Author: Tom Briglia

2023 2nd Elimination Final
St Kilda 2.3, 6.6, 9.8, 11.11 (77)
GWS Giants 5.3, 10.5, 13.9, 15.11 (101)
Crowd: 68,465 at the MCG, Saturday, 9th September at 3.20pm
By Tom Briglia

The Year of Exploration led us to September.

A wistful look through the 2023 season scores on AFL Tables in the coming decades will show we spent the entire year in the top eight. But really, week-to-week living was rollicking from taking wild shots at the top four and being on the brink of falling out of the eight entirely, and beyond that, looking like a bottom-four side through the depths of winter. It seemed like the players and the crowd late in the Geelong game thought we locked for finals – that night really did feel celebratory – and then at the Nixon afterwards (you couldn’t get into the heaving Platform 28) I thought we were actually there when Keays kicked that “goal”. Calamity ensued, and it looked like we were going to have to stare down a tense week of needing a win against the Lions at the Gabba, but more than likely be sweating on two games on the Sunday. We’d already had enough tension in the previous weeks to go with the Matildas ffs. World Cup into September hey. I was spiralling towards a menty b, frequently checking the ladder predictor to see just how much we could lose to Brisbane by, how likely it would be that Sydney and the Dogs win, and just how much GWS could beat Carlton by before we became a cross between the Blues of 2022 and Melbourne 2017. Instead, the next day we were assured of finals thanks to *checks notes* West Coast winning. 

The day after Jamie Cripps hauled his old team over the line, Saints merch was already prominent at Union Square Coles. The Saints AFL mini-gnome was smiling enthusiastically up front, while on the next shelf sat the disc-shaped three-in-one bottle opener ($8, I bought it). Round 24, ultimately, was all about where we would finish. A home final looked unlikely on paper until Melbourne rolled Sydney for no reason and Carlton shat out a couple of late goals against the Giants, who came close to pulling off over two weeks a very watered-down version of our 2008 finish to pinch a top-four spot from Adelaide (GWS actually sat in sixth place during that last quarter of the season).

Gerard led the next morning’s Whateley with reflections on the nerves of Saints fans throughout Sunday’s matched. All of a sudden Ross’s mid-week press conference had a microphone in shot that isn’t just a St Kilda-branded microphone held by the internal boofhead.

Swamp and others noted that this was the first time in St Kilda’s history – in its 150th year – that we had played finals in more seasons (28 now) than having finished on the bottom of the ladder (27 times). St Kilda evidently doesn’t often make finals often. This was a little bit of St Kilda history. There was every chance it could be over by the second quarter of the first weekend, but a little bit of history nonetheless. Rory and Andrew and others wrote about how they haven’t been able to take their children to finals yet.

The MCG is a sacred place. For a day, it was ours. In fact, it was for the second time in a year, following the 150th anniversary match. Unheard of. It was a far cry from what Richmond had for the 2017 Preliminary Final against GWS, and it wasn’t quite the 2019 Collingwood vs GWS Preliminary Final, nor the Semi Final between those teams the year before. This was a Diet Lite Caffeine-Free version of that, an Elimination Final, mixed with anticipation Richmond’s first final 12 years in 2013, the Elimination Final against the Blues.

***

And while the different permutations were being considered and spat out by the ladder predictor, and while we rode a great first part of the season and a dull winter, I knew that for the first three weeks of the finals series I was going to be in Mexico City and then San Luis Obispo, California. Family stuff that I really couldn’t get out of, you see. When we booked the flights it was Round 6 and St Kilda sat on top of the ladder; Hoyney and Kingy were rolling out stats about the team and Mitchito weekly as near-confirmation we were set for our first finals series in a “normal” season – i.e. anything that isn’t 2020 (at least 2021 was a full season with full-length games) – and I was going to be on the other side of the world’s biggest ocean. Incredible stuff. Part of me of spent most the year resenting Ross the Boss’s coaching capabilities because I’d be missing a Qualifying Final and a Semi Final and a Preliminary Final at the MCG – which then, as our season deteriorated, became ruminating on missing the experience of Carlton vs St Kilda in an MCG Elimination Final in front of 91,000. I sulked about being on an incredible holiday, I sulked about the prospect of being in a blanket on the couch at 3am in my hotel room with a dodgy internet connection, as if my experiences and memories are more important than those of the hundred-plus thousand St Kilda supporters. A search for “Aussie bar” and “Mexico City” came up with an inconclusive 2011 thread from a forum that may or may not still exist. A call-out on Twitter yielded nought, and I was left on “Pending” in the 74.5k-member-strong “Foreigners in Mexico” Facebook group. In the lead-up to the game (i.e. the beginning of my holiday) I was rattled and I accidentally replied to Tim Gossage (confirmed by the excellent Unpluggered as a St Kilda fan last year) on Twitter simply with my search for “East Fremantle”. It was one of those weeks where you either couldn’t sleep or could only sleep. 

