Month: August 2022

Round 23, 2022
St Kilda 3.3, 5.5, 7.7, 11.8 (74)
Sydney Swans 4.2, 9.3, 11.6, 13.10 (88)
Crowd: 23,344 at Docklands, Sunday, August 22nd at 4.40pm
By Tom Briglia

I said to Matt during the bye that no matter what happened, the second half of the year would be exhausting.

We sat 8-3 after Round 11, in the top four, after every team had played half of their home and away season games. Whatever happened from there would be a big deal. A dizzying huge rush towards the finals, perhaps. If we didn’t finish in a top four position it would mean we’d have to endure some very tough defeats with bad consequences. Missing out on the finals completely meant another journey altogether.

The season was effectively over when Cam Rayner told us all to keep quiet after he kicked his fourth goal of the previous Friday night; it was all but official when the Tigers won on the Sunday. We were down to hoping the Bulldogs lost in the last round, while making up a 142-point gap on the Blues, and by the time the Bulldogs fell over the line against Hawthorn we needed a circa 160-point win over the Swans. It emerged during the week that we were one of five teams to get punished for COVID reporting issues; even if the Bulldogs and Carlton and Sydney did the same and all got wiped out by COVID this St Kilda wasn’t getting within a few postcodes of that. This season and its hopes were now in the past tense.

We could still get a small kick out of Marcus Windhager getting the Rising Star nomination and getting the weekly interview on Dwayne’s World and AFL 360, a week after Swamp reminded us that St Kilda is responsible for clearly the most opposition Rising Star nominations (60 in total). Windhager has come a long way from the kid who let the ball go straight through his hands with his first touch in the pre-season match against the Bombers. We’ve seen clubs – from the Geelong side of the 2000s right through to Collingwood and the Bulldogs now – benefit from the father-son rule, as well as the Next Generation Academy (to the point of the Dogs taking the top pick in the draft). Hopefully it’s our turn with Windhager and Owens.

A lot of this time of year is looking back retrospectively, both for the season and more broadly, with players announcing their retirements. Robbie Gray retired, the man who has broken our hearts twice, including this year’s inevitable shitting of pants in Cairns with the winning behind with not much more than 30 seconds to go. This week his 2017 heroics – achieved with the help of Paddy Ryder, who at the time was wearing a Port Adelaide jumper – on that awful night at the Adelaide Oval got replayed and shared over, and over, and over again on social media. No doomscrolling timeline refresh was safe on Tuesday. He’s been relevant to us and our “mid-table mediocrity” (as coined by Demonblog) right up to the end. “Mid-table ordinary”, Gerard called us.

***

Tom Browne reported that Dan Hannebery would be retiring and Paddy Ryder – who played Australian Rules football in a St Kilda jumper, and it feels sad to write that in the past tense – would be joining him, and Rory was the one who alerted me to the official confirmation of Paddy retiring. Paddy Ryder in a St Kilda jumper has been one of the few joys of the Post-GT and Ross Eras Era (What is its name? The Watters/Richo/Ratts Era? The Long Decline? The Mediocrity Era?) There was something so un-St Kilda like about him. Maybe because one of our early dealings with him was his sealing an Essendon win over us in early 2010 as we dealt with our mortality following the 19-0 start to 2009. Then, of course, there was his tap to Robbie Gray in 2017. He played for the two clubs that we historically seem to have the most trouble with, and then all of a sudden he was a Saint. He seemed so above the mediocrity of modern St Kilda. He’s so good! He’s so dynamic! He’s so reliable! He plied his trade as an artist with ruckwork as his medium. Hit-outs into the path of goalbound Gresham and Billings were among the best moments of 2022. He kicked important goals himself. He was still a genuinely good footballer right to the end; banged up and at 34, he might have been our most important. Yes, it was this season that he kicked three goals in a best-on-ground performance to guide us to a win over the eventual minor premiers Geelong. I had a lot of fun repeating my silly joke about him wearing a St Kilda jumper every chance I could. I just couldn’t believe he played for St Kilda and we could call him one of our own.

***

The week’s “In the Mix” article was probably much too upbeat about our prospects: “Nothing to lose. That’s the message the Saints will be taking into Sunday, knowing that a win (and a big win at that) and other results falling their way will lead to a spot in September finals action.” By Thursday night selection, the outs suggested the cue was firmly in the rack. By game day, the club and its social media team had outright been reduced to “For one last time in 2022”. The club had spent its one final whirl of good news for the season with announcement that it had passed 60,000 members for the first time.

And then Sunday rolls around we go through the match day rituals, yes, for one last time in 2022. You check for the next 58 tram on the YarraTrams app. You get your 2022 membership scarf. You find something appropriately nostalgic to listen to on the way in (new Nilüfer Yanya album). You meet up with Rich at Platform 28 for a final pre-match Parma but it’s full because the top level’s been booked out again. You eventually find a seat at The Nixon. The Parma arrives and you watch the finish of the Bulldogs and Hawks and the beginning of Carlton and Collingwood over the Parma. You make the short trip up the stairs to the temporary combined gates 1, 2 and 3. You load the membership app to get into the ground. You see a guy wearing a long-sleeve, player-issue 2006 heritage jumper with number 34. You listen to the pre-match brass band play Holy Grail and feel like they’re playing it more for Swans fans. The team runs out to The Fable Singers for the last time.

The AFL had repeatedly given us Friday nights thinking we’d do them justice. We did once but bottled the rest, and now we were given the Sunday 4.40pm slot in the AFL’s hopes that we’d be playing for something similar to a certain other game being played across town that day, with all eyes (for the second half anyway) on the Concrete Dome. Sydney was suddenly playing to get their top two spot back after Melbourne rediscovered forward line efficiency on the Friday, and needed something like a 54-point win (depending on the respective scores of the Swans and the Saints) – half of the 108 points we won by in 2008 to pinch fourth spot after multiple results went our way on the final weekend.

Last year I said the last game of the season (which he played in Hobart against Freo, AKA Cooper Sharman Day) is something of a victory lap of the year, although not quite a trip down the Champs Élysées. It’s a day to sit back, relax, and watch the Saints run around one more time. To see the best and worst of what made up the season, knowing that all those elements can’t hurt you again in the same way. You can’t be hurt in the same way Robbie Gray’s matchwinner (2022 version) can, or the barely-there performance against the Bombers can, although nor can the team deliver the high that came following the tension of the final quarter against Geelong, or Max King soccering through the sealer against the Blues.

***

The loss against the Lions deprived us of the experience of looking forward to a week of anticipation and daydreaming. It would have been a little bit fun (but probably torturous). Instead, we rocked up ready to watch Paddy McCartin and Tom Hickey fight it out for the top two while Blake Acres was hoping we’d win to stay in the top four, and Jack Newnes was in a tussle for the top eight. Rhys Stanley was comfortably on top.

Max put the previous week’s 0.5 behind him within two minutes of the opening bounce after some short sharp kicks between Windhager, Long, Hill and Steele, who found Sinclair out wide, and while that was happening Max King had found his way free because he’d apparently put Paddy McCartin on the ground off the ball, and Max curled one through from the boundary. If only it was that easy for him all the time. It was Snags’ turn this week to be missing goals, slicing two gettable shots early (including one that came from a perfectly weighted Hunter Clark pass). The Swans found an easy one through Hayward in the square and then sliced through to Logan McDonald. Funnily enough, after giving up several goals directly out of the middle to the Lions, some excellent work from the centre through Marshall, Steele and Jones to force it forward went over the top of everyone and King was fastest, and ran in for a second goal. In a strange turn of events, it was the first of a couple of goals out of the middle for us.

