up. We would avoid the banana peel, we would be able to enjoy another week.

The spotlight shifts a little away from Max this week and onto Snags. Every game this year has been largely about either or both (by game’s end they averaged the most and second-most scoring shots this year respectively); we now have three wins in five weeks that we can largely owe to Higgins. He has now kicked hauls of four in a 10-point win, five in a 26-point win, and four in a 17-point win, each of them with game-turning bursts.

This may well have been the best win of the five. Two weeks ago we played the sexiest football this club has produced in years on a beautiful afternoon at the MCG. On Friday night we won ugly, coming from behind with two men down and no ruck in the freezing dark of Canberra, and it was at least as satisfying. Battle’s game typified the entire team’s performance; he finished the game Hollywood-placed cut under his eye with a blood drip that was happy to walk around with and show off afterwards.

I’d built up beating Gold Coast way too much that in my mind it became the Gateway to Being Good, completely forgetting there’s the weekly grind of a season to get through. As we settle into the colder months and Bob Murphy’s rhythm of the season, another test awaits next weekend. For now, it’s about this team looking like it wants the challenge, and we as fans learning to trust it and enjoy it again, bit by bit.

Round 5, 2022
St Kilda 3.3, 6.7, 9.8, 13.9 (87)
Gold Coast 3.1, 6.1, 7.4, 9.7 (61)
Crowd: 18,724 at Docklands, Saturday, April 16th at 1.45pm

This was a week in the footy consciousness that St Kilda hadn’t really had since 2010. Except maybe for when The Age called us “the story of the year” when we went 4-1 in 2019, and our coach was sacked three months later.

We were the week’s big winners for Gerard on Monday’s 360, although he said he still needed to see the next three weeks (Robbo was more sold). Nick Dal Santo uttered the words “Dusty” and “Petracca” in the vicinity of “Gresham”. We were front and centre in the Real Footy podcast. Paddy’s bump and suspension was big news, partly because of the grey area the AFL finds itself in with these incidents, partly because St Kilda actually mattered in the context of the competition. We got the deep dive and a lot of praise from David King and Leigh Montagna on Wednesday’s 360.The crowning glory of the week was perhaps the most effusive Ross Lyon we’ve ever seen: “If you’re a Saints supporter, get excited because their teamsmanship and their commitment is at levels I haven’t seen for a long time”. (Read: “since my heyday”).

St Kilda was part of Mick’s multi to cover the line at 19.5. Janice Petersen wore a top that was close to the jumper we wore from 1893 to 1914, complete with thick black collar. The hype rolled on right through to the feature article on Gresh on the AFL site on match day as he prepared for his 100^th game (by going to Elsternwick Subway with Rowan Marshall). This was all tempting fate, and the club leaned in and wheeled out Gresh’s match winner from 2018 against the Gold Coast on the socials (as well as a more extended highlights package for his 100^th).

pic.twitter.com/q2ulREGg5q

— Red, White and Black (@RWBFooty) April 13, 2022

I wanted to embrace it as much as I could. Even though there is a wild amount of media coverage (not to mention tin pot blogs like this), just as soon as you beat Hawthorn on a sunny Sunday afternoon with the sexiest football you’ve played since the GT and Ross eras, it can all be taken from you by a loss tucked away under the roof on a sunny Saturday afternoon to the Gold Coast Suns (or the Gold Coast SUNS, as they keep trying to remind us).

Really, I ended up reading into it all too much. Ross the ex-Boss’s praise had become a giant fuck-off banana peel and by Saturday I’d built up this match up to be a Gateway to Being Good. (The warm weather and hype was more suited to September than mid-April.) By the end of Saturday ABC Grandstand posed the question of whether or not we were a top four team. Dare to dream, I guess? But we have 149 years’ worth of trust issues. Let the record show that the last time we were here, the coach was sacked. There was also one year not too long ago we started 19-0, and nothing came of that.

***

The closer we got the first bounce the more panicky I got. It was an absolutely gorgeous early autumn day in Melbourne on Saturday, hitting 28 degrees with only a light wind. I got off the 55 tram and walked through the sunshine in the city, under the Gresham Street sign on Bourke Street, crossed the bridge, and was met with…the Concrete Dome roof closed. We were about to be unceremoniously dumped by the competition’s whipping boys in an echoing tin can. I put money on the Gold Coast at $3.35.

We started this one with the tried and tested method of giving up the first two goals of the game. In every one of our four wins now we’ve given up the first two (first three against Freo). Unlike the last couple of weeks, this wasn’t two in the first couple of minutes, but Gold Coast had settled into the game quickly. They were linking up with sharp, low, direct, quick kicks right across the ground. After being tagged out of their Round 3 match against GWS, Touk Miller had bounced back against the Blues and resumed looking his dangerous self and set up both Ben Ainsworth and Levi Casboult on the lead for early goals with perfect passes inside 50.

We needed Callum Wilkie’s first-ever goal and then some inspired stoppage work from Paddy and Gresh to get us on going in the past two weeks; on Saturday it was a string of multiple efforts from multiple players out of a ball up near the middle of the ground. Ross worked off Miller; D-Mac went to ground in a tackle and traded knocks with Sinclair, and then lying on his front managed to knock the ball out along the ground to Ross. That was all it took for the Saints to complete the transition from defence to offence. Ben Long was running off the back of the centre square, received the ball and gave to Sinclair, who had bounced up and handballed forward to Steele. Long kept running and thumped the ball to the top of the square. King was triple-teamed – the first time he’d be outnumbered on many occasions for the day – and Collins tried claiming the mark as the ball popped up and back down. Hayes was also there and with brute force wrestled the ball out of Collins’ hands, forced out a handball to Higgins, and Snags gathered the ball and snapped around the corner.

