They seem so very nice

Round 19, 2022
West Coast Eagles 3.3, 7.1, 9.2, 10.2 (62)
St Kilda 2.2, 9.5, 10.5, 14.6 (90)  
Crowd: 35,665 at Optus Stadium, Sunday, July 24th at 2.40pm AWST

St Kilda fell from irrelevancy to Moody Doom Vignette territory this week.

There was an absolute pasting from the footy world, collected and collated and packaged in multiple vignettes across Fox Footy landscape (i.e. On the Couch and multiple nights of 360).

BT said we were “bordering on putrid”. Garry Lyon called us an “all-talk footy club”, and asked if this group cared enough. “Sub-AFL standard” and “fraudulent”, said Kingy.

One team that isn’t going to win the premiership this year is St Kilda, Gerard and Robbo said with amusement. Jason Dunstall said we were “mind-blowingly poor”. “It’s fallen apart” for us, according to Joey. Nick called it a “passive effort”. Mike Sheahan was on 360 Extra and said the first 40 minutes of the previous Friday was “disgraceful” and “an indictment on the entire footy club”. On the same episode, Rooey again bought up “there’s trying and there’s really trying”. He said, “They’re not a dog-hungry group, it’s a nice group”. We’d gone from top four at the halfway mark of the season to “soul-searching”. “You can’t be held captive by talent,” Nick said. “St Kilda have got a lot of players that help you win by more, they don’t necessarily help you win.” Perhaps partly to that end, the club released the video of Brett Ratten’s post-match dressing down of the players as part of the “Uncut” series. Players weren’t telling each other that “that ain’t fucking good enough”. A nice group indeed. It was a massive week for feedback across the group, apparently, and big changes at the selection table were going to be made – or, at least with the caveat that guys would be on their last chance if they kept their spot. Zak Jones was the only one that really copped it – NWM was dropped too, but Ratts appeared to make a distinction during the week between guys really getting dropped and younger guys having natural fluctuations in form.

For a lot of fans we were really back to “just want to see effort” – and maybe Jack Steele giving it to everyone – but for what? So we can commendably finish 10th? Fuck that. It’s amazing how this season end up being so comparable to 2021 (just flip the order of the form). The first half of the season was about showing that we’d learned something from last year. We even had a new clash jumper and clash socks and everything.

It’s hard to really get up for another “defining encounter”, as the club site called it, when the team itself hasn’t really turned up for them for five of the past six weeks (comically so, too).

We were the “Saint Kilda Saints” this week, according to Optus Stadium’s social media team. Maybe a change in identity would help.

***

Bizarrely, we were only some Buddy-esque work from Jamarra on Saturday night from playing for eighth spot on Sunday. Depending on the Dogs as well, obviously, Richmond’s result against the Dockers might be the reason we make it or miss out. The Bizarro Rivalry Cold War rages on.

St Kilda made a statement by releasing the video during the week, according to West Coast and Adam Simpson, which I guess making a note of was a statement in itself. They were gonna be prepared for our guys to be yelling non-stop at each other for any vague blunder or non-committal contest. Maybe saying some really personal shit that would ruin each other’s day.

What we were met with was nothing really of the kind of uncompromising performance that we might expect from a team that’s on its way to doing anything serious at the business end of this year. There was no hammering of a team that might be at its lowest ebb in its 36 seasons. There was no teammates giving (demonstrative) instructive feedback. Within minutes this had the air of a late-season game between two teams with no business in September. After multiple turnovers in the middle last week, Brad Hill kicked it to an opponent in the middle of the ground. We were making a mockery of the model of efficiency we appeared to be in the first half of the season. Butler kicked it straight to a defender. There was no Jeremy McGovern but a lot of Tom Barrass, and repeated high kicks into the forward line allowed him to body up Max and take him out of the game. Edwards was the beneficiary a couple of times early took a couple of intercept marks; Max dropped one anyway when he actually did get into the right position and the delivery was to his advantage. A turnover the other way saw Seb find space in the middle and kick to Membrey who was outnumbered in a two-on-one.

The ground was in a real early-90s state after copping some decent rain and hosting Manchester United and Aston Villa on the Saturday (the ground were markings were still intrusively obvious). Snags ended up with some Moorabbin-esque mud across his jumper after getting a pretty lucky free kick within range, but he didn’t make the distance, and hit the post with another attempt soon after a rare measured kick forward.

Butler was the one who broke through for our first after making up for a bad kick to Gresham in board and snapping around on his left. It came from a good mark to Mason Wood in defence and the ball worked up with short passes in a rare display of cohesion. Our forward has not been OK for several weeks, like your futsal team is short and the entire forward line is just guys who played in the game before yours. Butler and Higgins were the two guys that Nick was prepared to say really needed to lift during the match preview on 360 Extra, while Grant Thomas went harder and said he was “stupefied & dumbfounded” about them having kept their spots. I’m not sure exactly how much Butler and Higgins and their positioning have to do with our forward structure – I’d say more than a bit – but they would be making (and mostly taking) their opportunities throughout this game. When Tim Membrey did it all himself out of a ruck contest in the forward pocket, Derm in special comments started talking about how this is a danger moment for the Eagles and that it could be five goals to nothing pretty soon. Perhaps that would be the kind of thing you’d expect from a team who had just had a soul-searching week and its season on the line, but those next three goals all went to the Eagles. The Eagles started working through the middle and goaled through uniquely haired Jake Waterman and with some assistance from the noise of affirmation working for Kennedy, and then Rotham, who of course had never kicked a goal in his career. It seemed to happen quickly; for all our possession domination – plus-30 for possession, 13 to seven inside 50s – we were behind.