There are some real first-world problems being experienced out there, and I can tell you I was fortunate enough to be having those on a Friday night in Mexico City. Twelve years is a long time, in footy and in life. St Kilda’s first final in Melbourne in 12 years, by definition, happens only once every 12 years. My heart secretly sank on the Monday as Sam Edmund declared nearly 65,000 tickets had been sold. Then there was mid-week talk on 360 of 70,000. Oh, my heart indeed. I had it rubbed in just that little bit more by Matt and Dad who requested that I get online and get the tickets for them and a couple of friends and family. I wore my 150th Year membership scarf to the Melbourne airport, on the flight to Auckland, at Auckland Airport, on the flight to Los Angeles, at Los Angeles Airport, on the flight to Mexico City, and in Mexico City. I brought my 150th Year jumper with me and wore that during the game.

The MCG in September. The Saints ran out to the Fable Singers and I may or may not have shed a small tear. As it ended up being, I was on my hotel bed watching via the OK-ish Watch AFL connection, OK-ish wi-fi and laptop-into-TV via HDMI set-up at 11pm on a Friday night, stress-eating a bag of jalapeño-flavoured Sabritas, with a couple of cans of Modelo and a bottle of Baileys. Another tear as I watched Max King, Mattaes Phillipou, Mitchito Owens, Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and Marcus Windhager lined up for the national anthem at the MCG on a Saturday afternoon in September. Ross’s boys. The rain made way for the sunshine.

***

Rowan Marshall and Cooper Sharman had the first say, Roma got the first clearance and then grabbed the mark in the centre circle from Lachie Ash’s return kick. Cooper – fresh from having had an AFL.com.au feature article written about him – hauled in a strong mark and kicked the first. Without Membrey he would need to have a big day in the forward half.

But that was immediately erased as the Giants nudged it forward and soft efforts from Higgins and Wilkie allowed Toby Greene to pounce. As good as our pressure was in the opening minutes, the Giants had bigger bodies and were switched on from the start. Some good moments – Sharman taking a big mark on the wing, Caminiti’s huge grab on the 50-metre arc that led to a worried GWS backline giving away a free to Roma for our second – were broken up by fumbles from all of Sinclair, Higgins and Wood. 

Marshall appeared set for a big day. Briggs won the clearance immediately after his goal but Roma won the resulting clearance out of defence and you could hear the murmurs in the crowd coming through in the broadcast, “Oh that’s Rowan Marshall again”, “That was Marshall”, Murmers McKenzie-style. It took a long time before GWS had their first mark, which showed we were having things on our terms but like so much of 2023, we couldn’t convert. A Max pirouette led to nought as Connor Idun a big few moments, Max was found on the lead but still wasn’t willing to put the arms out after his shoulder injuries (and also Ross mentioning his ACL wtf) and Perryman put in a fist. Promising high turnovers were dented by more signs were there that something wasn’t quite right. Sinclair made errors he hadn’t made all season; he dropped a high ball on the wing that became a GWS shot on goal, and was guilty of messy ball handling and wayward kicking when so often he has been an architect. Wilkie left his man and didn’t make an impact on multiple occasions. He dropped marks he’d usually take. The ball went straight through an otherwise anonymous Butler’s hands as we tried to get out of defence and O’Halloran found Bedford, who went back and owned the moment. Max couldn’t complete a mark at the top of the goal square after another high turnover, GWS took the field on and went up the other end and a fortuitous on the full from Crouch’s boot led to a big Jesse Hogan marking and goaling from close range. From our Airbnb room in San Miguele Chapultepec, Gracie next to me said, “That whole thing was very St Kilda”. Unpluggered, I think there’s something in this. Contact me and we can workshop the wording.

Mitchito cut through the noise with a great tackle up forward that earned a holding-the-ball free kick but his set shot kicking let him down, and it was just to the right. It was a moment that needed to be taken, because GWS were getting the game on their terms. They cut across the ground, Kelly and Tom Green were extracting, they were spreading, they pedalled harder. A menacing ball from Greene into the goal square saw a frantic exchange between Brown and Keeffe against Nasiah and Zaine and Brown managed to just get it to his boot. Three in a row for GWS. The Saints were getting frustrated. A free kick was given up on the wing and O’Halloran and Kelly were quick to react and ran it straight up forward to Daniels. Four in a row. The crowd had been taken out of it (when have he ever used that terminology about the Saints?).

There was worse to come. Finally, a neat transition from defence to the forwardline but we – to put it simply – fucked up a three-on-two; Mitchito and Max couldn’t get enough separation on their opponents and then competed for the same ball. Mitchito landed heavily and no one had stayed down, and no one was at the fall. We had the entire MCG to ourselves and bottled it in front of 68,000 fans. Aesthetically, on the broadcast, it looked like Grand Final Day. Sam Landsberger had pondered during the week whether or not this would be the most Saints fans ever at the one game.