That’s a lot of blog space to spend on what was just our first goal of the game, but it was going to take repeated efforts like these, peppered with some individual moments of nous and brilliance, to cut through a grinding game. Higgins had a second goal not long afterwards that came from Marshall forcing a kick out of a ruck contest that was met by King up on the wing who handballed to Gresham running past. Higgins has already seen the whole thing unfolding and was sprinting ahead towards an open goal by this point, and Gresh found him. But St Kilda had a tough time getting the ball moving at the best of times and wrapping up the Suns the other way. It took all of four neat sharp kicks from half-back for the Suns (Miller again) to set up Levi to go ahead with their third. They owned the corridor a few times, together with the lone seagull who spent nearly the entire game in the centre square.

Gresh created the third with a dead butterfly kick from 45 metres out near the boundary after we won a throw-in just outside the arc. On the other side of quarter time, Marshall kicked a beautifully-weighted ball to King in the pocket, who found himself on the right side of a one-on-one for the first time, and no could do anything about the high point at which his hands met the ball for the mark. He slotted the goal from a tough angle.

As soon as a very slight buffer had been established in the second quarter – it was nine points, with eight scoring shots to four – the Suns went on a three-goal run. Perhaps we were getting a bit complacent, perhaps the Suns just match up very well on us, perhaps we’re just not that good that we should be expecting an unrelenting four-quarter performance every week. Holman outmuscled Sinclair, who got distracted pleading with the umpire for a touched ball in the marking contest, and Rankine had kept running from the wing and combined with Chol and Ellis for a goal from the square; Dougal Howard outright missed the Sinclair target from the back pocket with a 20-metre kick and found Holman instead, who went back and slotted the goal; a quick Miller clearance from the wing bounced off hands and Chol was quickest to react, grabbing the ball, turning and expertly dribbling through a goal on his left. Within a few minutes, the game had turned the other way.

***

We’ve all been nervous about the Gold Coast going past us. Now that the Dees have saluted and left us with the only true long drought in the competition, the (next) final frontier may well be the AFL’s Latest Best Joke going past us, making finals, and winning premierships. We laughed them off nervously when we fell over the line against them in each of the past four seasons – by four, one, four, two and nine points – but it’s time for this St Kilda team to add other things to its highlights reel. It’s also time for Gold Coast to do anything at all. Are they our next rival? Do they have a list with a higher ceiling? Well, they might be the closest thing we have to a rival right now, and they still may have a higher ceiling. I was worried we were watching them go past us in real time (as I thought Collingwood might have) when Chol kicked his goal. Were we also about to be the first fill-in coach to lose a game for the year? The Suns had brought down the unbeaten Blues a week earlier, and we’re the kind of team that a crappy Fremantle could bring down while we were on a high two years ago.

Momentum either way had been scarce up until this point, and our missed opportunities were beginning to pile up. Max missed what should have been a regulation goal around the corner after another perfect Rowan Marshall pass to the opposite pocket. He made up for it soon afterwards with some substantial help from the umpire who let his hands in the back of Ballard go, but then Membrey – quiet by his standards – missed a shot that was an exact replica of King’s, and then Hill found some space inside 50 and missed after Long raced to intercept the kick-in. Steele then sliced a kick from 50 that landed in the arms of Lemmens.

The next goal actually brought about what would be the final lead change of the game. Paton’s 25-metre kick off half-back to Windhager in the middle had too much on it; players converged on the spill and after some contested footy Long thundered in head-on and put on a comprehensive tackle on Powell; Ross was there to put on a nice handball over the top that released Hill, and he was off; he steadied and found Hayes on the lead 45 out. In Row S, Matt and Rich sitting next to me both said he wouldn’t miss. “He loves the big moment.” He kicked it straight through the middle.

***

I was secretly thinking about the 2009 Grand Final half-time score line – we were up 6.7 to 6.1, both teams one goal shy of the same time of that very awful day. Had we burned our opportunities? It didn’t feel like this game would be broken open, or that we’d have too many more opportunities to burn. We were in for an arm-wrestle. More than nine minutes passed before a score was registered in the third quarter. It was Higgins’ third goal, courtesy of a Mason Wood spoil and a diving knock-on from Seb Ross that released Battle on the wing who found Sinclair by himself in the middle. He waited for the right movement ahead as he ran, took a bounce, danced past Fiorini and delivered expertly to Snags on the lead. After another 27 possessions and an afternoon of hard running off half-back, AFL.com.au suggested Sinclair was “the AFL’s most improved player”. A lot of Saints fans will tell you he’s certainly has been our best.

There was no Max King quarter this week, but there was a second grinding win in a month with Snags and Max kicking a combined eight goals. Like they did against Fremantle, they owned the third quarter; at least as much as a quarter in this game could be owned. It was only three goals in total this time, but enough to create a match-winning lead. Long – in arguably his best game, after having been shuffled across the ground no less – and Hill were involved again, breaking a run of several minutes played in the Suns’ forward half; Long’s quick kick out of defence skittled the slipping Powell and Hill was on the charge (it was nice to have a bounce actually go our way), speeding through to gather the ball and handball to Membrey. Snags again sensed it all and was already running into space on his own into 50, and charged in for his fourth. At a forward pocket throw-in just a few moments later, a tumbling Jack Hayes-shaped figure committed to a chaos contest that opened the space behind him; Mason Wood was the quickest to the react to the scramble but his handball didn’t quite make it to King’s hands, instead an agile Max reacted with a volley that went through and opened a 23-point lead. He’d been double-teamed all day but found a way to a third goal.