Max was switched on for any of the fans who could bear to care about it after what happened the previous week. He was leading up the ground, taking grabs on the wing and then, also strangely, right up near the centre circle, a place on the ground you rarely find him in. The last game of the season is for those kinds of strange things I guess; last year it was Bytel kicking his first two goals; this year it was Tom Campbell and Dan Hannebery and Dean Kent being out there in the first place. You also get moments that reflect a team running around with nothing to play for. Jones had three to aim for in the forward line but didn’t quite hit any of them; Mitchito had a shot from the pocket but he kicked the wrong side of the ball and it floated harmlessly to the opposite pocket. An NWM kick on the full went straight up the other end through Chad Warner’s blissful dash along the wing and then long goal from inside the centre square, which alone signalled that 54-point margin was perhaps likely.

***

Either side of quarter time there were some better moments. Ben Long was on his way to his best day with a nice set shot goal after a 50-metre penalty, and Max found the goals for his third after some excellent running and darting by Jack Sinclair. But Josh Battle was having a bad day. Three times he completely missed a target, and the errors were starting to be punished. Seb Ross completely dropped the ball as we tried rebounding off half-back and the Swans were away through Heeney, Buddy and McDonald for an easy goal (multiple times from stoppage and open play they were instantly able to turn defending into hard and fast-running attacking). Battle then dropped a Sydney entry that Reid pounced on and missed, but he wasn’t so lucky the next time around. Heeney ran onto the spill and into goal and Battle had to cop Buddy ruffling his hair. Battle was paid a soft free kick against on Buddy a few minutes later and the nine-goal margin was on, but we went straight out the centre bounce again through Seb Ross and King pushed off Rampe and kicked a delightful goal on the run from 40 metres out. It looked simple for him.

After all of that, Battle came off with a concussion, while Hunter Clark had found another way to get injured. One-hundredth and final-gamer Dean Kent came on and hit up Windhager with an excellent pass early in the third, but it was time again for the Swans to tease out second spot. Hickey got down low in the forward pocket and found Heeney who goaled from close range, and then Franklin was manhandled in the square. The margin was 28 points, and inched out to 29 as they had multiple chances to really put the foot down and set it up for the last quarter, but Heeney made some rare errors. In the final seconds of the quarter Campbell sent a long, high ruckman’s kick to Steele who played on to Higgins and he snuck the kick in just before the siren.

It was back to 23 points. So this game ended up mostly being played somewhere in the most boring parts between the two margins of interest, of zero and 54 points – right up until Steele (who was anchored forward for parts of the second half), Max (another nice kick by Kent) and Membrey all kicked set shot goals to bizarrely bring the margin to just seven with the best part of 10 minutes to play. I’m not sure how seriously in danger the Swans were of losing, even though we did bring the margin back to seven points not once but twice. This wasn’t the same Swans team that played second-placed Collingwood off the park the previous week, but it was the same Swans team that was going for seven wins in a row and a top-four finish. It made for a slightly-more-interesting, almost-fun finish to what was an otherwise odd game, and to the season. But Kent got an ugly bounce at half-back and the Swans pounced. Will Hayward had been presenting problems all evening and played a Diet Cam Rayner role in getting a win over the Saints with some clutch final quarter moments. The first had a lot to do with Dougal completely missing the ball with his fist on the goal line (although he still tried to claim it was touched); Butler got one back courtesy of a sloppy kick out of full back from Lloyd that was chopped off and his dribbler got an ultra-high bounce that just got over the line ahead of Rampe’s fingertips. But Rowbottom won a centre wing clearance and the Swans, again, ran hardest. Wilkie got a fist in ahead of Buddy and Hayward charged onto the spill and finished the game with a high snap kick. We had come so close to Wharfie Time twice during Sunday.

***

The game itself won’t be remembered for too much from a Saints point of view apart from Hannebery showing what could have been, Max King turning 0.5 into 5.0, and Ben Long playing the game of his life. As I said, last games of the season can bring some strange things, and Ben did several things he hadn’t done before – 27 disposals (at 96% efficiency), 17 marks, 13 intercepts, and eight rebounds out of defensive 50, all career-highs – with a couple of thrilling marks and a goal to boot. It wasn’t quite Peter Everitt’s 7.7 in the last game of 1996, or a very young Nick Riewoldt’s six in Stewart Loewe’s last game in 2002, or a less young Nick Riewoldt’s nine goals in the final round of 2016, but it is the template of a game for him to build the rest of his career off. Always looking to make something happen, to get something moving, physically uncompromising, high-flying, and very entertaining. Sign him up.

***

In his final game, Dan Hannebery led all comers for disposals and probably retained his status as our best field kick, and best disposer of the ball generally. Like Paddy Ryder, he looks out of place in a St Kilda team; he still looks like a player from a really good, slick outfit. We’ve forgotten what that looks like over the years. Much like Adam Schneider’s last game in front of Sydney and St Kilda in late 2015, it was the Swans fans that ultimately had more to be appreciative about. Schneider played the bulk of his career with us and was a big part of the 2008-2010 teams; but he was responsible for some of the worst misses on 2009 Grand Final Day, and he was the player that booted us out of 2005 in the Preliminary Final and helped the Swans break a 72-year premiership drought a week later. Hannebery’s story is much more lopsided, a champion at the Swans, premiership player, three-time All-Australian, played in three Grand Finals for them, and even chaired off former teammate Jarrod McVeigh after the last game of 2019. Josh Kennedy reciprocated on Sunday, alongside Jack Steele. It’s a shame it didn’t work out at the Saints. It wasn’t for lack of trying, and every time he took the field he was among our better players.

***

Hannebery and Ryder (in a St Kilda polo) got chaired off, while Dean Kent soaked up his last moments on the field as an AFL footballer. A moment of appreciation, of gathering at the race, in front of the cheer squad and the members. Not quite as if there had been a win, perhaps more relief. It’s an achievement as a fan to get through the season. Footy’s exhausting, whether or not you’re in the top four at the halfway mark. St Kilda is exhausting. Matt said the Collingwood game felt like it was just a few weeks ago. It does, but it also really feels like we’ve seen a lot of ups and big comedown since. This season that was effectively a mash-up of 1999 and 2019.

You take in the mostly Swans supporters who stayed around after the last goal having a kick on the ground. You give in and call Marvel Stadium “Marvel” instead of the Corporate Dome, or the Concrete Dome, or the Concrete Disney Store. You buy yourself a donut because why the hell not. You catch the tram home. You go through the Twitter feed to see what everyone else thought of the game. You watch the post-match press conference. There is a small time now for respite. To take a breath. In a world of pandemics and Putins, there is a moment to take in spring in Melbourne.

***

The club agreed with Gerard’s assessment “mid-table ordinary”. It’s time for a review. We’d gone from re-signing a coach to undertaking a review of the club’s football operations in a matter of weeks. Gerard went back to a forensic breakdown of the Andrew Bassat interview during the heady days of the mid-season bye. “There’s no doubt he’s coaching really well,” said the president, who also talked about confidence in the whole set-up. So what the fuck happened? Did the whole club get together for a heart-to-heart over the bye and discussed how they could shit it?

“I will not pretend the likelihood of missing finals again this year was part of the plan, nor hide my disappointment,” Bassat said in another notable letter to members. “We are not shying away from challenging whether our belief that we can soon break out of the stagnant sixth-to-tenth ladder position that has trapped many clubs is realistic.” Dwayne asked listeners that if Max hadn’t kicked 0.5 and we snuck into the finals would there be a review, but it seems like it was already in train. One listener got the Mystery Craft Beer Bundle courtesy of Hairydog for calling up and saying the club was on the front foot and being proactive.

Was a semi-final appearance in a pandemic-smashed season this group’s peak? Derm said we’re kidding ourselves if we thought this was the list that would take us to a premiership. Now there’s talk of Brad Hill leaving (and Alastair Clarkson was enthusiastic about it on On the Couch). We didn’t get enough out of Hannebery. We wish we could have got even more from Paddy Ryder; Zak Jones has had an unfortunately messy period.

There were 12 years between the 1997 and 2009 Grand Final appearances. This year marks 12 years since our last Grand Final appearance (well, appearances); this time we’re armed with the longest premiership drought in the competition after the Dogs, Tigers and Demons all saluted in that period. In another life Paddy McCartin didn’t have all those concussions, and we were able to develop Jack Billings and Luke Dunstan and Blake Acres into something else. Or maybe we drafted Bontempelli and Petracca anyway. Whatever.