***

We’re supposed to be the number-one defence in the league but we’d given up five goals in the first quarter. Someone needed to rise above the game because the team system was getting sliced up. Seb Ross engineered his own moment, catching Callan Ward holding the ball 45 out, but hit the post with a wobbling kick. Wilkie was finding his feet with a couple of strong marks. Butler had a massive moment after a massive dive earned him a shot on goal, but his kick around the corner was weak. A long ball to the top of the goal square for all intents and purposes found Phillipou, but Caminiti – who was surely told to just go for everything – crashed into his own man. A harried kick out was won by the Giants and Green, Ward, Perryman and Callaghan went straight up the other end to Hogan one-out for a goal. Bedford then won a pressured handball, Wilkie dropped the mark, and his man Greene gave off to a Riccardi who executed a classy banana goal. Wilkie couldn’t collect a Kelly clearance, Greene danced around him a few moments later and Lloyd was harder at the ball than Hunter Clark, turned and curled another. Daniels and Hogan fashioned a small chain of knock-ons small kicks in the forward pocket that ended with Kelly. You could hear 68,000 groan as they realised the ball was making its way to him, unmarked,15 metres out. Four goals in less than 10 minutes. A 42-point lead.

GWS had made their move. There is something irrepressible about a team making its move in a final. Orange tsunami, orange wave, whatever you want to call it, orange jumpers (fantastic design btw) were surging in numbers across the ground, scoring at will from stoppage (they ended with 8.6 from stoppage). Eight straight goals. This wasn’t the Ross Lyon-controlled game we’d seen for all bar one or two weeks this year. It was September, things are turned up, and the Saints looked out of their depth. A Year of Exploration, a day of finding out.

***

While Gerard’s narrative on the Monday following Round 24 suggested an absolute premium on a home final, tipsters seemed to favour the Giants off the back of nine wins in 11 matches. They were certainly favourites with the bookies. They had a whirlwind of good press after knocking over Carlton in the final game of the home and away season. Toby Greene was named All-Australian captain. David King had GWS as his fourth seed on Whateley. 

The Saints were a little bit on the nose otherwise. Kane Cornes said we were the only team in the eight that can’t win the premiership. GWS would win comfortably, he said. St Kilda dropped the “Don’t believe the narrative” video on the Sunday night and dredged up some disses over the past few months: “lack for talent” Kingy had said; “it’s been a wasted year” said Kane. Greg Baum did go to the trouble of writing up a feature on Mitchito Owens that took up a couple of pages in The Age. This was all on top of Sharman’s feature.

All this came alongside all the feel-good social media faff – “Which Saint is booked in for a finals haircut?” “Which Saint will step up in September?” Using the term “September” implied a length of time, not a weird week off and then a singular game in which we were nopal halfway through the second. Tempting fate, the club posted a bandwagon graphic for everyone to tag their friends in. AFL 360 played that “I’m coming home” Ross video again when it had him on the show – finals build-ups get bigger every year, and this implied something big was brewing. But it’s not ready just yet.

***

With all of 10.10 left on the clock in the second quarter, the camera cut to a St Kilda fan tearing up.

Jack Steele – who played his best game probably since 2021 – simply said after the game that the Giants’ contest and spread was better. Sometimes footy is simple. Sometimes it’s about winning the ball in the midfield, about body positioning, about having bigger bodies to work with in the first place, about class, about fighting harder when the other team has the ball and running harder as defence becomes offence. About forwards not getting in the way of each other at the top of the goal square.

For all intents and purposes the game was over, blown apart so quickly that it was already lost before we could pull the usual break-glass-in-case move of Sinclair into the middle.

There was a “but” in this game, however. There would actually be a few “buts”.

Sharman, doing justice to the feature, rose higher than Whitfield from a quick Marshall and Crouch clearance to get a much-needed win back the other way in that tactical battle, and slotted a goal.

Max King had been anonymous – unfortunately, an accurate word here for a few guys on the day – but there is still something to say about a player who can have little impact minute-to-minute and then in a few moments alter the trajectory of a game. The first moment was actually a shocking miss from close range after our best transition with the footy all game; Butler lowered the eyes and hit him in the pocket, but he never settled and blasted the ball around the corner and missed to the narrow side. A few moments later, Sharman and Butler and then Phillipou and Owens got the better of Ash and Green at half-forward in a rare physical contest win, and Gresham, in one of his best games for the year, neatly screwed a pass to King 40 metres out. He’d found some separation on Taylor and managed to hold on, go back and kick the goal. The whole ground was effectively the St Kilda end, but the St Kilda end was starting to stir. Just a little bit.

Gresham took a sliding mark from Steele’s clearance and hardly had a chance to look for a lead when Sam Taylor most likely lightly brushed Max in the forward pocket, 20 metres out. Max went down and the umpire went with it. Max, probably at his least favourite distance from goal, put it through. He celebrated with the fans. The crowd was a factor again.

Well, it was a factor for 102 seconds. Cumming, Bedford, Ward and Whitfield shirked Hill, Windhager and Steele on one flank from the bounce and the ball drifted to the outer flank. In not the only instance of iffy umpiring leading to a GWS goal, Wood caught O’Halloran and the ball fell out of his hands, was soccered forward and found Kelly. He settled and kicked the goal on his left near the boundary from 45 metres. Cliché: it oozed class. We simply don’t have players (yet) who can do that sort of thing.

