Author: Rory Sackville

Round 13, 2022
Brisbane Lions 2.4, 3.6, 7.10, 10.18 (78)
St Kilda 2.1, 5.6, 7.7, 8.9 (57)
Crowd: 26,610 at the Gabba, Saturday, June 11th at 7.25pm
By Rory Sackville

I was in foreign territory for this game, at my brother’s place with my Dad, on a cold June Saturday night. The Saints were back in foreign territory too, but at the same time it probably felt a bit like home after the two pandemic-affected seasons left us in Qld for a majority of them both. The Gabbatoir was in boss mode like it was 2001, the Lions winning 24 of the past 27 games there going back to 2019. Our last game there against them? A hard-fought two-point loss in “peak pandemic” 2020. 

I really do hate interstate games, especially at night. You just feel helpless. It’s like you have no influence or input on the game, as opposed to if you were there. It’s just you, whoever else is in the room with you, and the commentators. 

The commentators, including Brisbane Lions legend and board member, Leigh Matthews, didn’t provide for much Saints influence or input in the pre-game either. Well, at least there was a pre-game this time, unlike the last Saturday night interstate game versus Adelaide where the broadcast started at 7.24pm and 50 seconds. Over on Fox, it wasn’t much better, with Brisbane Lions legend, Jonathan Brown, providing his usual, middle-ear reverberating, sub-tonal “uhrgs” and “ahrgs”. St Kilda legend Nick Riewoldt seemed to be lulled into the Brisbane narrative too.

Mitch Robinson was back in the side (more on the “Mitch Robinson react face” later”), which reminded me of something I’d left out of my The Juggernaut Era article earlier in the week – his punch on with Gardi outside Eve nightclub … those heady days … 

Joe “Joey” Daniher was also back in the side – another portent of what was to come; the Saints are always on the receiving end of star players coming back into the side or getting up from injury the week before (hello to Darcy Parish who will most definitely line up against us on Friday night).

Roaming Ro was also back (note: I didn’t even know it was a thing) – this is what social media content 2022 style looks like – the biggest insight we got was (unconfirmed rumours) that Doogs sweats when he plays video games.

The Accountant (*checks the ledger*) was installed as Captain – our fourth captain in four weeks. He walked out to the toss with Windy.  “They’re changing the karma of the club”, says my Dad, as Windy handed over a boomerang to Zorko in the now traditional pre-game ritual.

There’s always concern coming off a bye – will the players be flat? Or will they come out firing after a week’s break … well, at least it was the latter, after a string of early-season games where we couldn’t get on the scoreboard early. The Max King quarter was the first quarter, so it seemed, getting right on top of Harris Andrews. Max snared the first two goals of the game in his 50^th of hopefully many games for the Saints. Kicking the first two goals of a game just seemed like an anomaly …

With Crouch going head-to-head with Neale, and Seb, Gresh, Windy and Owens running through the middle, we were getting on top of the Lions mids early  – but soon enough they were reading Paddy Ryder’s (still in that St Kilda jumper) hitouts to “advantage”, like they were reading a little kid’s book. Seb Ross’s inside-50 entries started to resemble 2019 Seb (clearly missing Steele in the middle), with his efforts plopping onto the Brisbane defenders’ heads. 

With second playing fifth leading into the game, there was always going to be a bit of heat in the game, and spot fires blew up around the ground at every juncture. Brisbane responded after three straight behinds with a goal through that man Joey, and then punctured by the rare double goal to Charlie Cameron (who had been well checked by first-half BOG Jimmy Webster), after a Brad Crouch indiscretion. Jack Higgins – whose head seems to be targeted in every game he plays – was shoved in the back (no free-kick), trying to kick a miraculous goal resulting in a behind, and we were down by three points at the first break.

The first quarter was littered with kicking errors from both sides, and misses at goal particularly by the home side. Fair to say there were more shanks than a LIV golf tournament. Looking at the stats sheet at quarter time showed that somehow Lienert (the sub) had more DT points than three players actually playing in the game.

So by now I was stress eating away. Snack of choice: a gigantic bag of Sprinters Plain Chips from Aldi with a smattering of old faithful SoC, Chicken Twisties. 