The Barrass and King battle became all the more intriguing when they both claimed a mark that the umpire couldn’t pay to either and balled it up instead. Clark saved us up the other end with a contest in the air on Darling and then a contest down low on Ryan, but then gave away a free kick to Darling moments later only for Darling to casually miss from close range.

***

In the opening minutes of the second Max finally broke free of the Barrass brace and in one motion gathered the ball off the ground and snapped around the corner, followed by Snags kicking a goal, threatening a Max and Snags quarter as they had multiple times this season, beginning with the first Perth game. Max likes Optus Stadium, his last couple of appearances there have showed. But is Max too nice? (Do we have enough energy left for this season to care in the here and now?) Kennedy bobbed up as he always does against us and Rotham got a lucky free and, somehow, a second career goal for a Jimmy Webster retaliation, with the umpire conveniently missing Rotham’s high shove immediately before it. No noise of affirmation required.

Ball movement took a turn for the better around the time that Sharman (in defence) almost took mark of the year (as he’d almost done against the Swans). It was the kind of moment that qualified as a “highlight” in a game like this. Even as we started cutting through the middle and finding space going into 50 Gresham persisted with the screw kicks around his body and hit the post on the run; we got lucky ourselves when the umpire missed Membrey’s throw out of a tackle to Higgins who found Butler coasting past within close range. Byrnes did a 360 outside the arc and hit up King but he missed. We’d finally looked like players from the same team were out there in the forward line but had 1.2 from three good looks. As we’d done for Rotham, it was time to roll out the red carpet for unproven guys to make their mark. This time, Sharman spilled an entry in defence and second-gamer Jai Culley threw it on his boot and went over his head, and Liam Ryan took the mark and goaled. Bailey J. Williams took a great mark in the six-yard box too on his way to goaling and doubling his possession average for the season.

It was at about this point it became apparent something was going on with Marcus Windhager and Tim Kelly. The commentators started noting that Tim Kelly – who a few weeks earlier had amassed 40 touches against the Tigers – had hardly touched the ball. Windhager, who had the role on him, was on his way to finishing with a career-high 23 disposals and 570 metres gained, the most on the ground in a game in which fluid forward movement was at a premium. He bullocked his way through traffic on multiple occasions but the highlight might have been his centre bounce takeaway from Marshall’s ruckwork in the last moments of the quarter that brought Butler’s third goal on the half-time siren, closing out three goals in the last four minutes of play.

Max and Snags had just for into the game and we did end up with a Diet Lite Caffeine-Free Max and Snags quarter. Max took a great two-on-one mark at high half-forward and was on the move immediately; his awkward handball sat up in the turf nicely for Hunter and through Butler the ball found Snags close to goal. Rather than trying to kick the cover off it as he has done a few times this year, a went around the corner a neatly slotted it.

Jack Billings’ contribution had been to spend most of the first quarter trying to make up his mind whether or not he was injured. Ben Long came on and brought the forward pressure that had been missing in the previous few weeks and ran down Edwards, and from a tough shot just inside the boundary near 50 also went around the corner and kicked the goal. Marshall had channelled the sadly absent Paddy Ryder (who was perhaps at least wearing a St Kilda polo somewhere but he might have just been at home in casual clothes) with a tap over the shoulder to Steele, who worked off the tackler to tumble the ball forward. Max was first to it and gave off and the ball finished with Crouch adding a goal to his fantastic game in the clinches.

***

Jack Steele minted himself as captain (all over again) with a career-best 40 touches, to go with 11 clearances and eight tackles. Fifteen of those touches came in the third quarter when we really needed someone to stand up. That was a player who took everything that was said in the post-match and during the week really fucking seriously, willing himself to doing things – at least on paper – that he hadn’t done before. To draw from Garry Lyon’s comments, he’s one that can’t be described as an all-talk player. Crouch went with him and finished with 31 touches and 11 tackles. Seb was doing a little more 2022 Seb stuff, and Sinclair put forward another case for All Australian (for whatever you think that’s worth; either way it meant he played very well again). Of course, Windhager missed out on the Rising Star nomination because Jamarra happened to pull out five goals against the premiership favourites the night before. Marshall – named perhaps or perhaps not pointedly in Ratten’s video of examples of what he wanted from the players – won 49 hit-outs and did some very nice work as the extra midfielder. No one was “bad”, really; I’m just not sure if this was the whole-team response you get from a side that will recapture top-four form.