But. Kelly’s goal was after the 31-minute mark and it seemed like a mini-fightback had been snuffed. There was just enough time for Gresham to win a ground ball on the wing and give off to Steele with 20 seconds on the clock, who launched to Butler in a one-on-four the Giants’ way, but Butler was held. St Kilda supporter Jack Higgins decided to show up and ran onto the bouncing ball  (I instinctively thought it was Gresham and yelled at the TV) with Idun on his hammer. He gave off an awkward long, low handball to Hill in the goal square, who was dealing with Bedford, but Hill used the momentum of the tackle to swing his leg around and sneak in a goal – which, nearly grazing the Tom Hawkins post, had to go through an agonising goal review.

***

The big news news that landed during the week was the announcement that the club would be wearing the 150th Year jumper in the match. It was going all-out for a 150^th Year celebration victory lap in front of the home fans at the MCG. As an aside, surely the feedback (and response from the club on the run) suggests something like it will be made permanent?

***

The day had gotten off to an awful start with the awful news about Tim Membrey. We don’t need to speculate, and I probably don’t need to say more other than I hope he’s getting every bit of help he needs, and that he is ok.

***

The momentum was ours at half-time, but we were a lapse in concentration or the Giants spreading harder from the game being gone again. But – there’s that word again, and it will be used again – the team came out with a high-energy, aggressive approach that minted a change in the fabric of the game.

It just couldn’t kick a goal.

Sharman flew but couldn’t bring it down. Crouch, having a disappointing day given his output through the regular season, missed a shot on the run that he simply had to kick, in time and space and given the magnitude of the situation. The pivotal moment was a transition out of defence with Battle going wide and finding a launching Dan Butler on the wing for the Bertocchi ham mark of the day. Hill was cruising past and hit up Mitchito on the corner of the square, ahead of him was Sharman goalside of Himmelberg 20 metres out, but Mitchito’s kick floated just wide enough that Himmelberg could command best position, knock it to ground, and then run onto the footy, give off to Green, and the Giants were out of danger. It could have brought the margin to just 15 points.

GWS wasted a couple of good opportunities in front of goal but they had weathered the storm. Phillipou dropped a mark he should have taken and then followed up with a soft effort on the wing, Perryman cleared to Green and his perfect pass found Callum Brown in front of goal. Mistakes were happening again. Sinclair on the rebound kicked to Himmelberg. Wilkie kicked out on the full. “St Kilda up against the ropes,” Jason Bennett declared. And then there was the non-free kick call on Lachie Whitfield for a throw in the Gresham tackle at our half-forward, and Giants spread hardest again. A couple of handballs and Bedford was out, and he was able to kick to the advantage of Riccardi one-out, 20 out. They were just doing the things we couldn’t do. Back out to 37 points. Briggs worked off Marshall at the bounce and knocked on to Green, who had pushed off Steele, and the ball found Bedford for another.

43 points.

***

But.

Given all the momentum we’d had for so much of the quarter, we hadn’t kicked a goal; that does make some sense given the team’s stats on forward efficiency, and it was something that we couldn’t correct during the season and would hurt us come finals. With little more than 2.45 on the clock, Mitchito, for 2023/old time’s sake, found one out the back of the pack after Sharman launched again, claimed the ball, and had the awareness to give off behind him. A muted crowd reception. Zaine Cordy put in an immense aerial and then ground effort as GWS looked to transition through the middle and Webster found Sharman, who had worked hard to find space, who found Hill, 40 out on a decent angle. Hill went back, gathered pace and kicked it. He was proving his worth on the big stage.

We worked the ball forward again and with 18 seconds left, Roma summoned all of the energy in his big frame to work off Briggs at a forward pocket throw-in and kick the ball on his left; it went higher than it did longer (and possibly slightly backwards) but he tracked it, worked off Ward and caught it, gave off to Hill, to Windhager, to Nas 45 metres out. He took a step, feigned a kick, took two more steps, and thumped it through on the siren. In San Miguel Chapultepec, there were multiple wide camera shots of bays of St Kilda fans out of their seats on the Airbnb TV. Three goals in less than three minutes of play. Twenty-five points at the final change.

Our biggest quarter of the year was required. Our biggest-ever comeback from three-quarter time in a final was required. After two weeks of build-up and anticipation, after a whole season really – having the fantastic start to the season – it would take something historical to extend the Year of Exploration, and not have it all snuffed out in a couple of quarters.

Good signs. We picked up where left off again. Butler had another shot early in the last and again went the snap instead of drop punt to useless effect. Ross the Boss was only just getting back into the coaches’ box with an orange Gatorade as Nas took a contested mark on the wing as GWS sought to rebound; he changed things up and went short in-board to Gresham, who went central to Marshall, and Battle was rushing past. Battle wound up but the kick was more of a chaos ball, but it still found the outreached fingertips of Snags directly in front. Instead of quickly going around the corner or trying to blast the cover off the ball and making himself nearly fall over, he went back and kicked a neat, low, tidy drop punt to bring the St Kilda end up again. Just 18 points. Four goals in a row, and the momentum was ours, our pressure was high, the crowd was back in the game. So much time left on the clock.