Never mind this potentially being a Gateway to Being Good; we just needed to get through the rest of the third quarter. Gold Coast took control of the game again. For all intents and purposes Lienert, Wilkie, Howard and Battle did incredibly well to soak up the pressure of repeated entries and only let one through it was only when Miller again found space through the middle to hit up Corbett on the lead that they found a clean opening.

After becoming the highest-scoring team in the competition with two thrilling weeks, we got something that wasn’t so aesthetically satisfying to watch. The crowd sat in tense silence for most of the game, perhaps hoping we’d bust things wide open yet again. It only happened bit by bit. Membrey was good enough to take his moment in the first minute of the final term, staying down while his opponent was drawn to Max, and swooped onto the ball that came over the top and goaled. Ross furthered the lead by finishing off his own forward 50 entry (with Max halving another double-team contest) that put the exclamation mark on his early season form and drew some much-deserved attention from Saints fans.

***

For such a difficult game there were some thrilling individual moments that cut through. Hill’s charge past Powell onto the rogue bouncing ball that ended with Higgins’ fourth was the most high-octane, but the peak might have been Gresh’s banana goal from the forward pocket with a few minutes left that truly sealed the game, and bookended his 100^th match with excellent finishes from difficult shots. We’ve got guys consistently taking it upon themselves from tough situations to back themselves in, and it’s coming off in important moments (see also NWM’s bullet kick to Wood that helped set up Gresh’s sealer). Higgins did the same soon after, happily ignoring options in the 50 and banging through a set shot from beyond the arc. When was the last time before the last few weeks we could actually enjoy these kinds of moments? Gresh’s sidestep and goal against the Cats in 2016 maybe (that night actually ended well), but otherwise it reminds you how dark the days were when Jack Steven volleying a goal from the pocket while we were down by 58 points was as spectacular as it got.

At no point did this feel like a true four-quarter performance, but we actually ended up winning every quarter and have now won 10 on the trot. A lot of that had to do with 17 more clearances and 7.6 to 1.2 scored from stoppages. That tally included our first three goals to work back into the game and multiple goals from centre bounce, including the very important first early in the final quarter to settle things. We were all freaked out by the prospect of playing without Paddy, more so given Witts is one of the better big guys in the competition, but Marshall rose above his quieter form for his best game of the season in the oversized midfielder role, while the undersized Hayes (albeit with a fantastical physique) competed very admirably in the ruck and in all parts of the ground. It was secretly nice to see him punch the ground after the final siren after he spilled (another) excellent NWM pass.

The midfield has gone from one of the shallowest in the competition to one of the most effective. Seb Ross is stringing together his most impactful season without the pressure of needing to be our first or second-best mid. Crouch won’t get many plaudits for this but was always in the right spot to feed the ball out. Jack Steele didn’t need to carry the team for the midfield to have an effect, gathering “only” 27 touches, which included an overly confident one-handed grab working off Ballard in the middle. He also provided the funniest moment of the season so far, racing off half-back in the final minutes with the ball safely in his hands, being held firmly by him, not being tackled, unmarked; and for no reason the ball ballooned out of his hands and over the boundary.

Brendon Lade was quietly confident in his press conference: “We’ve got some real clarity in our roles and what we need to do”; “People look at our side and they’ve commented all year, ‘where are all your superstars?’…we play pretty well as a team.” We had Higgins and Hayes come straight back in and make an impact, Ben Long was moved to half-back and played perhaps his slickest, most reliable game (and still gave the opposition plenty to be worried about), D-Mac continued to relish his role on the wing; Howard, Battle, Lienert and Wilkie continued to work effectively as a unit. And on top of all of that, Sinclair is vindicating Champion Data’s “elite” categorising, Gresham, if he plays like this every week, will be a bona fide star of the competition, and Max is equal-leader in the Coleman Medal.

***

A month ago we were the worst-placed team in the competition. Walking out of the Concrete Disney Store on that Friday night it felt as though 2022 has instantly been reduced to reluctantly following the Saints for bright spots like Max King and Jack Hayes. A week ago we might have been the most entertaining team, certainly the highest-scoring. Saturday wasn’t the kind of sexy performance like the Hawthorn game that will have us called “the story of the year” again, nor Ross Lyon telling all us Saints fans to get excited. (There is a rude amount of teams with at least four wins at the moment, all passively competing for that air time). The State of Being Good comes with tough, ugly wins, and we’re going to need to ride a lot of uncomfortable afternoons and nights if we’re going to get near it. As this club tries to build something, those wins need to be celebrated just as much.

Round 4, 2022
Hawthorn 3.3, 5.8, 7.11, 10.13 (73)
St Kilda 6.1, 12.3, 15.8, 22.10 (142)
Crowd: 30,926 at the MCG, Sunday, April 10th at 3.20pm

A big part of this week was learning to trust St Kilda. It’s going to be a big part of the coming week, too.

Even saying “learning to trust” implies that it’s on us as fans to do the heavy lifting. Prior to Sunday I would have said, no, string together two good full quarters (let alone two full matches) and maybe I’ll come on board. It’s a bit like the 2019 membership campaign that asked us “what would you do, if you were called upon?” when we’d just seen the Road to 2018 jackhammered.

Well, we’re all very pleased to be sitting here in the knowledge that the Saints went a whole lot better than two good quarters on Sunday. We got one of the most impressive performances from a Saints team since the first half of 2020, and this was probably more complete, more dynamic and more promising. It’s a performance that has already created a shift in media narrative, for whatever that’s worth. The Age was prepared to call Max King’s three last quarter goals a “trademark” last quarter burst. That’s three games in three weeks he’s kicked at least three goals in one quarter, and he’s equal leader in the Coleman with Tom Hawkins, but I’m not sure if he’s yet quite earned the title “King of the World” that they gave him on Sunday night. Gerard and Robbo discussed on 360 whether or not we were the real deal. Gerard said he’d wait three weeks but there was something more immediate. Robbo seems convinced. Gerard also said he’s taking talkback calls on SEN about Jack Sinclair. They opened 360 with Paddy Ryder being suspended for two weeks. Very suddenly – for a week anyway – St Kilda matters again.