The second quarter wasn’t the Max King quarter, but it certainly belonged to the Saints – even with a little bit of luck from the “not-so-very-good-but-definitely-not-showing-any-dissent-to-them” umpires. A questionable (but on review and reflection ultimately correct) free for deliberate gave Gresh a goal from the goal square, and we were on top. Zorko either didn’t appreciate the gift given to him at the toss, or just doesn’t know what it means to be a strong leader, and gave away an abuse free-kick, and soon after shoved Higgins’ head into the turf.

Speaking of heads being shoved – this is where the game turned. We led by 12 points at the half after a great (but questionable – insert Mitch Robinson react face) mark by Murmurs McKenzie, but a few minutes before the end of the second, Mitch Owens’ daring style worked against him. He met Lincoln McCarthy head-on and got knocked out, ruling him out of the match (and the next one). We’d held the Lions to their lowest half-time score of the year.

Within two minutes of the third quarter starting, Murmurs was off with concussion, and our structure started to collapse. The Lions got the first two goals of the quarter; the first through Starcevich, after Gina the sub’s first possession was a roundhouse to his head, giving away 50, and subsequently, a goal. Halfway through the third quarter the inside 50s read 11-0 the Lions’ way. The game should have blown out much further than it did, but for some excellent defending by the back six/seven all game – especially Battle and Webster – and a couple of goal reviews going our way too.

A huge run by Buts in the middle of the ground (note: this was the stage I realised Hill was playing but more on this later), led to a typically hardworking Higgins goal (who was shoved in the back well after the kick … no free kick). Higgins works so hard to get back and get into position – he has such strong forward craft (and crypto investment skills). The Lions got a couple back, and then Gresh (who had been quiet) took on the game, and set sail from 50 to nail a cracking goal before three-quarter time. We had multiple shots at goal in the last couple of minutes of the quarter for no score. We just weren’t able to sneak ahead, but again – like quarter time – we were three points down. We were still in this game … or so we thought.

But at three-quarter time we got the news we were three players down with Jones off with a hamstring. The CEO-in-waiting gave an on-field interview, basically telling the world what our structure and game plan was going to be in the last quarter. Maybe keep him off the mic mid-game once he becomes CEO?

McCluggage – who in my mind was BOG – got the first of the last after a dropped mark by Hill (which reminded me again he was playing). Early in the last quarter the stats read 24-8 inside 50s after half-time the Lions’ way. There is no doubt losing Owens and then DMac (and then Jones) limited our rotations, and we just ran out of legs. The defenders never gave up though – they still gamely defended everything thrown at them; Capt Cal with a tremendous save on the last line of defence. With savings like that, I want Capt Cal to do my taxes at EOFY. 

In the end, we recorded the lowest amount of I50s of the year, but no goals from stoppages (see Ryder and his hit-outs to “adv” – won the hit-outs 31 to 25, but lost the clearances 34 to 25). We’re now sixth halfway through the season and, even with a tough run home (Brisbane, Sydney x 2, Freo, and Carlton – who are all in eight – all still to come), I think we’ll be thereabouts come season end. But 149 years of trust issues still linger.

It was later revealed that a few of the players including Hill, Wood and Higgins were all unwell, and it showed throughout the game. With the VFL game earlier in the day (side note: why? Why was the VFL game BEFORE the AFL game on the same day, especially interstate?), there was little that could be done. Losing three during the game and having a few players unwell was just too much to handle.  

On to Essendon, who are the most under the pump team in the comp. West Coast and North are cloaking the troubles at the Bombers … so that means the stage is set (remember those trust issues) … we will have three forced changes, but here’s hoping Nas, Latte and Clark come into the side, and we get on the right side of the (checks notes) ledger.

In a special mid-season bye retrospective, we’re delving into the last time we were this good through the first-hand experiences of Rory Sackville.