We left Round 1 as the worst-placed team in the competition, and after being in the top four at the halfway point of the season we may have returned to that place again. In some kind of way, the club is lost.

Round 22, 2022
St Kilda 3.1, 4.2, 9.7, 9.12 (66)
Brisbane Lions 3.2, 7.6, 8.8, 12.9 (81)
Crowd: 22,211 at Docklands, Friday, August 12th at 7.50pm

We’ve been living dangerously since the bye. Not in the thrilling way of playing the brash, daring footy that had us busting games open and in the top four at the halfway point of the season. We’ve been living dangerously by playing stop-start, non-threatening, inoffensive footy. Getting pushed off the ball, outworked comprehensively, looking disinterested.

Three years ago it was a trip to Kardinia Park that ended Richo’s reign. Last week we left the Cattery still wondering whether the problem was the “kickers” or the “catchers”, and we also left sitting outside of the eight as Richmond comfortably accounted for Port. Our chances and our time were running out. Top four fancies Brisbane and Sydney to come, while those around is could enjoy much kinder draws. Subconsciously it became that time of year for winding down and reflecting. Sandringham’s season was officially over after their own two-point loss to the Cats, with their decline occurring in sync with the AFL side’s. The anticipation of Thursday night teams had gone. No one was smacking the door down. What’s the most exciting thing that can happen at selection? Hannebery plays and is subbed out again? Jones was named an emergency, and then the sub, again. He hasn’t quite made the impact this year since missing the early part of the season with personal reasons. I hope he’s ok. Sharman was back to being named in the forward line after the club put him at centre half back for the Cats. D-Mac had regressed back to “calf awareness”.

Meanwhile, Big Boy McEvoy retired the week after playing the 250^th game of a career that has seen him win two premierships and captain Hawthorn. His trade is a symbol of our recruiting and drafting in the post-Grand Finals/Seaford era never working out, no matter all of Pelchen’s grand plans. Nick Riewoldt pantsed the McEvoy decision on Best On Ground the week before (and keeping in mind he was at the club to see it all unfold). Perhaps the overall result had a lot to do with the development of player during the Richo era (we still don’t know if that’s changed). The week’s major news item was Patrick Cripps being suspended, and an appeal being rejected, and then a second appeal successful. Those still dreaming of the Saints snatching a September spot now had to worry about Cripps being free to play affecting the top eight permutations, and I was thinking about him lifting the Blues to a memorable win in one of the final two rounds while we barnstormed our way to two upsets over premiership contenders for nothing.

On AFL 360 Extra Nick and Joey talked about bringing effort and went with their hearts and tipped the Saints. Gerard’s word association on SEN for the Saints was “Show us what it means to you”. It decidedly hasn’t meant much since the bye. I listened to SEN on Friday afternoon before heading in and having dinner in the Quill Room. I tried to enjoy the anticipation of what might be the last St Kilda game this year with something on the line. Channel 7 released their broadcast introduction package during the afternoon. Perhaps for the final time in 2022, the Saints were in a highlights package that suggested we were relevant with the Geelongs and Melbournes and Collingwoods and Sydneys and Brisbanes and Fremantles and Richmonds of the footy world.

***

Every game since the bye has had some aspect of a mini-final to it, but this started in a haphazard way more befitting a dead rubber, despite the playing group and coaches forming a circle in the rooms for a pre-match heart-to-heart. Silky Wilkie, one of our two most reliable players all year misread the flight of a wayward Lions shot on goal and dropped what would have been on the full next to the behind post. Snags broke through with the first after Marshall finally cleared it out of the Lions’ forward 50, Long broke through with some good pressure and Snags decided to just turn and go for it from inside the centre square without barely a glance. The ball rolled through.

But the footy was going to live in the Lions’ front half for most of first two quarters, and only some good pressure and tackling on our part – and some misses from the Lions – kept us in it. Their talls were having a say early. We got caught napping with a Hipwood bullet pass to McCluggage on a good angle (he missed), while on the other side of the ground Daniher took a big mark on the wing and his kick found a high-leaping Charlie Cameron who went back and kicked the goal. From the centre bounce, Neale snatched it from the tap down and gave off to McCluggage who was away and goaled on the run. It would be the first of several goals they’d kick directly from a centre bounce. Moments as easy as those defied the magnitude of the consequences of a loss.

We could barely find our way out of their high press when we got the ball in defence and we were reduced to the toothless movement as seen in the worst of the pre-season and the last 10 weeks. If we weren’t bombing it on Max’s head trying to get it into the front half it was Dougal trying to spear a pass through defence that went straight to Mason Wood, only to be dropped off the chest. Marshall finally took a get-out mark which ended in King’s first behind of the night as he kicked it on his right instead of his left under pressure from close range.

The game was slowly wrestled back. Two goals came from throw-ins on centre wing. Lienert grabbed it out of the ruck and gave it to Ross, and the ball went through NWM, back to Lienert and to Windhager who sped away and under heat from Lachie Neale found Membrey in the pocket. The post-goal celebration led to the first of multiple push and shoves featuring Dayne Zorko. Then, as our tackle count ticked over to 28 courtesy of NWM, Ross harried the ball out, Mitchito led into it and turned on a dime into space, took a bounce and found Wood, who kicked the kind of raking goal that only left-footers can kick. We were in front.

But Brisbane won it out of the middle again. The Big O got down low and handballed off to McCluggage, who hit up a perfect pass to Hipwood on the lead (Sharman was in defence after all, and was trailing behind). Hipwood kicked the goal as the siren sounded, making it three of the last five quarters in which our opposition had kicked a goal with the last possession of the term.

***

A team that prided itself on blue-collar pressure and repeat efforts – which prompted Ross Lyon to tell Saints fans to get about earlier in the season – was about to get physical. Long barrelled through Daniel Rich at half-forward, and then Crouch copped Gardiner high on the wing as he kicked. It was unruly but it was about the temperature the game required. Crouch now had to deal with Payne, Prior and Coleman in the latest push and shove. It was nice to see Mitchito getting involved. Windhager got involved in the other spotfires that broke out during the game too. Lienert was mouthy as well.

But the problems with the footy in hand remained. Stop, start, going nowhere fast.

The second quarter was all about holding on and hoping the Lions didn’t completely blow the game open. Daniher rose in the pocket and snapped a goal. They were getting big returns from their talls. Again the game was hemmed into the Lions’ 50. Wood’s attempted exit was smothered, Berry and Neale pounced on it and McCarthy fended off Sinclair, marked, and kicked another.

A Sharman spoil and follow-up should have yielded a valuable goal on the rebound and against the run of play, but Snags decided to kick it over King’s head instead of handballing inboard to Butler streaming into 50. Brisbane immediately took the footy around the other side of the field; Rayner gave a taste of things to come with a strong mark on the wing, Bailey was on and drove it forward and it had circled its way back to Sharman, who almost held onto it but the ball spilled out and Cameron found Hipwood for an easy goal. Hipwood lined up a few moments later and a flaccid two-on-two on the goal line was won by McStay. The margin was 26 points. It was the bad old days of the Watters and Richo eras (did the Richo era ever end?) with every opposition forward entry looking dangerous.

***

A rare venture forward found Seb who was smart enough to pinpoint a kick laterally on the 50-metre arc. Wood stood up again for a second week with a long-range goal when we really needed one. But this was looking more like the Lions’ chance for a percentage boost in their race for a top two spot.

Would it be too much to ask that we could do exactly what the Lions’ opposition over the past two weeks did in the second half? Brisbane has given up a 40-point lead to the Tigers, and then looked like they’d returned to their best for three quarters last week, getting out to a 57-point lead at three-quarter time before nearly shitting it (much like we did in Round 12 of 1997, getting out to a 57-point lead at the final change – almost the same scoreline – against the Blues at Waverley before almost giving the whole thing up).