But.

That was really the last time this team had a genuine place in season 2023. Immediately out of the middle, Briggs came over the top of Marshall, Windhager was in front of Kelly but was forced to ground, Kelly took the bobbling Sherrin and quickly gave off to Green, who had gotten away from Steele. His left boot entry found Riccardi, a metre or two clear of Battle. Riccardi kicked a simple goal. GWS simply had another gear when they needed it.

Riccardi missed a close-range shot at goal for momentary bemusement purposes but that gave way to the fall of the face and sinking of the heart that come as you watch your season slip away in real-time. Snags and Hunter got a bit confused from the kick-out turnover and gave away a 50. Callaghan kicked another easy goal.

Thirty-one points. Enough for GWS really to just ice the game for the bulk of the final quarter. I remember Dennis Cometti in the final stages of the 2008 Grand Final saying “Well, right now, Geelong are being milked with cold pliers”. GWS wasn’t quite employing the keepings-off game perfected by the Hawks in those final moments but St Kilda was doing a lot of the work itself with tired ball and unimaginative movement, keeping the result out of reach, just out of reach, no matter what they threw at it. Pou had been moved onto the ball; as a Year of Exploration faced its mortality, there was still a longer game in mind. Max took a great high grab and kicked his third, but that moment belongs to the aether, not really consequential to the 2023 season, and there’s no carryover to next year. There was only watching the season evaporate for a third time in one afternoon.

***

There’s a reverse or mirror image of 2011 in 2023 but I’m not exactly sure what it is. In Ross 1.0’s last year, 2011, St Kilda finished 6^th, beating 5^th-placed Carlton at the MCG in the last game of the home and away season to secure a home final, against a Sydney team (the Swans) at Docklands. In that game, 6^th-placed St Kilda lost a home final to 7^th-placed Sydney. This time, in Ross’s comeback year, St Kilda lost in the last game of the home and away season but still finished 6^th, despite Sydney team GWS beating 5^th-placed Carlton at Docklands, but not quite getting enough percentage to secure a home final. St Kilda’s 2023 home Elimination Final was this time at the MCG. Sixth-placed St Kilda got the home final but ended up losing anyway to a 7^th-placed Sydney team. There’s something in all of that I’m sure. It’s in there. It’s somewhere.

***

***

Brad Hill said during the week that we brought our best against the top teams. We certainly didn’t bring our best against the bottom teams – we squeaked out eight-point wins against North Melbourne and West Coast, while Hawthorn and Gold Coast both rolled us. Finals, we learned, are a different beast. Our midfield was exposed, our smaller bodies were exposed, our pace was exposed, our class was exposed.

In a Year of Exploration, we made a habit of dirty days and nights at the footy at home games. Having Port laugh in our face again on a Friday night, pissing away the Hawthorn game, and prime time slots against Brisbane and Melbourne becoming really difficult nights of watching bad, frustrating footy that almost-but-didn’t-quite come off. Fittingly, the season closed with an Elimination Final loss at the MCG on a September Saturday afternoon in front of 68,465 against an AFL billboard with a few hundred fans.

This day really did get big on the club. Its first final in Melbourne in 12 years, under the returning Ross Lyon, and perhaps the biggest congregation of Saints fans in history. The team couldn’t rise to the occasion. I closed last season trying to somewhat quote Nilüfer Yanya with “In some kind of way, the club is lost.” This feels like part one of a long game, and one that may not necessarily be all upwards from here. But Saturday still takes the wind out of you. One minute there’s a new logo and there are all sorts of fun jumpers, there are media features on Mitchito Owens and Cooper Sharman, Sam Landsberger is highlighting a momentous piece of Saints history, Max, Pou, Nas, Windy, Mitchito are all lining up for the national anthem, and the Saints fans are making the MCG look like Grand Final Day; the next, the Giants have hammered on eight straight goals and your season’s over by halfway through the second quarter. The Year of Exploration, in the club’s 150^th Anniversary Year, is done. Ross, who so much of the club and this year revolved around, didn’t break character in his press conference. He simply opened with, “It comes and goes quick, doesn’t it?” Centuries come and go.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

One month to go.

Round 18, 2022
Western Bulldogs 5.2, 8.4, 12.5, 13.6 (84)
St Kilda 0.2, 2.4, 3.9, 7.14 (56)
Crowd: 25,981 at Docklands, Friday, July 15th at 7.50pm
By Tom Briglia

The footy world in 2022 is going past St Kilda, quickly. Thanks to the quirks of the foolproof *checks notes* floating fixture we again dished up a Friday night special to remind everyone on the big stage that no, this team is not necessarily here to play, nor will they necessarily give everything for four quarters.

I say it most weeks, but 149 years of trust issues are again sounding off. The effort is negotiable, the ability to run out winners now looks flimsy. A bit like the Sydney game, we tried against Freo, and we both a) disappeared and b) weren’t good enough anyway. As supporters, we’ve regressed again to simply wanting to see effort…but for what? Time is running out for that effort to build into something bigger.