For full disclosure, this is a first-hand account of the St Kilda Football Club 2007ish to 2011ish (aka the Ross Lyon era and – according to Lethal – from here on in known as The Juggernaut Era). I worked at the club in various middle management role during this time including sponsorship, community and fan engagement. Overall, I held various positions between 2004 and 2015. This is my account – to quote the reality TV quote de jour, “I’m speaking my truth”. Others who worked, played, were involved in the club during this time will have their versions of events and why things played out the way they did – that’s cool, I’m not trying to debunk anyone else and their version of events. These are my stories … dun dun …

***

2007 – New coach, who dis?

2007 brought Ross Lyon to the club in the battle of the 2005/06 Sydney assistant coaches. John Longmire was a frontrunner to win the top job after Grant Thomas’ departure but Rossy snared the top job. In my mind, this appointment was one of the first “just hire assistant coaches from successful teams” appointments – this approach carries on today. 2007 was a middling year where we hovered low-to-mid table for most of the season. The highlight of the year was the appointment of Nick Riewoldt as sole captain moving away from GT’s captain rotation policy – this was a wise move.  A late season draw to the equally low-to-mid-tabled Western Bulldogs and close losses to Collingwood and West Coast ultimately cost us a spot in the finals when Adelaide upset Collingwood in the final round at the now-known-as Concrete Disney Store to clinch eighth. In hindsight, whilst you want to make finals every year, this wasn’t a bad thing as Geelong were always going to win this one.

2008 – Can you smell what the Ross is cooking?

Something changed. The ninth-place finish spurred the team on. I’ve always believed a team needs a good year to settle into a new coach (and I’d seen GT into Ross into Watters into Richo), the 2011 Cats aside where C. Scott inherited a premiership team in waiting. 2007 was learning Rossy’s new game style – defensive, accountable, next man in – epitomised by the Rob Eddys, Andrew McQualters et al – getting to learn the ropes. 2008 showed us what they had learnt. The tone was set from Round 1 with a 6.15 to 6.13 win against Sydney – the apprentice defeats the master at his own game. Some of the old, pre-Rossy traits were still there though and by mid-season we were exactly where we were at 2007 season’s end – ninth. It looked like we were in for another middling season but we came home with the wet sail with a 7-2 run after Round 12 leading into the last game of the year against Essendon in seventh position. As per usual, the live ladder and its computations were in full swing in Round 22 as fourth to eighth spots were all up for grabs with the ridiculous “if North lose by more than 70 but Port score more than 140 and North score less than 70, Adelaide win and Saints win by 100-plus and Mercury is in retrograde … Saints will finish fourth” scenario being thrown around. By the last game of the round – the cursed 4:40pm Sunday slot – all the computations and live ladder scenarios had played out (not sure about Mercury in retrograde). If the Saints won by more than 100, we’d snag fourth spot and the double chance. Well, that happened too. The Saints won by 108 points kicking 7.6 to 0.1 in the last quarter in an absolute procession – Milney with seven including three in the last.  This was a sign of a team that was starting to believe … the additions of Sean Dempster (who did his knee very early in the Round 22 game and missed the finals and first half of 2009) and Adam Schneider – both Swans premiership players – brought experience and polish to a very talented side that had that delicate mix of youth, experience, talent and hard workers.

Geelong again looked unstoppable (which ultimately wasn’t true, all thanks to Stewie Dew) but easily accounted for us in the Qualifying Final – which totally made sense seeing we were in seventh place one week before the finals. Knocking off the Pies in the Semi-Final set up a Preliminary Final against the Hawks. This ultimately became Robert Harvey’s final game; he’d announced his retirement late in the season and was chaired off with two Brownlows, 380-plus games, umpteen accolades, but no flag. But – being completely honest and transparent – the players and certainly the club was nowhere near ready to play in a Grand Final. The murmurs went around the admin team after the game with words to the effect of “lucky we didn’t win that – we would have been nowhere near prepared to play in the big dance…”. No one remembers Preliminary Final losers anyway … all this did was set us up for quite literally the greatest home and away season put together by a side in the AFL era. A side note here – it’s been statistically proven (Footballistics) that the 2004 St Kilda side was the most accurate and potent side ever – I often reflect on 2004 as the one that really did get away but onto …

2009 – The Greatest Show, that wasn’t, man

I could spend countless words on 2009 – this whole retro could be on 2009 – 2009 made The Winning Streak DVD (2004) look like The Midday Movie. A club-unprecedented 19 wins in a row to start the season, the greatest home and away game ever, another McClelland Trophy for the cabinet and again accolades galore … but no flag. Off the back of the 2008 form and seeing Rossy’s game plan and style gelling with the team, the club knew it was in for a big year. 