During the week on AFL 360 Extra Nick said the team needed to “go down swinging”. After yet another half of footy of being unsure how to move it, it was going be fascinating in the least to see what they tried to do after having all of the half-time break to talk about it. Snags spent the half-time break concocting something else altogether, marking on the 50 and drawing the arsiest 50-metre penalty known to science by baiting Zorko into chasing Lienert running past with a feigned handball. Lienert and Zak Jones tried getting stuck into Zorko, reluctantly drawing former St Kilda supporter Jarryd Lyons into the fray.

Again, the Lions got one immediately out of the middle – this time Rayner had the class to bomb a goal on the run from 55 metres. The margin was a precarious 23 points. The Lions didn’t have it all their way – Windhager was in the throes of another career-building performance restricting Lachie Neale to just 16 touches while getting 21 himself, levelling the midfield battle, although Neale still good enough to get involved in goal-scoring chains. But we had Jack Steele kept to just 13 touches, and most importantly the Lions were ruthless in getting the ball back and putting it into a dangerous spot.

We’ve made a habit of third-quarter bursts this year, with different end results. In Round 1, we were 35 points down in the third and hit the front early in the last. Six goals in Perth in Round 2 flipped the Freo game our way. We stormed over the top of Richmond after trailing by 25 a week later; then managed a 28-2 third term against GWS to bring the game onto our terms. We kicked six goals in a row against the Cats after being down by 22. We’d also booted five goals in a row against the Bombers to draw level. Our season was going to need one more added to the list, and then some.

We had a period of holding the ball in our 50 through a series Max King-in-the-ruck throw-ins and stoppages, but we needed reward for effort. It was Mason Wood again, living up to his early-career billing, who broke through. Daniel Rich cleared the area with a shallow kick; Wood was at the fall and got his skates on, baulked Lyons on 50 and his kick floated through. Something had indeed been said at half-time. The switch had been flicked. There was movement. There was space. Kickers and catchers were briefly united. Snags got it on the wing and sent it long with Wood one-on-one the target; he dropped the mark but recovered quickest, got up, baulked one and hit up NWM who moved it on to Membrey just a few metres away.

But things were about to take a devastatingly curious turn. Max had had a shot from nearly 50 earlier in the quarter that you might think would have been a lot-less pressure-filled for him given his track record closer to the sticks, and now here he was taking a huge grab in front of goal in a pack of six from a Windhager kick. The crowd was getting into the game. This St Kilda ploy looked familiar. But Max went back and missed from 25 metres. He’d gone to 0.3. It was about to be revealed that his confidence was shot. Matt said when he was lining up he was a zero per cent chance of kicking it, so perhaps parts of the crowd were already realising what was happening. Zak Jones then punched a short kick to Membrey on a sharp angle from 40 metres out – a shot I absolutely trusted more than Max King in front; Membrey kicked it. We had the run and we’d taken the Lions out of their comfort zone. Brisbane are the highest scoring team in the competition, and their games average more than 181 total points this year. They were stuck on eight goals.

We hit the front a few moments later. Gardiner tried cutting through the middle to McCluggage but we were awake to it. NWM chopped it off, Ross gave it off to Butler, who had been largely anonymous, but here he put in a great run around Starcevich, took a bounce and hit Wood on the lead. Wood kicked his fourth.

We’d now kicked four in a row. Six of the last seven. And it was going to be our last goal for the game.

***

The end of the third quarter was the time to really put a gap between us and the Lions. Premiership quarter and all that. We didn’t yet have them on the ropes, but we would if we kept landing our punches. “Go down swinging”. Lachie Neale was getting frustrated under Windhager’s close checking and gave away a 50-metre penalty to Hill, who found Membrey with a short pass. Membrey, reliable and a leader, went back and missed. Sinclair got the ball back at high half-forward and as he wound up King took a soft dive after contact with Harris Andrews off the ball and was given another shot from 25 out on next to no angle. Matt, immediately, again said he had a zero per cent chance of kicking it. Max leant back on the kick and in that moment a new type of crowd reaction noise dropped. Two chances to go up by beyond a goal in the last 100 seconds of the quarter had been missed by both spearheads. Just take one of them and the game has a different complexion.

You get swept up in the moment. Just like the penultimate game of last year against the Cats, the exhaustion and resignation of several weeks of playing out the clock on another disappointing season gives way to sudden pang of desperation. Wait, no, I want this. It’s still there, it’s still live. I want it.

Swamp reminded us during the week that we’ve offered 60 opposition players the honour of winning that week’s Rising Star nominations, by far the most in the competition. We decided to run a little with that theme on Friday, rolling out the carpet for Cam Rayner to announce himself as the Dustin Martin/Jordan de Goey-style match-winner he’d promised to be when he was taken with Pick 1 in 2017. Starcevich and the Big O were too strong at a bounce in the middle after we’d spent some time forward; Lienert fresh-aired a marking attempt on the defensive 50 and then went to ground, Hipwood swept it away targeting McStay. Rayner was at the fall, split Hunter Clark and Sinclair and quickly and cleanly snapped around the body. Yet again Brisbane went straight of the middle; McInerny worked off Marshall, out to Zorko, and nearly everyone got drawn to the fall of the chaos ball at the front of Daniher, but Hipwood was the one who got to it and Rayner had held his position the whole time. The Lions, suddenly, were out by more than a kick.

Who wants to win you the match? Who wants the ball in their hands? Steele, our captain, found the ball on his own from a turnover in the middle and kicked it to the advantage of a Brisbane defender. Lienert cruised through the middle as we kept looking to move the footy quickly and hit up Max on the lead to steady things Max might have broken new Murmurs McKenzie decibels territory as he lined up. Maybe this time the distance of this would take some of the pressure off after the last couple of shots. He spun the ball around in his hands, leant back on the kick and missed to the right.

Rich took the kick in and hit Zorko, who went up the wing and Hunter Clark pinched it from McCarthy’s hands and then lost control. If he’d held onto it he had Long and Ross ready inside to turn and go for the repeat 50 entry. But instead, Neale broke the Windhager shackles and swept through, and his long ball sat up for the running Daniher. Two goals the margin.

We had two more easy opportunities to get within a kick with more than eight minutes and then more than seven minutes of play remaining. Ross worked to the 50 and Sinclair took a great mark with heat oncoming, and kicked to Windhager, rather than the slightly more central option of Sharman, in the pocket.

His kick went to the right.

Membrey had another turn from a kind angle a minute later after Hill took the advantage when Mitchito caught Harris Andrews holding the ball.

He missed to the left.

The Lions fans at the away end were now taunting the home team. They were delighted. They had nothing to be afraid of. Our best and our spearheads and our leaders weren’t going to get it done. There would be no Max King quarter. No Snags quarter. Strangely, there was a Mason Wood quarter, but Mason Wood’s best game in years – possibly his best game ever – wasn’t going to be enough (he deserved to have a match-winning performance). King and Membrey et al. opened up the door for Rayner to seal the game with a mark on the lead and a snap around the corner from the forward pocket with four and a half minutes to go. We now have high-definition images and footage of Cam Rayner coming into his own against the Saints, ending their season, and telling the St Kilda home crowd to keep quiet.

🤫 pic.twitter.com/Ao2nm47NKP

— Brisbane Lions (@brisbanelions) August 12, 2022

***

The inside 50 count in the final quarter was 18 to seven. That’s 18 to the Saints, mind you, and seven for the Lions, who kicked 4.1 from those entries. We kicked 0.5.

The time for live ladders and permutations and what ifs – “what ifs” of the ladder predictor type – was now over. The rest of the weekend was about letting the results roll. Watching the Dogs and Blues’ own sliding doors moments that barely affected our own fortunes; really it was about keeping an eye on the inevitable Richmond result that relayed our season is officially over (and no, relying on the Bulldogs to lose as well as Carlton losing and beating the Swans while making up 142 points to reel back the Blues on percentage this weekend doesn’t count). Now it’s time for the retrospective “what ifs”. Six months of wondering. What if Max kicked just one of those goals? What if Tim Membrey did? (It’s harder to get as upset about Windhager’s.) We have plenty of time to get excited about Mitchito and Marcus in the coming years if the club doesn’t fuck up their development like it has so many others. We’ve got a season to mourn for now. Windhager might have kept Neale to just 16 touches but Neale looked as happy as every other one of his teammates on the siren.