The footy media has definitely gone past us. The fallout last week was all about Nat Fyfe and what he could mean to the Dockers going forward; he was Robbo’s Monday Hero, while AFL.com.au said “Nat Fyfe reminds us of his greatness, Paddy McCartin has gone from VFL to VIP”, just to add a bit more salt. Kane Cornes suggested Freo’s performance was a template for how to win a premiership. Stewart Dew had his contract renewed and the Suns came back from 40 points down to beat Richmond. We had Ratts’ contract renewed and turned in a 2021-style performance of disappearing when things got really tough. We’re not really relevant to the season anymore. This year is for others. There’s no real interest in what are most likely also-rans in a relatively even season, only the Crunch Time analysis on Saturday morning because the Friday night game is the only one to talk about. David King said we’ve returned to the “fraudulent” 2021 form.

Max King’s Coleman chances are long gone, talk of Sinclair being All-Australian quelled, although he did enhance his claims on Friday night with 36 touches and a very nice goal. But really, the ceiling for this season has been getting lower and lower. The Carlton win was an aberration – Crunch Time’s six losses in a row didn’t quite happen, but we did manage five losses out of six. Our form line is back to poor and the context of the Carlton win perhaps looks that while it was a better Saints team out there, the result had a lot do with Carlton kicking themselves out of it.

Meanwhile, SEN was asking “Where has it gone wrong for the Bulldogs this season?” despite the fact there was every chance the Bulldogs would only be out of the eight on percentage by round’s end. Beveridge said something to his players about Cape buffaloes and it all worked. They weren’t world-beaters on Friday night, but they came out at least playing like a team with its season on the line. Bontempelli, Smith, Liberatore, Macrae, Dunkley, Treloar, Naughton (albeit out on Friday) et al. – it still is curious the team is where it is at the moment. I confidently chirped in the off-season that this year’s Grand Final would be Melbourne and the Dogs again. Knowing the Dogs, they’re close to their favourite part of the ladder for a tilt. They’ve been utterly curious since Luke Beveridge took over ahead of 2015. Every one of their seasons has been varyingly intriguing.

There were small claims on this one; for us it was a night of sitting in eighth spot before Richmond inevitably pushed us back out (it turns out they wouldn’t have, and we blew a chance to jump back into the eight for the week). Three premierships have wiped away all the jokes about Richmond and “Ninthmond”, and we’ve got claims to be the heir apparent. Ninth in 2007, ninth in 2012, ninth in 2016, and then one game and percentage out in 2017, one game and percentage out in 2021. That’s five finals series we’ve barely missed out on, and all the memories and experiences that go with them. This year’s looking very similar.

***

I tipped the Dogs but foolishly tweeted about being concerned over having to endure a close finish. My actions probably didn’t match that; I went to Nando’s on King Street and ate my over-expensive and not large enough meal by myself in the saddest part of the “restaurant” without going near “stress-eating” mode. Even with Naughton out under Health and Safety Protocols. Ross and Windhager were out too; everyone was wearing masks at Moorabbin the week the club sent out a gentle reminder about the fact the pandemic is still a thing, and about to get worse (again).

Sometimes (often) I get sucked into writing near blow-by-blow descriptions in these match reviews. No need to quite do that this week; there was no real storyline to this one other than we have a new contender for the most disappointing game of the season. No apparent “effort” – I think it was Nick Riewoldt who made the distinction between “trying” and really “trying” – we were wiped out by that mystical element of being “outworked”. No pressure, which apparently was a focus during the week.

We made more than enough mistakes on our part when we did find the footy. Like we’d seen multiple times over the past several weeks, multiple kicks into the corridor from half-back went straight to opposition players and turned into scoring opportunities, if not goals. That had happened twice against the Blues; a game we left thinking we might have rediscovered our first-half-of-the-season form and a template for the rest of the year. Sinclair and Hill had given up goals cutting into the middle that night, but those skill errors were harder to fault because they were part of a broader intent that had put us in a position to win the game. On Friday night they seemed to pop up out of desperation amid halted movement. Marshall got away with one but Battle’s kick into the middle to Jones was easily picked off by Bontempelli, who gave off to Bailey Dale and he slotted the goal on the run from 50. Ratten appeared to make a distinction after the game that these were 40-metre kicks into the corridor and that they’re not part of our game plan. Weightman went to ground and won the free he played for we had the right to be frustrated about the umpiring after last week but boy oh boy, we weren’t doing ourselves any favours to begin with. A bit like the Melbourne game, it felt like we barely gave ourselves a chance to be in the game.

Sharman starting in defence and Paton up forward felt a little like it was dangerously straddling the line of “desperate” and “late season exploration”, rather than “stroke of genius”. Sharman actually wasn’t bad; he probably showed more intent in a couple of contests than he had all year in his appearances at AFL level, charging to a contest and spoiling a high ball in the centre and then wrapping up an opponent immediately, and he did move to hunt down Treloar after his rebounding kick was chopped off by Williams, but the Dogs were away through Williams, Dunkley, Garcia, Bontempelli and Macrae and a perfect pass to Rhylee West on the lead.