I’ll spend a bit of time on the Round 14 v Geelong game – both teams undefeated by Round 13 (an AFL-era unprecedented feat) – in the years before the floating fixture, the AFL had got this one wrong at the start of the season scheduling the game on a Sunday afternoon. It didn’t deter anyone with a still-AFL, now-known-as-the-Concrete-Disney-Store-record 54,444 crowd. It was a TRUE sell-out by every stretch of the imagination. Every single person attending had to have a reserved seat and the club, the AFL and the stadium went out of their way to ensure every patron sat in their seat. This makes sense, but typically people just sit wherever they want (even in reserved seat areas) so the club had staff members patrolling the aisles to ensure that everyone was sitting in their allocated seats – including staff. The game itself was truly pulsating, right down to Gardy killing ironing out Harry Taylor taking the mark that ultimately led to a six-point win.

After the win the club was on the highest of highs. The show kept going until Round 20, after sneaking a one-point win in Sydney in Round 18 and accounting for the Hawks in Tassie whilst resting some key players in Round 19. Momentum is real, and we lost it. Close losses to Essendon and then North, and then a lacklustre 47-point win to the bottom-placed Melbourne leading into finals. There was never any doubt we were going to make the Grand Final but an unconvincing Qualifying Final win v Collingwood and a sneaky seven-point Preliminary Final win against the Bulldogs – we’d been behind all game, and snuck in front with seven minutes left, and a Nick Riewoldt toe-poke put the game out of reach with a minute or so to go.

Onto the Big Dance for the first time since 1997.

This time, the club – players, admin, members and fans – were all ready for it. Planning had started months earlier (mainly as no team that had been 13-0 had ever missed the Grand Final – so effectively we could have planned to play Geelong – no doubt the footy department were planning for this too!) – everything was falling into place to snare our first flag since 1966. We all know about Scarlett’s toe-poke (cringe), Hawkins goal hitting the post (double cringe – leading the rules being changed and goal reviews being introduced) but what hurt me the most was Max Rooke tumbling a goal in after the siren had sounded. We fell away so badly in the last quarter against a team that had our measure. I genuinely believe the wet weather did not help our game style and neither did not playing at the ‘G often enough (our first game of the year there was Round 22).

I’m of the view that every club restructures approximately every nine months or so, on and off the field. You don’t win the premiership? You’ve failed. Something has to give. The industry is brutal at best. Players go and more go, staff churn (at 11.5 years when I left I was the longest-serving administration staff member at the time – most come and go within one to two years), coaches’ contracts expire, and out the door they go. The club knew they were in the window, clock hands closest to the premiership, so they threw their first draft pick at a player who absolutely fit the bill of what we needed – outside run and some polish to support the defensive, in and under style of play. There are some brutal things I could say about Andrew Lovett (who was at the club for all of five minutes but somehow stuffed it up) but I’ll let a quick Google search cover that off for me. So let’s go to…

2010 – Bounce baby bounce

When you look back at the 2010 season there were some weird results and our performance throughout the year put us in a strong but never dominant position. I put this all down to losing Nick Riewoldt for half the season to a terrible hamstring injury in Round 3. Adding players such Adam Pattinson (a great bloke who I later met again outside of footy, but a solid, foot solider by his own admission) and Jesse Smith (who never, ever, ever got on the park but touted by many as the greatest ever half-back flanker that never was) and the aforementioned Lovett didn’t eventuate to the additional polish we needed to win a flag. A seven-game winning streak (six without Riewoldt) set the season up well finishing in third place – a game and half behind Geelong. That half a game? A draw against Hawthorn in the annual Blue Ribbon Cup. This game was a see-sawing affair. Usually when you are presenting a cup for the game the result is known as you make your way down to the field but we had no plan for if it was a draw. I watched the end of the game from the bowels of Docklands with the Chief Commissioner of Police Simon Overland, the CEO of the Blue Ribbon Foundation and other guests from the Silk and Miller families. I recall turning to the Chief Commissioner after the siren and saying, “Well, you’re the most senior person here – you make the call on who gets the cup!” – it made sense to give it back to the team that held it anyway (which was the Saints after the Max Hudghton-led 2009 win in Tassie).