***

A good part of that second quarter was the work without the ball. We pushed hard across the ground to shut down the Eagles’ space when they had the ball at half-back. We needed that kind of effort in the back half during the third because our forward structure broke down again and the Eagles had it their way. Things were looking shakey again. Shuey had looked like he was with a shoulder in the first half but then appeared to finish Webster’s day with his shoulder. The Eagles dominated possession and territory and finally broke through with a goal 13 minutes in. Webster had saved one with a tackle on Kennedy in the pocket while Darling was waiting on his own in the goal square, but Sinclair’s rushed kick came back immediately and found Darling, who hadn’t moved. Another kick came into full forward to Darling on the lead a couple of minutes later and we looked like were about to crack. They finished with 20 inside 50s for the quarter but only scored 2.1. We cut through the other way with just over five minutes left in the quarter thanks to Max marking and playing on again at half forward, but he poked it to 15 out where Higgins played for the free and then immediately decided to stop playing for the free, grab the ball on the ground and dish off to Membrey, who was good enough around the corner. We’d seemed to have halted the momentum but the lead was only nine points, and we’d only scraped together all of 1.0.

***

So what happens if we really fucking shat it from here? Dropping another game to a lowly team with all of two wins. After all the talk this week, what happens then? What else can Ratten say and what other video can the club release? Who goes out? Who comes in? This season’s drop-off in form happened at the same time at Sandringham too, and they’d been pantsed by Eli Templeton’s struggling standalone Port Melbourne earlier on Sunday. Not sure what’s going on there, but the rot’s been happening across the whole club. It appears it’s time to Break the Dan Hannebery Glass In Case of Heading Towards Middle of the Ladder Late-in-Season Emergency for a fourth consecutive year.

There were some “almost” moments in the final term on the way to grinding out a win that similar to the third quarter saw no team score a goal for a long time. Gresham had a mid-air shot in the square in a move that was 20 hours too late; Wilkie – the one player who came out of that mid-week video better than anyone else – looked to go through the middle for a counterattack but got chopped off, and then finally Higgins didn’t get enough of it in the forward line, but Membrey found it, kicked to the top of square and Max finally worked off Barrass and finished the play.

That passage had started with Sinclair falling over at half-back on the sloppy turf and ended with Barrass on his backside, and players slipping onto their arse was a feature in all of St Kilda’s goals that ultimately finished the game. Mason Wood has had some good and bad moments in his time as a Saint, but I feel like this year there’s been some really good ones. He combining both in the game breaker with just over five minutes left that again saw Snags and Max both involved; Snags worked up to the defensive side of the wing as we came off half-back after Cooper Sharman played goal keeper on the line (the line of the traditional Australian Rules type; also I didn’t think I’d be typing “Cooper Sharman played goal keeper” this year), and Hill – involved on the wing in several chains – hit up Max. The 50 was open and he went long to the goal side of Wood who ran onto the ball, tried wheeling around Bazzo and slipped over, but got back up quickly enough to get a snap kick in before Witherden came across his boot. The ball bounced kindly.

Steele and Windhager won the ball from a centre wing throw-in and the Eagles defenders were forced to move quickly with the clock against them. A few Eagles traded handballs looking for a clean exit and this time it was Redden who hit the deck; Windhager had kept running and intercepted his handball and delivered to Butler on his own on the goal line for the sealer. Somehow, the score line was the same as Dogs disaster the week before.

There was an intermission for a Jai Culley goal before Barrass became the last to go down (again), caught out by arguably our slickest chain of possession (albeit through a very tired Eagles defence), which started from a rushed Steele kick off half-back for number 40 for the first time in his career (Lienert has won the hit-out, of course), before Ross ran and handballed to Sinclair, who ran and handballed to Byrnes, to Hill, and his tumbling kick sent Barrass the wrong way and Butler strolled in for his fifth goal – also for the first time in his career. By day’s end a big chunk of the goals had echoed the Saints of 2020 – a lot from close range, a lot featuring Butler.

***

So there it was, our first win over the Eagles in Perth since a grinding Nick Riewoldt-less win in 2010 that set off a winning streak of seven that set up our tilt at September (which ran into October), and our first dual wins in Perth since that same year – we also outlasted Freo in that streak at Subiaco just a few weeks later.

No vignettes this week. We’re not good, we’re not bad. We’ve just taken a small step back up and slightly sideways from the moody doom vignette editors’ suite into mid-ladder irrelevancy. The final minutes of the Carlton win were gripping as they were the difference between a (brief) re-entry into Maybe We’re Good territory and a season plunging into freefall. The season hit freefall over the next couple of weeks anyway, and the final minutes of Sunday were not gripping. “Mason Wood produces a bit of brilliance!” Adam Papalia exclaimed when the game-breaker bounced through. It wasn’t joy. It wasn’t quite relief. It looks like for another year they’re going to drag us all the way. Not many ladder predictions will have us near September. Sunday was a warm late July day in Melbourne. Perhaps the first sign that changes in the weather are ahead, that we’ve been through the absolute depths of winter, and that the end is in sight.

One month to go.