Problems in attack started with slow ball movement once we got to the wing or half-forward (multiple times through Max pushing up and taking a grab). Paton wasn’t the reason a lot of guys chipped around in the back half (uncontested marks was 148 to 91 our way) and then waited for the Bulldogs defenders to set up and to kick to an outnumbered teammate, or were just hoping that Max, when he was deep, would vaguely run onto a long ball in foot race against an opponent, but there definitely wasn’t much presence at ground level from he nor Butler nor Higgins. Wood finally got a decent look and went around the corner in the same way he’d failed to do so the previous week, but this time comically hit the wrong side of the ball and instantly became a funny Instagram post.

The Dogs were well on the way to midfield dominance, winning the clearances 41 to 21. Their forward 50 entries were much more dangerous and we have Callum Wilkie to thank for the margin not being 2021-esque. There was no real burst; the Dogs just consistently kept kicking goals as part of a blanketing. Bayley Smith set up their fifth through a quick slice on the wing to Johannisen who was running harder than anyone else, and delivered a great kick to Dunkley, who went back and kicked the goal. We invite either young or unproven players to demonstrate their best; Jamarra was already on his way to three goals, running off Sharman.

I wasn’t sure if the 32 to 2 scoreline at quarter time was unbelievable or perfectly believable. Rory had last year’s review of the 111-point demolition ready to go for me at quarter-time. This ended up being 83 points better by the time we shat out some junk time goals (and a lot of junk time points), but the lack of intent around the ball when it really counted still felt so, so disappointing. This was the kind of game you don’t actually get emotionally involved in, you’re just in the standing room on the members’ win in a dumbfounded silence. Things, somehow, were about to get worse. They didn’t get “blown out of the water” worse until the third quarter, just (“just”) more demoralising. Steele was the least of our problems but he had Smith cold on the Dogs’ half-forward line and fluffed the tackle. By half-time, we’d only managed 12 tackles (the tackle count in the next day’s Adelaide-Collingwood game was 107-126). Another borderline holding the ball free in the middle that could have gone our way wasn’t given and Jamarra kicked the goal, but then Smith combined with Liberatore at half-forward and Hannan was cruising past unchecked for one that was a lot more sapping.

It’s about this point – all of 10 or so minutes into the second quarter – that you start wondering if you’ll see any positives. Either on the night or for the rest of the year. This season is turning into a mash-up of 1998, 1999 and 2019. Our first goal came 17 minutes into the second quarter thanks to a free off the ball to Max, but moments later Bontempelli furthered his way to a near-perfect game with the highlight of Bulldogs’ match-winning charging, a goal off a step or two from just inside 50.

We’ve really forgotten what a genuine superstar looks like. Gresham and his curated eyebrows threatened in the first half of this year to be our Dusty/De Goey/Petracca-type. He nearly got one back immediately but was it touched on the line. Gresh has been a different player since the bye. It’s been a different team. Steele has been seen as something of a borderline elite mid in the past two years but isn’t quite on the same plane as Petracca and Bontempelli. Funnily enough, apart from Steele, in several moments over the past few years the one player that looks like someone who knows what it takes is Dan Hannebery. I don’t mean to put him in the same category as Bont et al., but rather that he is slick, unflinching, and doesn’t need a second thought to execute something good. He knows what to do in the moment. But watching the Bont and his big frame motor through traffic, deliver the footy around the ground, take grabs and kick goals with big celebrations shows the gap between the best of the competition and the best of our list. If our entire team isn’t bringing uncomprising effort – the team that Ross Lyon told Saints fans to get excited about earlier in the year – then the lack of talent and class is shown up in a big way. Right now, guys are drifting in and out of games. Friday was perhaps another night to rue drafting errors of the past – Billings over Bont comparisons, Paddy over Petracca. Billings was actually alright on Friday, but you compare him in real time to the Bont and he just doesn’t have the killer competitive instinct, nor the presence, nor the class. And that’s…kind of ok in the grander scheme of things, in a world of Putins and pandemics. He’s a human being. The problem was an AFL club in a historically dire state drafted him at number 3, and another club in a historically dire state drafted Marcus Bontempelli at number 4, and within three years Bontempelli was the best and fairest winner of a premiership team. Billings’ 150^th passed without any fanfare. I still feel like the club’s development had as much to do with this as anything else. Would Bontempelli be the player he is if the Saints drafted him? I doubt it.

