Another life

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.