After however many years of heartbreak and disappointment we still need to get a kick out of these things. There’s a very, very, very fine line when supporting St Kilda in enjoying the positives – a big win, a good start to the season, promising young players – without getting too far ahead of ourselves. But we’d be silly not to indulge just a little bit at the moment. Just a little bit.

***

I’m one for melodrama and fatalism. During Round 2, I pondered if we were the worst team in the competition, and if not, considered us to be at the very least the worst-placed team. At 3.21pm last week I uttered the words “Clarkson 2023” to Matt and Dad sitting next to me in Row S. This week, the auto-generated push notification that comes through from the Saints app at the start of every game actually hadn’t had the chance to appear by the time Dylan Moore kicked the first. By 3.22pm he’d kicked another and if The Age can call Max King’s last quarter flurries a “trademark” then we’ve also registered and patented the two-goals-in-two-minutes head start to the opposition. Maybe we’d Saints blown all the goodwill of the past week already.

But this felt more of a levelling start; it brought us back to earth rather than dragging us below the surface. We knew that this scenario (eventually) turned out OK last week. We didn’t have to rely on powerhouse forward Callum Wilkie to steady things this time around; this week it was Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, with ruck tapwork-as-art from a ball up just inside 50 near the boundary to the unmarked Gresham. Gresham, on the move and on his opposite foot, just as artfully curled the ball through for our first. It was gorgeous, and very un-St Kilda like. And there was a whole afternoon of un-St Kilda like fun to be had.

Max made his introduction to this one a whole lot earlier. All told he didn’t quite have the singular impact on the game as he did in the previous two weeks, but that said more about the rest of the team than him. But he was there when the game was live. He saluted next with his reprisal of last week’s long set shot goal after casually receiving the ball from the air via Brad Hill. It would take a long strike from just inside 50 on the difficult side for a right-footer, but again he backed himself in from the difficult spot, and again it came off. A few moments later just outside 50 he won a free kick in a one-on-one (although the mark he simultaneously took would have been one of his best for the day), swung around onto his right and bulleted a pass to repay the favour to Hill for Hill’s first of four (yes, that’s right).

The Hawks showed what they were capable of with Ward running laterally off the mark from half-back and slicing a pass across to opposite flank to Day, and Breust was instantly out at half-forward. His long kick forward saw Gunston fly for the mark, Moore was at the fall and a handball to Mitchell Lewis in the forward square had the Hawks back in front. It wasn’t the only time the Hawks looked threatening this way, but it was the only time it came off and threatened the balance of the game. The next time they tried slicing through the middle Newcombe’s kick to Frost was interrupted by D-Mac, and with the help of Marshall and Gresham at the fall D-Mac got it back and found Butler in an open goal.

By this time Seb Ross had taken a dashing run off the back of the centre square and evaded Howe, took a bounce and found Paddy Ryder (St Kilda player) in a two on one but with a dangerous enough pass that he drew a (borderline) free kick for somewhere in between. Ryder wheeled around and had put us in front. We weren’t seriously challenged again.

***

Gerard said on 360 that we “ambushed” the Hawks. Our set-up across the ground halted the Hawks’ ball movement and we dominate the ball in play; the tackle count was won easily and while ground ball gets were led by Tom Mitchell, the stat was otherwise headed by Saints (Sinclair, Steele, Crouch, D-Mac, and then Butler and Gresham up forward). Our own fast ball movement across the ground caught the Hawks off guard and they couldn’t get their good early season turnover game going. Hill up forward took away one of the Hawks’ biggest weapons in keeping Jiath and his rebounding in check (and to the point where the relatively undersized Hill actually outbodied CJ on multiple occasions).

The ball movement and forward line were functioning beautifully – to the point at which we finished the day with the highest-ever score by a team with 46 or fewer forward entries. After looking static in Round 1 and toothless for a lot of Round 2, we’ve very quickly become very watchable and dangerous. The speed with which we moved the ball allowed for space forward targets to move into and we finished with 22 marks inside 50 to 10; otherwise Butler, Gresham and Hill were getting to work at the fall of the footy (when Max King was invariably bringing it to ground). It all amounted to plenty of shots from good range and good angles and we went into half-time at 12.3. Some awkward Hawthorn moments helped too. Gresham ran into an open goal after Scrimshaw didn’t realise he’d marked a touched ball, and Seb Ross intercepted a short kick from Hardwick out of full-back and set up Membrey.

Butler played one of his better games since 2020 and he too was prominent when the game was live. His cute stuff was coming off; King created a contest off a Lienert spoil than landed in Wilkie’s hands on the wing and Butler was at the fall, and his perfectly weighted kick found Hill between Jiath and Hardwick at the top of the square. Butler was then at the fall of a stoppage just 20 metres out and as he cruised past the ball ricocheted off him and back into the hands of Paddy Ryder (in a St Kilda jumper), who curled it through for his second (I might be kind crediting Butler’s involvement here). Butler and Steele nailed set shots from no angle. At the other end, Mitchell Lewis at one stage had 1.5, which had a lot to with Hawthorn taking shots out wide. We were denying the Hawks space in the corridor and any movement off half-back was stilted. Howard hasn’t been at his best this year but together with Lienert, Wilkie and Battle we have a tough defence to crack. Either side of half-time the Hawks kicked five behinds in their last real look. We replied with a run of misses in the third ourselves (it would have been great for NWM to kick that set shot) but it only delayed the inevitable. The Saints were humming.