Outside of the Qualifying Final win in Adelaide in 2005 (where the entire club was flown over to watch the game) – I think the 2010 Qualifying Final result was my favourite finals win, beating Geelong by four points in a thriller (this is in the back any day of the week). Another classic game between the two sides, and some personal glory with my wife and her entire family being Geelong supporters. Seeing off the Bulldogs again in the Preliminary Final (by now you’re starting to feel sorry for the Bulldogs and their run in prelims 1997/98 and 2008/09/10 but then win one out of their-you-know-what in 2016), this sets us up for a Grand Final against … well, every team’s nemesis … Collingwood. This is officially the fourth-best Grand Final of all-time, epitomised by Brendon Goddard’s mark of the year and subsequent goal to put us a goal up with just under seven minutes to play. Lenny Hayes’ forgotten Norm Smith Medal performance of 32 touches, 12 tackle and a goal (and one lost voice) showed everyone the type of big-game player he was. Don’t forget he kicked it into the 50 for BJ’s huge mark and it was his kick that led to the game equalling point … that bounce … that f^%$ing bounce. It was widely viewed that we had spent our tickets in that game and the 56-point loss the next week proved it. Again, the AFL changed the rules not long after and a drawn Grand Final will never happen again.

And for the third time in three years, we beat the eventual premiers during the season all to no avail. And we all thought that not winning three Grand Finals in two years was the worst thing that could happen to the club.

Welcome to 2011.

2011 – Schoolgirls and Seaford and Dockers (oh my!)

Three major things occurred in 2011 (well, late 2010 and 2011). The “St Kilda Schoolgirl”, Seaford and Rossy leaving to go to the Dockers are all well reported. The worst thing was a combo of the first two with the “St Kilda Schoolgirl” turning up to the first training session at Seaford handing out provocative flyers. It wasn’t pretty stuff. The club’s response? Hide, hide and hide some more. In hindsight, this was the worst thing they did. They had just moved to the Frankston LGA and this was supposed to be an opportunity to open up the Bayside that we claimed we owned … but we hid. Hid from the media, hid from fans and members and hid from the community we were supposed to be embracing. I’d just taken over the club’s community engagement programs including things such as school visits and I recall a conversation with a senior club official who told me, in no uncertain terms, that we’d be doing the absolute bare minimum community engagement. This was not the way to engage with the local community and our fan base, certainly not a way to grow the club. This was all before the season had even started.

It was clear we had run out of petrol by 2011, the hangovers from the highs of 2009/10 and the offseason troubles including the NZ drug scandal (which I’d forgotten also happened in early 2011 such was the onslaught of off-field issues). The start to the season was disastrous – losing Lenny Hayes to an ACL in the Round 2 draw versus Richmond. By the mid-season bye we were 4-1-7 sitting in 12^th position. The bye was a godsend – wet sail again – and we finished off the season 8-2, finishing in sixth. The oddity of finals and game locations meant not only did we have a home final against the Swans but it was an ACTUAL home final at the soon-to-be-known as the Concrete Disney Store. We couldn’t lose this one – we had momentum – but we did, and easily, thanks to an Adam Goodes and Ryan O’Keefe double act.

Four days later, Rossy was gone. Some say he double-crossed us, some say he walked out for money due to some issues, but we didn’t sign him when we had the chance. Negotiations went on and on but we didn’t get the signature. I happened to still be at the Linen House Centre in Seaford the night he walked out in a purple haze of bluff and bluster. It wasn’t a pretty start to the season; it wasn’t a pretty ending either.      

***

You look back at this era and it was the era of Victorian teams – 2007 to 2011 – Geelong, Hawthorn, Geelong, Collingwood and Geelong with Geelong, St Kilda twice, and Collingwood runners up (Port Adelaide being the outlier in 2007). We had our chances, but just couldn’t take them. It just wasn’t meant to be.