How reductive can we be in the fall-out of this? Our method wasn’t excellent (certainly not for four quarters) but it feels like this week’s culprit out of the “kickers” and the “catchers” was the catchers – in particular, the catchers’ kicking. How much do you lay the blame on Max King for the result? Or, as the harsher comments would suggest, for us missing the finals? We were still relying on other results either way. I’m wary that Max is a young guy under a lot of pressure (he is also recompensed handsomely and has all the access in the world to psychological help at any time). I’m also wary that while Ratten said some of the right things in the post-match press conference (“I want to go to war with Max”); he also said “He won’t be seeing anybody outside the club, he doesn’t need to. We’ve got people with the skillset to keep working there.” Well, fucking do we? We have a player who should be a generational talent who looks defeated just by the prospect of having a shot on goal; who’s otherwise been manhandled by multiple opponents and has Sherrins bombed on top of his head by teammates that for a lot of the season have been unsure what they’re doing with the footy. Max almost single-handedly guided us to a few wins this year (including kicking 6.0), but when he drops his head he drops his fucking head and he doesn’t have the technique to hold him up. He kicked 1.5 against the Cats last year in another performance that cost us a game that might have changed the trajectory of the season, we got away with his 1.7 against the Giants this year, not so much with his 2.2 with a huge miss in the last quarter from close range against the Power in another game we can point to that might have cost us a finals spot; there was 2.5 against the Hawks, and now 0.5 in another important game. By Sunday, the Herald Sun was reporting the club was actually open to outside help. Maybe Ratten doesn’t know better, maybe Jarryd Roughead doesn’t, maybe Andrew Bassat doesn’t, but maybe Max does and maybe Matthew Lloyd does. Emma declared after the game, “now he is a deflated boy with a large moustache”.

But this is all part of a season ending in a hot-headed rush of watching shots at goal pissed away with a game there for the taking. Max has been the most inaccurate of the top handful of goal kickers in the competition over the past three years, Joey highlighted on First Crack. But really, our problems since the bye have run much deeper than Max. We’re not 3-7 since the bye because of Max’s accuracy or inaccuracy. The gap between his best and worst is emblematic of the gap between the best and worst of this team, a team – perhaps by design – that even in the brighter times of early 2022 relied too much on bursts of good footy. We’re back to being confounded by the relationship between kickers and catchers. We’re back to being outworked, back to being pushed off the ball, back to looking a little disinterested. We’re back outside the eight. Those great wins throughout the season – Freo in Perth, storming over Richmond, a day out on the MCG in the April sunshine against Hawthorn, a fighting victory over the Giants, Paddy Ryder (in a St Kilda jumper) leading us to a win over the Cats, charging home over the Crows in Adelaide; a wonderful undermanned win against the Blues on a Friday night – none of those games matter anymore.

Maybe we did reach the “No D-Mac, no St Kilda timeline” after all.

One week to go.

Round 21, 2022
Geelong Cats 6.4, 8.5, 12.7, 17.8 (110)
St Kilda 3.0, 7.1, 7.4, 10.5 (65)
Crowd: 20,583 at Kardinia Park, Saturday, August 6th at 7.25pm

Just as Gerard declared on 360 that it’s time for urgency, we strung together two indifferent wins in a row against lowly opposition. The West Coast win was important, because we got the job done. The Hawthorn win was almost a 1999-echo calamity – we settled for a 2021 Collingwood escape – but according to some it was important, because we got the job done.

Brett Ratten cracked the shits after the game saying there was a lot of negativity towards the Saints. “We won the game of footy. Everyone can keep looking at how negative the Saints are and what the Saints are doing but we won a game of footy. So it would be nice for people to say yeah, ‘Well done’ for a change.” I mean, sure. It’s great to have someone aggressively taking a stand for the club. Do we take the first two and a half quarters of the Hawthorn game as representative of the St Kilda fighting to keep 2022 alive or the last 15 minutes when we almost pissed it away? The answer is both; just like last year, they both co-exist, and what “getting the job done” looks like to us simply wasn’t going to get the job done against a decent team.

The club wheeled out highlights of the last time we won at the Cattery – all the way back in 1999, in a stirring comeback led by Ben Walton that took us to 7-3 after Round 10. It looked like the team of 1997 and the first 16 weeks of 1998 had returned, but that would be the peak of the Tim Watson era. Just a couple of weeks later was that Hawthorn debacle before a loss to bottom-placed Collingwood, and we finished the season with just three more wins. This year has been very similar.

Geelong had won 10 in a row and hadn’t lost a game since…well, the last time we played them, when Ben Long and Marcus Windhager had massive days across half forward and the wing; Paddy Ryder – who was at the time wearing a St Kilda jumper – kicked three goals, and we turned the game with a third-quarter blitz. But now, 11 weeks later, we were trading entirely on “maybe the Cats are due to lose one” (especially after we avoided the absurdly large banana peel scenario of Geelong having the loss they had to have last week against one of our rivals for eighth spot). Our footy has regressed, matches featuring St Kilda have become forgettable. Collingwood and Melbourne reminded us all on Friday what a genuinely good game of footy looks like.

Know what Id love from the Saints tonight? Apart from a win obvs, but a few neutrals to say "gee that was a cracking game of footy" rather than the usual "God no-one will ever want to watch a replay of that"

— Michael E (@Michael_60) August 6, 2022

***

As it got closer to game time it looked like Geelong might actually be wondering if they should take it easy this week after the Joel Selwood 350 celebrations, and get in a rest for some guys before the finals. A scramble over the Thursday night selection that went right up to the opening bounce saw Joel Selwood rested, Blicavs a late out (but also managed), 2009 Grand Final Sprint winner Rhys Stanley rushed back in, Jon Ceglar relegated to sub, Dangerfield twinge his calf in the warm-up, and all of Menegola, Tuohy and Dahlhaus brought in late.

So maybe they were due for a loss after all, and from our perspective something a result we’d been inching towards since getting pantsed in 2013 and 2014. “I’m feeling the Saints tonight”, Matt said. I have to admit, part of me thought we might be competitive, or rather, didn’t want to give up on the season just yet, just as we had to at the Cattery late last year. Our selection moves didn’t quite feature the blue-chip names that the Cats’ did – Owens was kept, Jones was the sub, Sharman stayed in even with Dougal back. The St Kilda site sprang a feature on Cooper Sharman’s switch into defence on game day, but he was spotted in the opening minutes deep in the forward line working with Hill to set up Sinclair for the first at the construction end. (I went to Kardinia Park for the first time ever early this year for an AFLW game and even with a quarter of it missing I could not believe Geelong has a whole stadium like that to themselves).

The well-worn notion of “Geelong’s bigger bodies” came into play early. Steele only found the footy three times in the first quarter and Hannebery four. Atkins, De Koning, and Menegola all worked through traffic to drive the ball forward to Hawkins and Dougal, and there was nothing Dougal could do to get around Hawkins’ strength. We weren’t doing ourselves any favours when we actually had the ball. Max King at half-forward kicked it straight to Parfitt, and the Cats cut a path through the middle (and some mild resistance) for another.

Six goals were kicked in the last seven minutes of play of the first quarter, including four in the last three minutes. Rhys drove went out of the middle and Matt Stevic resumed St Kilda duties after the Fremantle debacle with a touchy free kick against Dougal to Hawkins, who was already eyeing off a re-entry into the Coleman Medal race. The Cats got another one from a 50-metre penalty and it took Mason Wood to show some real attack on the footy at half-forward and draw a high free kick from Duncan (despite the new interpretations) and be good enough to finish with a long goal for a breakthrough. But Duncan got one back on the siren, and there was a hill to climb.