***

Jack Steele is gradually returning to Jack Steele 2021 Mode. He kicked a goal in the first quarter from a strong mark on the lead (a proper running, full-chested lead, not a Max King ambient separation) and would be filthy with himself for not converting a second in the third quarter. He is assuming the role of captain again in the way he is playing and the way is with his teammates. He pulled Paddy aside after the Will Day bump and Paddy giving away a 50-metre penalty that ended with a Hawks goal, and gave him a very considered one-on-one talking-to to refocus him. As per the St Kilda Football Club (1873-present), of course the AFL decided to overcorrect after fluffing their lines with Tim English and gave Paddy two weeks. I’m sure the prosecution will argue that Paddy should have welcomed Day running directly into him. There’s no conspiracy, but of course it would be St Kilda in this situation.

We relied almost exclusively on Steele, Ross, Crouch and Gresham at centre bounces this week. Windhager had a handy post-car crash debut and was the only other midfielder to attend a centre bounce (only six for the day). Crouch was fantastic again, leading all comers with seven tackles and generated eight clearances, while Ross played some of his best footy in years. There was no Jack Sinclair at centre bounces this week; instead, he did the damage in open play, darting off half-back and up to half-forward, delivering multiple perfect passes to Membrey and Max, including an intercept in the middle of the ground (after a comedic Brad Hill stumble) and a deft running kick on the outside of his boot to Max (who set up the recovered Hill with the next kick) that elicited an audible “Oh!” from the crowd. Maybe Champion Data was onto something when they rated him “elite” on the eve of the 2018 season (and did so again earlier this year). Wearing a famous number (with a career-best 35 touches to match) and a wild mullet, he’s motored into fan favouritism and the wider footy consciousness.

Gresham went from a 32-possession game last week to a 20-possession, four-goal game, including setting up goals for Max and Hill in the last quarter. He’s been getting better every week this year and we now have a midfielder that can accumulate possessions and kick goals. Nick Dal Santo described him as our Petracca or Dusty equivalent (nearly eight years later for the former). His work in the midfield is a big reason why Sinclair can start off half-back and Hill can go forward at the moment. So much that needed to change on the run after Round 1 has done so. Gresham, King, Crouch, Steele, Sinclair, Butler, Battle, Lienert (there’s something about the SANFL, the Saints, and composure at the moment), Ross, D-Mac, Ryder and Hill, all in different ways, have been part of it.

Last week Brad Crouch finally played the kind of game through which St Kilda fans could get attached to him. This week it was Brad Hill’s turn. He’s had a few games where he’s racked up some decent numbers and has created a lot from behind the ball, but these had been littered with too many moments that frustrated (see several dropped marks under heat, multiple scrubbed kicks). On Sunday he played a game that showed tangible, more immediate results for his work: 23 disposals, nine marks, five inside 50s, and yes, four goals; excellent reading for anyone in any position. It’s obviously not the only reason we’re playing this way but his move forward during the third quarter last week directly coincided with this team’s turnaround.

***

It felt as though the stadium was expecting a big last quarter from Max from the moment Sinclair honoured the 35 on his back with a perfectly weighted chip kick into his path near 50. Max kept up his good long-range record this year and then Butler repeated the Sinclair dose a couple of minutes later with a near-identical kick to a near-identical position, except this time Max had held space on his opponent who was caught goalside and he simply stepped towards Butler.

Max finished with a career-high 17 touches, took 11 marks and dropped a few that he could have taken, but his threat draws multiple defenders and he brings the ball to ground at the very least. He’s never beaten in a contest. He was the target in three entries in the last quarter that ended with goals, including drawing an extra defender from Ben Long’s entry to the top of the square and that allowed Membrey to stay down on his own and snap his fourth goal from close range.

Admission: I haven’t yet come to fully enjoy watching Max King because my first thought is always “Please don’t do your knee”. Yes, that obviously stems from the time he literally did his knee but it’s also renewed Ben King-induced anxiety, as well as the fact that this is the St Kilda Football Club and history proves we’re simply not allowed to enjoy any things (don’t get me started on Gresh and Paddy’s respective Achilles). Prior to the Buddy 1000 game, Tom Browne suggested Sydney go after Max King, and we do have form offloading big forwards to the Swans for big results (their first Grand Final in 51 years, and then their first premiership in 72 years), so there’s that to worry about in the future too I guess. Either way, I just hope no one touches him, ever.

For the first time in years – probably since the prime of Nick Riewoldt – we again have a player whose presence we all anticipate ahead of the ball. You can hear the crowd volume rise as the ball goes into attack, the collective sound of thousands of people exclaiming “Max King!” Party time really began as soon as Max kicked the first of the final term. Another seven goals, three of them his, and a hand in nearly all of them. Every forward foray looked dangerous. One of the better moments of hte year was Max bringing the ball to ground, chasing after it low down and handballing to NWM hard up against the boundary; NWM spun away from Scrimshaw and gave off to Gresham, who feigned a kick and stepped inside CJ and snapped his fourth. Max has become the de facto standard-bearer for the best parts of this team.

Max’s last was probably everyone’s favourite, simply for the theatre of Butler running down CJ (who had to wear a lot in defence), and Gresham kicking to Max by himself near the top of the goal square in front of the Saints end. Everyone could enjoy the flight of the footy on the way to his hands for the day’s crowning moment (he’d had a similar moment a few minutes earlier but dropped the footy, then gathered the ball and kicked it on the full). Max was there again a minute later to compete in the air for the ball that ended up with Gresham and then Hill for his fourth on the run, and a bit of well-earned Me Time with the crowd.

For the third week in a row, Max fucking King.