On this era you could easily script a mini-series apt for (insert one of the countless streaming services here) and have enough content focusing on the off-field components only. Maybe I’ll write a screenplay next?

After all this I’m but one a small handful of people who can proudly say they’ve worked at three Grand Finals in two years (and an even smaller handful of people who can say this AND worked at the first-ever AFL game played overseas for premiership points). It truly was The Juggernaut Era – let’s hope this is The Juggernaut Era Mk II.

Round 10, 2021
Western Bulldogs 3.5, 10.10, 15.13, 21.18 (144)
St Kilda 2.0, 3.1, 4.2, 5.3 (33)
Crowd: Reciprocal, at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, May 2th at 7.25pm

A DM landed in my Twitter inbox late on Saturday afternoon. 

“Rory, you can say no, but would you like to write this week’s report?” 

I was keen, so I replied, “I’ll do it. How many words, what’s the tone?” 

My internal monologue said, “I’m not a professional writer! I can’t write like Tom and Lethal.” 

A reply came back, “try for 1500 words – and make it cathartic”. 

After the game I considered a Bart Simpson-esque blackboard gag of writing, “We are crap”, five hundred times – but didn’t think that would cut the mustard for my blogatorial debut. 

This will be like something out of the movie, Inception (where the follower and fan becomes the content writer), so here goes. 

It was a reciprocal home game for the Saints, but I quickly realised that this does not equal a commensurate home game. While I was interstate for work, I got an email from the club at 9:30 the night before tickets went on sale for this game. Lack of organisational time meant I was destined to be watching the game at home. 

I’d heard of mates with Level 2 Premium reserved seats instead being offered nosebleed tickets on Level 3, or they could purchase another Level 2 ticket for $70 in the General Sale purchase window – reciprocal, not commensurate. 

This negative worked in my favour. Instead of a cold May night at the Concrete Disney Store, I was at home with the heater on, watching on delay. A kid’s party earlier in the afternoon spilled into the early evening. My snack of choice for the evening was leftover mini-vanilla cupcakes, with swirled blue and pink icing, dusted with edible glitter. 

The pre-game build up during the week for two teams who played finals last year was measly – probably representative of second playing eleventh. A highlight was the celebration of Josh Battle’s 50th game. Josh is playing like an early 00s Brendon Goddard (without the terrible haircut) – he’s fifty games into his career, and after two coaches and four years of development, they are still trying to figure out which position best suits him. 

Losing RoMa (again) to a foot injury (again) brought in McKernan – again, this was definitely reciprocal, not commensurate. Geary came into the side for his first game of the year to add some on-field leadership. This was on display early with an intercept mark in defence, whilst his now-regular Dogs’ opponent, Caleb Daniel, started on the bench. 

This was always going to be a clash between the much-vaunted Dogs’ midfield (actually missing a few vaunts), and the Saints’ ruck combo of Ryder and the reciprocal McKernan. So to hear the call from the umpires of, “No St Kilda”, in the ruck a few times early was just a bit weird.

It was a rough start to the game, with the first six shots at goal resulting in four behinds to Dogs, and the Saints kicking one out of bounds on the full and one reciprocal McKernan shank. Watching on replay, this was unbelievable for an AFL footballer.

Soon one of the many, many Dogs’ mids, Libba, kicked a good goal on the run. 

The Saints came back with a quick reply from Membrey, who took a strong contested mark from a long Clark Inside 50 kick. 

Billings, Clark and Hill were all busy early, and, when we got going, we kicked accurately – but the Dogs took an eleven point lead into quarter time after one of those, “what was that fifty for?” moments. 

The Dogs started to kick away early in the second with their midfield getting on top. 

Then it got ugly. 

Goal after goal after goal from the Dogs, taking the half time margin to fifty one points. It resembled the Saints of earlier this year against Richmond, Essendon and Port Adelaide. Heads dropped, the margin seemed insurmountable, so just give up. 

The first goal after half time went to the reciprocal McKernan, who had been present all game, but had failed with execution on numerous occasions. 