We came out of the first change looking much more awake. We caught the Cats napping with short passes from Mitchito in the forward pocket to Butler and to Membrey to improve the angle. It was seven minutes of play before Skunk kicked the goal, but we were up 6-0 in the inside 50s count. Long smothered a Cameron kick on the wing and ran the footy up with Seb and Snags, who accidentally found Max in the pocket. Max ignored a couple of options to improve the angle as he did last week – although he was a bit closer to goal this time and probably wouldn’t have attracted the same type of feedback from Mason Wood – and kicked the goal around the left.

The tempo had lifted. This looked more like a game between the premiership favourite and a finals contender. Webster got caught deep in defence by Parfitt in a scramble and the ball immediately ended up with Isaac Smith in the square, while Steele made his impact catching Menegola up the other end and bending a goal through. We then pulled off one of the better passages of play of the night – Paton off half-back, out wide to Sinclair, to Hill, who cut inside to Windhager; Sinclair kept running the length of the slim wing and passed to Snags at half-forward who almost ruined the whole thing with a chopped-off kick to

Mitchito, but redeemed himself by cutting off a Geelong handball, and King squeezed it out to Butler. Somehow, it was just four points.

We finished the quarter with 16 to five inside 50s, but with their fifth the Cats, again, managed a late one on the siren, this time through Stengle. They’d kicked two goals in the final seconds of both quarters and held a 10-point lead. It wasn’t the end of the world, although it might be the end of the season.

***

All of this was happening in a manic few hours that featured all of 6^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th on the ladder. Over the week we were calculating the good and the (much more probable) bad outcomes. Fremantle beating the Dogs was good for the here and now, but also it might mean Sydney are playing fourth spot when we face them in the final game of the year, rather than having top four locked up and coasting like when we played the Dockers in the last game of 2013, although if results go our way it might be a little closer to the Round 24, 2011 scenario when we faced the Blues at the MCG on a Saturday night. But really, 2022 is shaping as a “choose your own adventure” of how to miss the finals. While we were trying to get into the game at the Cattery, Richmond had kicked a goal after the quarter-time siren themselves over in Adelaide to get some breathing space.

So much for all the permutations Saturday; while the Bulldogs did us a favour (they’re still every chance to finish above us anyway) we didn’t bother kicking a goal in the third quarter. There’s been some real letdown games over the years with our season on the line, or real stakes up for grabs, against fellow finals aspirants. A thumping in 1998 at the hands of reigning and eventual premiers Adelaide (backed up by a smacking by bottom-of-the-ladder Hawthorn) as the season spiralled out of control, a smashing in Perth against Fremantle late in 2006 to decide a top four spot, a meek effort in a play-off for top spot against Collingwood at the MCG in 2010 in front of more than 81,000, and barely moving the footy against North in 2016 in a game that helped decide our ninth positioning.

Jeremy Cameron got back into the game. He kicked the first of the second half and then found Hawkins for the next as errors crept back into our game; Cameron had got the ball because Sharman had tried coaxing Long to run onto the footy at centre half-forward, which was a neat idea to things moving, but the kick went straight to Kolodjashnij and the Cats were away.

Even without Selwood, Blicavs and Dangerfield we were getting thrown off the ball in close and around the ground, and their lesser lights were having big nights anyway. Dahlhaus, Parfitt and Atkins at a centre bounce? No worries. Parfitt had 10 clearances, Menegola joined him at the top of their possession count with 25, and the guy that Geelong strangely (at the time) traded a future first round pick for, Max Holmes, was right there with them. Atkins and Guthrie outworked Crouch and Paton at a ball up on the wing and within a flash Smith was running into goal and all of a sudden it was 27 points. Holmes took it out 33 points at the 15-minute mark after Paton found a bouncing ball in the back pocket and under inferred pressure kicked straight to Holmes, who slotted it from 50. We’d only lost the inside-50 count 11 to 15, but Geelong kicked 4.2 to 0.3. The presence and leadership of Dan Hannebery wasn’t going to help this one.

Our forward line was back to dysfunctional. Three years after leaving Kardinia Park losers in a game that sealed the fate of the Richo era, we leave the Cattery yet again wondering if it was the “kickers” or the “catchers”. Score from turnovers was 7.4 to 2.3, Ratts said after the game, which meant we weren’t using the ball well. He called our ball use “hard to watch”. “Sometimes under no pressure, medium pressure or high pressure,” Ratts said. I think that’s code for “all the time”. That said, De Koning was all over Max. The last we met they were compared to Jakovich and Carey. Jakovich won a few of those battles. This was another game in which you wished Max had a little more campaigner about him, and perhaps could rise above the state of play further up the ground to make some sort of impact (granted, that can be hard when they’re scrubbing the ball to the opposition). Battle and Sharman and Membrey flipping between half-forward and half-back didn’t really work, although Sharman had a lot of almost moments in the front half.

A hallmark of the first half of the year that took us to fourth spot was that this was now a resilient team. The team of 2021 that gave up in the face of anything remotely difficult has returned since the bye (Grant Thomas arced up this week and amongst other things said we were poorly led). Things were about to reach the morbid curiosity stage and I was embarrassed we were doing this in front of Jason Bennett. Three-quarter time was time for the weekly Dan Hannebery injury update; normal programming has resumed and he was being subbed out with an ankle possibly linked to his calf. This was supposed to be season in which the ins and outs list were dominated “AFL Health and Safety Protocols” more than muscles made out of tissue paper. And just as Richmond were kicking away from Port Adelaide, the goals were getting softer. Smith got his third within the first 30 seconds from the goal square, Hawkins, Miers, and Smith linked up before finding Zack Guthrie coasting on his own on 50 and he found Cameron. Paton attempted to get something going through the middle but put the handball to Owens on the ground; he tried getting it out to Hill but they were immediately swarmed by O’Connor, Atkins, Parfitt, and Miers. The ball was worked out wide inside 50 to Cameron whose funny kick was run onto by Close, who strolled through the forward pocket around Wilkie and into goal. Menegola made it 58 points. How much could we lose by? We didn’t have our first of the second half until there was nine minutes of play left in the quarter. Paton found himself in another bad situation, getting rundown on the wing while waiting for something to appear ahead of the play, and then Zach Guthrie made things a little bit funny, going forward and taking a big mark in attack and kicking a goal.

We absolutely didn’t deserve to kick the last two to bring the margin back from 57 to 45 points. We were within four points until the final seconds of the second quarter, sure, but we were wiped off the park from then. This really should have been edging on 10 goals and 45 felt a little flattering. The club didn’t even bother putting a caption to the final score graphic tweet. A bad night for St Kilda, but a decent night for The Fable Singers enthusiasts as Geelong – at least for one night – ditched the weird cover version was offered to the clubs at the start of 2018 (and which the St Kilda board were silly enough to be baited by AFL into using until this year).

We came to Geelong armed with Dan Hannebery and our season in our hands. We left without both. Tim Watson’s reign continues.

Tim Watson is still the most recent St Kilda coach to win in Geelong.

— Daniel Cherny (@DanielCherny) August 6, 2022

***

Ratts said after the game that ineffective or clanger kicks have been high throughout the year “and we’re trying to address it”. He said “the big one will be caring about your possessions”, which was a bit like when Ross the ex-boss told Sean Dempster in The Bubble that he had to work on his football. All these kinds of conversations over the past few weeks, so late in the season – giving more, and more honest feedback to your teammates, “caring about your possessions” – really should just be a January check-in if that. Non-negotiables in an AFL team.

Amid all the fallout from the Crows’ 2018 camp it was this week that Rory and myself made the discovery that Collective Mind had worked with St Kilda in the mid-2010s. According to Collective Mind’s website, in a remarkable bit of spin, St Kilda “became competitive again moving up on the ladder from 18^th to equal 8^th”, which is referring to our meteoric rise in 2016 to…ninth, and no, that’s not finals. This club has proven more than capable to be perfectly poor-to-mediocre all on its own, with or without Collective Mind.