***

We’ve kicked 32.14 to 11.13 since halfway through the third quarter against the Tigers. Sunday was our highest score since Round 23, 2016, when Roo was wearing the number 12 and kicked nine goals and took 21 marks. Sunday equalled our 69-point win over the Hawks last year (and this one was topped and tailed by the Hawks kicking the first two and the last two goals), to share the title of our biggest win since the 71-point win over the Blues just a few weeks earlier than that last game of 2016. Courtesy of Swamp, this was the first time since Round 12 in 2016 that a team had four players kick four goals (that was Fremantle against Brisbane). The previous time before that was…Hawthorn against St Kilda at the MCG in Round 7 of 2014, when we managed to lose by 145 points on a slippery day, and that was a week after coming within a kick of going 4-2 to start Richo’s tenure.

Sunday felt a combination of Rounds 4 and 5 of 2019. Round 4 of that year was the last time we went 3-1, with a win over Hawthorn, before a remarkable win over Melbourne at the MCG the following week that had us equal top of the ladder. There was a shift in media narrative then, too. Gerard said on that Monday what we were doing was “sustainable”, and The Age called us “the story of the year”. Richo was sacked 12 weeks later.

***

Absolutely nothing beats a day game at the MCG. Our home ground is a Concrete TV studio, where games of footy are filmed on what amounts to a stage with professional lighting and sound (too much of it). At the MCG you see and feel the change in daylight as the game evolves throughout the course of an afternoon. No matter the weather, you feel like you’ve been somewhere. And there is nothing like an MCG crowd in full appreciation of a St Kilda team. The last time that genuinely happened might have been the 2010 Preliminary Final. It was a fitting result in our first outing in front of the Shane Warne Stand.

This was also the first time since 2016 that we heard The Fable Singers after a win at the MCG. It appears the club has listened (after four years) and made the change back to using the original version at all grounds (The Fable Singers was used in Perth as well). It feels like some order has been restored, and it was almost nostalgic to hear it at a day game at the MCG with crowds in all the stands. There’s a cheeky thrill in entertaining the idea of whether the Saints are back, too (but let’s not get too cheeky).

COVID made a mockery of “there’s always next week”, and Putin is threatening “there’s always next year”. What absolute decadence to sit in the open air of the MCG on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Melbourne and watch the Saints win.

Round 3, 2022
St Kilda 6.2, 8.4, 11.8, 18.9 (117)
Richmond 6.4, 10.5, 12.6, 13.6 (84)
Crowd: 31,933 at Docklands, Sunday, April 3rd at 3.20pm

St Kilda Messianism has just entered its newest phase.

I had written in my pre-match notes “Max and Higgins aren’t going to bail us out every week.” Well, well, well. (I’d also written, “Higgins this year is just as likely to kick four behinds as four goals”, so the reverse mozz didn’t quite fully work).

We’d all raved about Max and Snags last week, with Josh Battle thrown in for good measure, and Josh got the AFL.com.au feature treatment. Speaking of mozzes (reverse and otherwise), I know we need CONTENT ALL THE TIME and there’s a lot of features flying around these days, but I did immediately recall the Robert Walls’ glowing feature article in The Age about Brent Guerra following his seven goals in Round 9, 2004 and which effectively spelled the end of his better form for the Saints.

Maddie’s Match has been the only real “marquee” game we’ve had some ownership of. We did occupy the season opener in all of 2005, ‘06, and ‘07, and we all prefer to forget Good Friday 2018. (New Zealand was literally a whole different country altogether). We’ve had only the very occasional prime time game in recent years. As Rory noted, Maddie’s match 2017 remains probably the only real prime timer with something on the line that this generation of Saints has won (outside of Round 18, 2020 against the Giants and then the Elimination Final, and even then you could argue that was all off-Broadway). Sure, this was “only” a Sunday 3.20 game on Channel 7 (a look over the highlights reveals Matt Hill calling; the Saints would storm home from the turn to finish two lengths in front) but we needed to make up for our Live and Free Friday night debacle against the Pies in the season opener.

COVID unfortunately appears to have put an end to the purple jumpers. We went from what should have been the most spectacular version in 2020 – a purple hot cross bun – to now just purple socks (proudly pulled up by Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda now. I don’t know if you know this.). The flourishes on the new scoreboards and lighting system at the Concrete Dome balanced out the lack of purple on the jumper, but it’s a shame that touch has gone.

***

Daylight Savings finished on Saturday night, meaning clocks turned back from 3am to 2am. Please also adjust your body clocks further for the day ending mid-afternoon when you walk into the Concrete Dome because the roof’s shut for no particular reason and we’re sitting in artificial lighting.

After Round 1 we were lamenting that nothing had been learned over the off-season. We were set for another year of the gap between our best and worst being as wide as the gap between the fence and the boundary at Waverley. Last week during the second quarter I wondered whether or not we were the worst-placed team in the competition; at 3.21pm on Sunday I uttered the words “Clarkson 2023” to Dad and Matt sitting next to me in Row S. Five handballs out of the middle and Tigers had a trademark goal on the board in 19 seconds, and then a handball and a long kick from Bolton out of the middle made it two goals from 34 seconds of play (and that’s including the time it took for the goal umpire to signal).

Never mind the discussion of whether we’d gone into this one too tall, or how much a freshly-injured Dan Hannebery had cost us over the past few years. We’d barely sat down and enjoyed the team running out to The Fable Singers when for the third time in three weeks our season was facing its mortality. It was really fortunate that we had reliable pressure forward and set shot goal kicker *checks notes* Callum Wilkie ready to pounce on a wayward kick across the face to steady things early. The first quarter then turned into a bruise-free football shoot-out. Six goals each and a quarter-time scoreline barely heard of since the 2000s. The Richmond/St Kilda Trade Union of small forwards had got to work: Butler had a couple, Snags had one after a dashing run through the middle and well-weighted kick from Sinclair, and Matty Parker had a couple (just like pre-COVID times).