But all was lost… 

Halfway through the third it was twenty three scoring shots to six, and the margin was fifty four points. It could have, and should have been, a lot bigger. The Dogs sliced the Saints up with precision disposal by precision players. In the end it blew out, both in number of scoring shots and margin. 

The highlight of the third quarter was a scuffle in front of the reciprocal Saints’ home end (aka the Bulldogs’ cheer squad end). Clark dumped Weightman in the back, Weightman responded with a tap on the chest, which resulted in another fifty to the Dogs, with Weightman kicking the goal. There was no Saints’ player on the mark, as they were all still involved in the scuffle. 

Last week Ratts had questioned why bother tackling if you are not going to be rewarded. Players took this literally, with only thirty six tackles to three quarter time. It was great to see Ratts backing King in during the week though (ten marks, six shots on goal, in my mind, deserved a coaches vote or two for the Geelong game), whereas the Saints of old would have dumped a young player under the pump to Sandy. 

Unfortunately, King responded with the most recalcitrant performance of his career, taking a mark late in the game to the unnecessary Bronx cheers of the crowd. 

At this stage, I must mention Josh Bruce, so here’s me mentioning Josh Bruce. That’s all I have time for (for him, or for the word count). 

The Bulldogs’ development showed significantly in this game, with Hannan, Weightman, Dale, R Smith and co prominent throughout the game. All have been through the Footscray VFL system, whereas we still tinker with the Sandy arrangement (read: an away jumper that is a Saints’ jumper, with a block of Arial font that says “SANDY”). Ten years later, when every other team is now seeing the value of investing in their own VFL / development system….debt sucks!

Butler, Lonie and Higgins went missing again (again). Clearly the three of them can’t be played in the same team at the moment, but who comes in? The calls of “play the kids” will come, but we really have only four “kids” playing at Sandy, (a result of trading away draft picks) – Allison, Clav, Coff and Connolly. 

None of these are really medium/small forwards. Allison was recruited as a forward, and is playing down back and on the wing to learn his craft, and rightly so. And we are playing the kids, with Byrnes having his best game of his fledgling career against the Dogs and Bytel stringing games together without being mysteriously dropped to Sandy or starting as the medical sub. Calls will come to play Dunstan because of his numbers in the VFL, but this is not a numbers game, as he can’t seem to elevate his game to an AFL level. Calls will come to draft Nathan Freeman in the mid-season draft, but he did his time at the Saints, and in the system, and he is not the answer. 

We are clearly suffering from prime-time fatigue. Up on the big stage, and a big loss again (again). Seven showed highlights of the 2009 Preliminary Final before the game, and that seems a lifetime ago now. Gee beating the Dogs in the 2020 Elimination Final seems a lifetime ago. 

Unfortunately, injuries have been staining our year with Clark, Geary, Frawley and Hill all suffering various forms of injury during the game. We have the depth to put a team on the park, but it’s really starting to show. 

Sinclair and Byrnes were the only highlights in a horror performance, the fourth capitulation of the year. Our biggest loss under Ratts, our biggest loss at the Concrete Disney Store, our biggest loss to the Dogs – and our first one hundred point loss since 2016. 

Mixing metaphors, when the heat is on, the tough get going, and the Saints capitulate. 

Where to from here?

The season isn’t over, but it’s over. We have two off Broadway home games, then a Saturday night game against Adelaide in sunny (reciprocal) Cairns. Noosa to Cairns is further than Noosa to Melbourne, so I’m not exactly sure how we’re rewarding our Queensland fans for everything they did for us in 2020. We’re definitely rewarding the coffers.

Methinks the Dogs game will be the last prime time game we have on Seven for a little while. Advantage AFL for the floating fixture, for which they blame COVID, but have been wanting to implement for years. It’s here to stay. 

Earlier this year my Dad (a longer suffering Saints fan than me, who, as a 16-year-old, missed the 66 Grand Final as he was in synagogue on the Day of Atonement), apologised for making me and my brothers barrack for the Saints. He’s 70 now, and I think he believes he won’t see us win a premiership in his lifetime. I’m starting to believe him.