We’re a loss on Friday night and a Richmond win on Sunday away from the season being over. And let’s not get cute with making up the percentage on Carlton; if that’s our path, crystal balling that shows a circa 130-point win over the Swans would be required. (And yes, we did win by 108 points in the very last game of 2008 to get into the top four, but everything about that was entirely different.) There is a pang of jealousy as Collingwood gets the highlights package and effusive praise on SEN and 360, as Melbourne looks to go back-to-back, as Geelong sits on top – their era in which they knocked us off in a Grand Final never really ended – as the Swans storm back into premiership contention (already!), as the Blues vie for a finals spot a little more realistically than us, and with a big future ahead, and as Freo returns to September. At the halfway mark we looked like we could finally live up to the “story of the season” billing that The Age prematurely went with early in 2019. But it’s the same problems of kickers and catchers, and being too nice, and not being able to hit a target, and finding ourselves out of the eight with just two weeks left in the season.

Round 20, 2022
St Kilda 2.2, 5.7, 9.10, 10.15 (75)
Hawthorn 1.2, 1.5, 4.6, 9.9 (63)
Crowd: 25,348 at Docklands, Saturday, July 30th at 4.35pm

Bizarrely, ridiculously, possibly a little perversely, St Kilda is in the eight with three weeks of the home and away season remaining.

St Kilda has been toggling between irrelevancy and moody doom vignette territory on On the Couch and AFL 360. The team that Ross Lyon had earlier this year told Saints fans to “get excited” about was then “bordering on putrid” (BT), an “all-talk footy club” (Garry Lyon), and “sub-AFL standard” and “fraudulent” (Kingy). That team has now scraped together two unconvincing wins against lowly-ranked teams and, somehow, sits clear in the top eight by half a game.

The club felt a little more comfortable putting together a more in-depth episode of Uncut last week (although the shortest one this year has been the most impactful). Seb said he’d copped it from Max during the game. I asked the question last week (many people have) if Max was too nice, or, at least doesn’t have enough campaigner about him yet. So, that was some development we’re hoping for from Max generally, and also from a team perspective given what Ratts had asked of the players following the Bulldogs calamity. But why is this a talking point at the end of July and not a quick check-in in January?

I was absolutely resigned to Saturday evening being the beginning of the end of the season. Our form doesn’t warrant wins against Geelong, nor Brisbane, nor Sydney. Still, 25,000 found their way into the Concrete Dome from the glorious late July sunshine for the beginning of the melancholic indifference tour. Some people on Twitter would have you believe Gresham heading in for surgery was a sign of the club throwing in the towel for the season. Gresham out for the season, Hannebery in. It must be close to August. 

***

The first quarter was a lot of free-flowing circle work, another week for Saints fans being treated to two teams who had no particular September plans. The tank was on with Sicily dropping an easy mark over the half-back boundary line. Matt said this was the kind of game you’d like to play in – bruise-free, a bit of a runaround, a good work-out for everyone involved. Some great athletic leisure activity on a Saturday.

Marshall was everywhere from the start on the way to perhaps his best career game, appearing at half-back on one side of the ground and then setting up the first on the opposite wing by blocking McEvoy’s rushed kick and delivering to Wood in the attack. He was up forward too; although the only muted groan for his scrubbed kick into the 50 showed the crowd’s investment in this game wasn’t as great as hisl.

Max King kicked off another big day of missing shots at goal after Ben Long spread hard on the half-forward line in a rare moment of initiative for positive ball movement and hit him up with a nice banana kick. Max put it out on the full. Membrey missed a relatively simple set shot. There was comedy on the goal line for Hawks’ first as they went from half-back after Butler missed long with a handball that should have been a kick; Webster spoiled the other J. Koschitzke in the one-on-one in the goal square and Wilkie cruised past to handball over the line only to be tackled by Koschitzke, and the ball spilled out and Gunston kicked it off the ground.

Dan Hannebery, playing an AFL match for the St Kilda Football Club, cut through the low-quality Australian Rules on display. He put on a big tackle in defence, and then put his body on the line in the middle for a squaring ball and got crunched by a Hawk, and then did some bustling work from Mitchito and Windhager justice with an early goal (courtesy of a lucky bounce). “Watch them come from everywhere Jase”, said Garry Lyon in the Fox Footy box, but I thought the big celebration could have been bigger. They didn’t quite come from everywhere.

A two-year deal for Butler was announced as soon as he’d kicked five against the Eagles; this week he was offering at least three clangers heading forward. There was soft cheering for Paton and for-some-reason-now-a-defender Cooper Sharman also signing two-year deals during the week. Hopefully, Sharman’s stint is consigned to history in the same way Malcolm Blight’s 2001 “Barry Hall Experiment” was, although special mention to Sharman’s several excellently-timed thumping spoils as he endeavours to become a regular feature of the Golden Fist.

Membrey, in another low-key 150^th for this team, got on board with Butler’s clangers and missed another set shot – he’d got it because Hannebery instinctively knew where to put it – and then outright kicked it to a Hawks player inboard as we tried pushing forward on the members’ side. I was starting to get that feeling that Hannebery was one of the few guys who actually knew what might be on the line or what it might take, and then there was the now traditional panic of seeing the number 10 above the interchange bench and only three Saints players visibly sitting on the pine – none of them Lethlean’s mate’s son. Ah, fuck, I thought. He’s in the rooms. But he was just getting rubbed down on the boundary. He’s a minute-by-minute proposition.

Ball movement was again an issue; long kicks down the line were favoured over of the fast, cutting ball movement off half-back that we displayed against Carlton in the We’re Briefly Good Again match a few weeks ago. The next goal had to come from brute force; most of the players were around the ball-up directly in front of our goal, Ben Long laid one of his nine tackles and Crouch caught Sicily, with ball the falling out Sicily’s grasp just before it went over the line for a rushed behind.

The game was there if either side decided to turn up. We looked not very good, Hawthorn looked quite bad. Sam Mitchell had obviously given everyone a licence to go the torp and it never quite came off – one went straight to Wood and came back, Mitchito competed in the air and Butler was in the perfect spot – they fucked up the 6-6-6 rule twice and gave away a free, and they gave away 50-metre penalties. 

This game had few genuine highlights but we were treated to the funniest goal of the year. Steele found Long again on the spread at half-forward, and his kick to near the top of the goal square should have been marked by Membrey but was dropped. Mitchito kicked off the ground directly towards goal but the ball cannoned straight into Max and then he fresh-aired the follow-up; Snags and Blanck rummaged around for it for a bit, Mitchito got low and Wood had a half-hearted attempt off the ground that looked more like he was tripping over it, Mitchito got low again and tried another shot himself but his kick went straight up and then backwards and was thumped away. Seb was sick of it all and finished it off with a classy kick around the corner.

After multiple times walking back into the rooms at the main change with just two goals to our name, this week the novelty half-time score belonged to the opposition. Hawthorn sat at just 1.5, although we sat at just 5.7. Another week, another showcase of a dysfunctional forward line. Or dysfunctional structure, or lack of connection between the kickers and the catchers, as Richo used to describe it. Richo’s gone and won another premiership at another club but we’re still dealing with the issue. Any serious team would have been up by 50.

***

Skunk finally got his moment in his milestone game. The first-half-of-2022-version of Seb Ross connected with Windhager, on the wing, on to King and back to Ross, his kick hit Mitchito and Sicily, Mitchito competed with Sicily on the ground and got the handball to Snags and gave off to Membrey, who kicked the goal from an angle just inside 50 off a step and across his body. It wasn’t a typical Tim Membrey moment, but it was one of the better ones.