The thing is, regardless of where you think Richmond will finish this year, they just looked better, right from the time Liam Baker swept onto Gresham’s handball at the game’s opening bounce. The way they move the ball is almost hypnotic. Spent force or not, their system is more finely-tuned. Their players are more responsive with and without the ball. The yellow Sherrin moves almost on its own. Richmond players merely guide it forward and to dangerous positions using their hands and boots and bodies. Once they strung together a couple of possessions in a row and the ball got moving there was little we could do about it. The opening was ominous enough. They kept it going with the Baker, Ross, Ralphsmith, Ross handball combination along the wing, ending with a Shai Bolton flick up to Lynch for a goal. They pounced on anything slightly rogue, from the opening bounce to the Mason Wood spoil near full-back that was instantly turned into a goal by Parker.

It’s not just chaos footy all the time, either. In the second quarter, Nankervis picked up a spilled ball on the boundary and handballed to Baker, who in a second sized up a forward 50 entry and then split traffic going for a short central option in Edwards instead. Edwards didn’t need to wait before any movement ahead emerged and found Bolton on the lead. Absolutely no fuss.

It was those kinds of moments that made it feel like a matter of time before Richmond broke the game apart. Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, was giving our mids the best service they’d had since, well, he last played. But the Tigers were more dangerous across the ground. Here I’m using Nick Riewoldt’s “Eyeball” test, i.e. “They were just better.” It’s not going to hold up in court, but it was holding up from Row S. The lead was gradually inching beyond two goals. Soldo at back of the square, short to Dow, out wide to Graham, on the lead to Castagna. Long set shot kick for a goal. Easy.

We were barely hanging on. An excellent moment from Rowan Marshall kept us in it – a strong mark on the lead on the wing and a perfect low kick to Membrey and King. They raffled it with Membrey the winner; he popped up at a few very crucial times with goals and defensive efforts when we were up against it.

Gresham was providing his much-heralded Point of Difference in the midfield on his way to what was probably a career-best game (he’s liked playing Richmond over the journey) and Ratten made the in-game call early in the third – Gresham was doing enough to allow Sinclair (perhaps our best in the early part of this year) to spend more time off half-back, while Brad Hill would spend more time in the front half. Hill only had six possessions at half-time including a kick-out that went straight to McIntosh, and the return entry fell to Parker for his third. Hill was absolutely hating footy when he gave up a soft ball in the goal square to Nankervis for a soccer goal, and then at the other end a couple of minutes later his scrubbed left-foot kick grazed the inside of the goal post.

***

Cam noted in the comments last week that we’d only played two good quarters in the first two games and still sat at 1-1. There was good and bad in that; we’d gotten away with a win, all things considered, but the fickle 2021 Saints were still here. Round 3 is probably when you can start identifying trends, and one difference emerged on Sunday: this 2022 version is made of sterner stuff. A 34-point deficit against Collingwood was reeled back, and the slow start in Perth reeled in, where in previous years both games would have turned ugly. Richmond threatened to blow us off the park. Halfway through the third quarter it would have made a lot more sense for Richmond to be the team to kick 10 in a row.

Avid watchers who have followed On the Couch to the 6.30pm time slot will have seen this week’s show highlight Membrey’s gut running defensive effort to hold up Broad as Richmond were coming out of defence at this point in the match. It gave Sinclair enough time to press over and spoil Parker and then knock the ball on, and to give Ross the opportunity to win a contested ball running head-on into Broad. He took the footy and gave off a quick handball to Membrey, who started running the other way with the ball; a give off to Gresham, a catapault throw missed by the umpire to Hill, to Brad Crouch for an excellent composed goal. A dangerous Richmond attack with a 25-point margin had been halted. The reaction from the crowd was more of relief than that we were still in the game than St Kilda having just willed themselves to the beginning of a 10-goal streak. 

Matt has mentioned a few times that Brad Crouch hasn’t yet ingratiated himself to St Kilda fans. A lot of that has to do with the type of game he plays – he accumulates possessions consistently and without too much flashy stuff. On the one-year anniversary of his debut, he played a game that supporters couldn’t ignore – 11 clearances and nine tackles, including a pressure effort early in the third when the game really was on the line, and the goal to boot. His big body created chaos against a Richmond midfield missing its best. Jack Steele finally had a well-rounded support crew humming.

***

There’s something about our third quarters in 2022. In Round 1, we went on a 5.6 to 0.0 run (including an early last quarter goal), and then last week’s third quarter yielded a run of 5.3 to 0.2. This week, it sparked a 10.4 to 0.0 run (spoiled by a pokey Dougal out on the full in the last 15 seconds). It was yet another fascinating momentum shift this year in broader AFL landscape. Something was going around this week alone: Adelaide’s heady finish on Friday, Geelong kicking the last eight in overwhelming Collingwood – who themselves had kicked nine out of 10 – while Carlton kicked eight out of the first 10 and the Hawks kicked seven of the last eight.

Why does it take a game turning to custard before the players pull their finger out? Sunday probably wasn’t a Marvel thing. We all thought Dimma’s comments about the Tigers and Marvel last year were a little bit funny because we knew they weren’t on their way to yet another premiership, and we’d only won four of our last 10 at the Concrete Disney Store ourselves. Three years after Simon Lethlean declared we were the fittest team in the comp and we’ll “run teams off their legs”, perhaps we really have something to show for the pre-season under new head of performance and conditioning Nick Walsh. Richmond has now faded from two games in three weeks.