We were making our move but there was still time for self-created calamity. Hannebery nearly put Sinclair in an ambulance twice in a few moments showing a rare lack of awareness, first diving into his legs from behind while they contested a wide kick all by themselves, and then popping out a handball to Sincs with a Hawthorn opponent bearing down on him (somehow, the passage ended with Mitchito getting reward for his efforts up forward). A few moments later Hannebery and Sincs combined on the other side of the ground; Sinclair had “only” 24 touches but was making every quick handball and deft kick count. He found the footy and propped it up to Hannebery; as soon as he got it Matt next to me uttered “he’ll hit someone up here”, and immediately pinpointed a pass to Max, who went back and finally kicked straight. Hannebery (Sincs moments aside) has the reflexive, unflinching nous of someone from a genuinely good football team. I remember that’s what he looked like when he arrived (on the field) in the second half of 2019, and perhaps as an indictment on the rest of the team he still stands out in the exact same way three years, one coach and a pandemic later.

“Well now they’ve got to be ruthless, the Saints,” Jason Dunstall said in special comments. The score was quickly 55 to 11. We had an excellent chance to take it out further but Clark waited a moment too long to give back to Butler on the charge off half-back. The Hawks had reached that “nothing to lose” state and decided to go for it; they cut through the middle and the ball ended up with Butler’s brother. His connection was awful but it went straight and long enough, and then Scrimshaw kicked another directly out of the middle.

***

Snags took a mark tight in the pocket and pushed the margin back out a little further, and then Max missed an easy chance to do the same dose from a throw-in free-kick. Snags burned another one. The Hawks began taking on the corridor more often and with more speed. Another bullet off half-back after Snags’ miss from Moore hit Ward, and then Gunston competed in the air and O’Meara was at fall for the pass to Newcombe who went back and kicked the goal. We’d have to settle for a 34-point lead at the final change.

Going over the replay on Kayo, at half-time Fox Footy played a package of the 1999 Hawthorn and St Kilda game that at the time was the biggest comeback ever – the day St Kilda gave up a 63-point lead while sitting a game off top spot, which was the beginning of the end of 1999 (and the Tim Watson era). This season has had a whiff of both the 1998 and 1999 late-season fade-outs; some 2019, too, with a lot of 2019’s characters thrown in.

We didn’t quite get a repeat of that awful 1999 day. The Hawks had won three in a row coming into this and were no slouches, but we had the incumbency of two 69-point wins over them (nice, etc.). A boring comfortable win that no one would ever want to watch again was the most likely result, especially when first-half-of-2022-version Seb Ross turned over a Hawks rebound and Max got a very, very cheap 50 from Hardwick that took him to the goal line. Instead, we got a repeat of the Collingwood game last year in which the opposition had just two goals on the eve of three-quarter time and we had a 49-point lead at the 29-minute mark of the third quarter. This time, we had a 42-point lead early in the last when Max was gifted that second amongst missed bananas, squirted shots from closer range and low-percentage shots from out wide and at distance while ignoring other leads that drew the visible ire of Ben Long. Add the 2.5 to his 1.5 against the Cats last year and 1.7 against the Giants in Round 6.

(My match notes here simply say “Nuclear bomb 1958, Commonwealth Games???” I’ll owe that on my Twitter feed algorithm.)

Hawthorn went for it, although had to go around another one of Sharman’s several defensive thumps. This became a bit like the Essendon game – we had no answer to a young team putting pace on the ball and we couldn’t win it cleanly enough to control the tempo ourselves. Gunston went long and quick to McEvoy with a perfectly placed kick in between Marshall, Battle and Wood, to bring it to within five goals, and even when Scrimshaw marked and goaled from close range at the 16-minute mark the margin still felt like comfortable enough at all of four goals. But two goals soon after in the space of 81 seconds – that’s including the break in play for the players to go back to position for the centre bounce – brought the margin to 12 points with more than five minutes left and packed out plenty of dacks in the members’. Butler (the Sam one) took on Paton which broke open the run to Ward and the McGuinness; Marshall looked gassed and then Moore ran onto it from close range, and then Big Boy took it out of the middle, and efforts from O’Meara, Mitchell, Moore, and Scrimshaw to keep the ball alive and moving ended with Moore kicking high to a three on one that Membrey couldn’t hold on to and Breust ran onto it. By this time Hawthorn was up 35-17 in the contested footy in the quarter. The Hawks were playing chaos footy that they probably should have started playing 90 minutes earlier. From where we were exactly two months earlier, we’ve become far too used to our season facing its mortality.

It appeared that not even Dan Hannebery’s elite professionalism and on-field direction could halt this one. This was why Fox Footy had bothered sending a near-A team of Huddo, Garry Lyon and Jason Dunstall to call a game that usually would be right in Dwayne’s wheelhouse – a winter’s day under the roof at the Concrete Dome in a nothing timeslot, with two also-ran teams taking it down to the wire begging for Dwayne to proclaim “firestarters” and “That could be ball!” and call it a classic.

So who stands up in these moments? The Silk-Miller Memorial Medal doesn’t have the profile of other best-on-ground awards but Marshall was a worthy recipient in arguably his best-ever game (30 disposals, 35 hit-outs, seven tackles); immediately, at the centre bounce it was he and Crouch (30 touches, 11 tackles and a goal), who has strung together a couple of excellent weeks now, that combined in the middle. Crouch was good enough to drive it deep forward rather than scrub a shallow kick to a dangerous turnover spot. Snags got a good look at it from King but his snap didn’t make it to the line and Sicily took it one-handed. I remember an article in The Age following the 2010 Grand Finals – from memory by Rohan Connolly and written in the weeks or perhaps the year after, rather than the immediate aftermath – and he was talking about how after Goddard’s goal “they only needed score one more time”, or “they only needed to score once”. Or, to put it more simply, without bringing up the GT and Ross eras, a handy point would have been, well, handy. Marshall, effectively an extra midfielder, stood up with a crunching tackle as the Hawks repelled Steele’s entry through McEvoy and Day and Mitchell and Ward. Roma immediately dropped behind the ball and 30 metres from the stoppage that he created, and blocked off a Hawthorn hack kick forward. Hawthorn’s margin for error was tiny and Battle anticipated CJ’s kick into the middle, and Long was there too to give off to Crouch who was able to score that point.

Hawthorn worked the ball back up to their end but Steele and Butler stood up with tackles in defence; Sharman followed up a spillage from Breust, worked it forward in front of him, got down and spun out and away from Maginness and cleared it in a move that would have otherwise been fantastic, but no one was ahead of the ball. Fortunately, Blanck’s kick back into their 50 was a tumbler and Membrey and Steele helped clear it out, and Wood was there to take an important mark out wide. The Hawks weren’t quite done, but the game was. Breust had a chance to make it seven points with just over 30 seconds left but missed one you’d think he’d usually kick, and then Moore took a mark as the siren sounded, played on and bananaed the ball through for another goal that would have made it an even six points.

***

Heading into the wind that will blow 1st, 4th and 5th our way in the coming weeks, you’d hope the fade-out had more to do with a six-day turnaround off a trip to Perth than anything else. Our first consecutive wins since going fourth, sure, but much like the West Coast game, I don’t think we left the Concrete Dome feeling any better or worse about where this team is at.

As it did in 2021, the best and worst of this side again co-exists within games and within quarters. We thought we’d closed that gap in the first half of the year and decidedly found what this team was all about. The doom vignettes and the general pasting from the AFL commentariat over the previous several weeks had obviously weighed on Ratts. He went for it in the post-match: “Probably everyone who speaks about us speaks about half-empty, every time we speak to somebody, ‘we’re not going well, we don’t do this, we don’t do that’. We won the game of footy. Everyone can keep looking at how negative the Saints are and what the Saints are doing but we won a game of footy. So it would be nice for people to say yeah, ‘Well done’ for a change.” He suggested we’re an “easy target” too. That’s all well and good, and it’s great to have someone at the club standing up for the Saints with some aggression, but after Richmond storming home on Sunday, and given our respective fixtures our place in the eight is precarious. Right now it feels like a small tokenistic reward to say we’re good enough that you’re in the eight this late in the season. Use it as something to build on for next. Steele walked off with some silverware and the players with medallions, but that stuff’s not for right now.