But what did we actually do well? It’s hard to reconcile the gap between Richmond’s best and our best. When Richmond is switched on I look at them and think, “Ah, yes, that’s what a good football team looks like. I remember now.” We’re not quite as structured around the ball – it seems as though our guys are left to their own devices to win contests more than other teams. But we outworked and outran them. We outlasted them. The passage that led to Crouch’s goal was an excellent example, and you could follow that right through to the last of the 10-goal streak. A fast tackle from Brad Hill on McIntosh at the throw-in, Steele out to NWM with a quick kick forward; Butler was out of position but created the contest against Jayden Short, and as the ball was knocked out both Hill and NWM had already run ahead to meet the contest. NWM gathered the ball and gave it off to Butler, who had sprung back up, and gave off to Membrey who found Hayes, who had sprinted forward.

The midfield was a different beast. This game did nothing to dispel the notion that a 34-year-old ruckman carrying an Achilles problem might be our most important player (Spoiler alert: It’s Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda). But Gresham has added speed and agility in the middle (his cat-like pounce and turn on the ground and then follow-up knock at the start of the final quarter helped set up King’s first), and Sinclair has been there with him helping to reshape this midfield. Crouch has found some excellent form, Ross had some great moments around the footy in one of his better games for a long time, and Steele is gradually returning to his best (and he’s still among our best anyway).

Until we’d had the game won the first two goals were in the back of my mind. What if we’d lost the game in the first 34 seconds? We’d spent our petrol tickets against Collingwood getting back to parity. This ended up being a mash-up of the first two games. It looked like we were heading for a carbon copy of the Pies game with an early goal in the last quarter (courtesy of Max King marking the centre clearance with his legs) to put us in front, following a third-quarter rush that kept the game alive for another half-hour at least. (Membrey had run in on an angle to put us in front but missed late in the third with a weak banana kick that some of Higgins’ Round 1 misses). The first echo of Fremantle came a few minutes later when Max rose in the pocket among four players to bring down the Ben Long kick, landed lightly and scooted off and snapped his second goal. He was on his way.

***

For the second week in a row, Max had spent much of the game in virtual anonymity. Last week it was two disposals at half-time, before three goals in a few minutes in the third and what proved to be the sealer late. This week, it was six touches and a behind to three-quarter time, before four goals from six shots.

Grimes going down certainly helped. But the forward line was functioning differently with the way the team was playing higher up the ground. His second goal came from one of the more thrilling passages of recent Saints Footy; Sinclair working into space out wide out of defence, a neat quick kick to Hill and then to Long, both of whom had worked ahead of their opponents. Long went long, and Max rose.

Max had more space to work in with this type of movement and once he got separation on Tarrant and Gibcus and a half-decent delivery there was nothing anyone could do. Long, Membrey, Paton, Gresham and Steele all obliged through the quarter. Like I said last week, he doesn’t need to make barnstorming leads and mark the ball at full pace on his chest, Plugger-style. He simply finds space and calmly receives the ball from the air.

Footy is heavily reliant on system. It means a lot of goals are from low-risk situations, usually closer to goal. The rush that comes with mercurial solo efforts in all parts of the ground are rare now. There is a joy to seeing Max take a mark on the 50 metre-line, on a tough angle, and for him to turn his back on the play and take the responsibility to kick the goal. He did it again a couple of minutes later on a sharper angle when he won a holding free-kick, and shut the door. After 1.3 in the first game at this ground he could so easily have dropped his head, let alone the first half last week, and the first three quarters on Sunday. Instead he was backing himself in to be the matchwinner when the game was on the line.

He’s only 41 games in and this is the St Kilda Football Club after all, so I’m not going to call anything yet. But it is such a thrill (that word again) to watch someone from the side you barrack for play in this way. We were spoilt for choice in the 1990s and 2000s for these types of players; not so much in the 2010s. Few have promised great things ahead. And it is that much more special knowing he playing for the club he grew up loving.

While we’re feeling good, special mentions have to go to Mason Wood, who played one of his best games (to go with Gresham and Crouch). His goal from a step outside 50 came when we needed a moment of brilliance and helped get the run on, and he moved very well through traffic to have a hand in multiple goals. Ben Long too, who was thrust into the game kicked two goals from uncompromising attack on the opposition. Also, NWM for some of the cleanest possessions in a Saints jumper in years. His 40-metre bullet pass inboard to Rowan Marshall out of defence in the last few minutes was itself a small victory lap for the day. D-Mac has found himself.

The last quarter saw 7.1 from 14 inside 50s. Max could have made it more from his six shots. It took inside 50s efficiency for the game to 55% compared the Tigers’ 35%. Watching on the replay the light show makes it look like there’s a constant power failure at the ground after every St Kilda goal. (Sure, we kicked a lot of goals but that’s not enough to short an entire stadium’s lighting system.)

Anyway, Max fucking King.

***

The last time St Kilda won a match with the final scoreline of 117-84 was Round 22 of 1997 against Port Adelaide. It was the last game of the home and away season and secured top spot on the ladder on the way to the Grand Final loss. Last week was a 65-55 scoreline; the only time we’d won with that was in 1913, another Grand Final year (there have been only seven). So the omens tell us we’re on track to lose another. Otherwise, the last time we went 2-1 was 2019, and we played Hawthorn in Round 4 then too, and that season saw our coach get sacked.

***

St Kilda turned 149 years old this week. Congratulations / Happy Birthday to all who celebrate. Or sorry that happened. There’s a whole lot more to commiserate over the journey. But footy is a week-to-week proposition. When the darkness descends early again and the wind starts to bite a little, you revel in 10 goals in a row and Max King kicking four in the last quarter, and the Saints going 2-1.