***

Our second goal came just before the 27-minute mark of the second quarter from another questionable free; one that was barely more there than Rory Lobb’s the week before. (The problem was, the game was well and truly gone.) It’s probably too much to expect for the team to come out firing in the second half being six goals down when they couldn’t come out firing in the second half with a slender lead and the season on the line the week before, and the season even more on the line at the beginning of the night, only to dish up indifferent footy. We were back to the flimsy 2021 Saints of giving in when things got a little bit two tough. The second game within a few weeks in which we went into half-time with two goals on the board. The Dogs had another two goals on the board three and a half minutes into the third quarter through Jamarra and Garcia. Most of the rest of the third term deserves a “Scene Missing” slide. Treloar took it to 52 points and we were just over two minutes of play from making it the second time in a few weeks we’d gone into three-quarter time with two goals. We got the moody doom vignette On the Couch. BT said we were “bordering on putrid”. Garry Lyon called us an “all-talk footy club”, and asked if the players cared enough. “Sub-AFL standard” and “fraudulent”, said Kingy.

Bizarrely, we’d finish the game with more scoring shots, owing mostly to a faux-fightback in the last quarter that landed with 4.5 before Bont capped off his and the Dogs’ night with a mark and goal, and a big celebration. Max, Snags, Roma and Butler all missed gettable chances and the Herald Sun’s expected score actually had us winning the game from the shots the two teams should have kicked. But by this stage Dogs had taken the foot off the accelerator because they could; we’d come back from 55 points early in the third quarter against the Dogs in 2015, this team absolutely wasn’t coming back from 50 down at the final change. There was little to keep caring abou-OH MY GOD PADDY RYDER, IN A ST KILDA JUMPER, HAS HURT HISACHILLES.

***

It’s about this time of year we become a little retrospective. This might still be the season that will be, but given our form line over the last six weeks and our draw ahead we’re closer to that was the season that was, and we’re just playing out the final few weeks to make sure it’s all recorded on AFL Tables for future procrastination reference.

That means players start to announce their retirements. Jarryn Geary – drafted with rookie pick 57 in 2007 and who went on to be St Kilda captain for five seasons – became one of the first in this late-year stretch to do so on Thursday.

The first time I saw him was from my couch; the first round of the 2008 NAB Cup against Richmond and I had with ice packs on my cheeks nestled in a headnet because I’d just had all four wisdom teeth out. Riewoldt and a few others were rested on that night, and in a team that was looking to take a big step forward in Ross Lyon’s second year young guys weren’t likely to figure too much. This game served as a novelty chance to see what draftees Geary, Jack Steven and Robert Eddy may or may not have to offer if we needed to break glass in case of emergency, as well as new recruit Charlie Gardiner.

Geary would be in and out of that bottom six of the Ross Lyon era that we painfully could never get right when it really counted. Most of his early career highlights are goals that can be found in the hastily-produced 2009 Season Highlights DVD; indeed, the club’s highlights package during the week was dominated by goals and forward line moments from the front and back ends of his career. Perhaps we never really found the best position for him. He was an unassuming footballer, not blessed with a spearing pass or quick hands or incredible agility, and he and toiled away in relative anonymity, in the shadows of the Riewoldt generation in his early career and then having played just three games last year and none this year for a team that’s hardly been relevant. However, you could count on him to be unrelenting in a game that relies heavily on pressure at either ends of the ground, but given he the kind of player that was maligned for the occasional ability to completely miss targets, he might have been better kicking at goal than at teammates. He’d still come up in selection chats with Matt and Richie and I even up until the last few weeks. Just put him in the forward pocket and let him chase and harass. You know he’s not going to take a backward step.

My favourite Geary moment might be his diving fist in 2016 late against the Bombers in front of a leading Essendon forward, getting to a ball that he had no business getting near as the Bombers looked to go ahead, and the ball went up straight up the other end for a Mav Weller goal to help our 2016 second-half rampage along. Rich and I were in the medallion club that game perpendicular to him, able to see the full extension he willed his body to. “That’s play of the year” Rich said after Weller’s snap went through. Unfortunately, AFL.com.au cut out Geary’s moment in the passage in its highlights package for the game.

His uncompromising approach allowed him to carve out a 15-year career but it didn’t always favour him. A brave effort in the peak win of 2019 in front of Melbourne’s goal was rewarded with emergency compartment syndrome surgery (that’s the link if you want to see the surgery photo) and a giant fuck-off scar down his thigh. He returned for the China game against Port and broke his leg.

Geary was the last direct link to the Ross Lyon era. His war stories aren’t quite the same as many in the Riewoldt generation; he wasn’t out there on the biggest days, named as an emergency for all three of the 2009 and 2010 Grand Finals, and came on as the sub in the bleak 2011 Elimination Final. His lot was playing a role in trying to guide a heartbroken club back to relevancy and vitality. He had the difficult task of having to be the club’s first captain following on from Nick Riewoldt, arguably our greatest ever, while carrying the title alongside the likes of his good friend and triple premiership player and finals mainstay Joel Selwood. He played that role to some success; for now he remains the answer to the trivia question “Who was the last player to captain St Kilda to a finals win?

He was one of the few guys over the past decade – an awful decade, really – whose effort you couldn’t ever question. The best thing we can do is seek out ways to be the best versions of ourselves, and that’s what he did. “I just wanted to be someone that was trusted,” he said in his retirement speech to the club during the week. The current team – the entire club – could take a lot from that.

Round 16, 2022
Carlton 2.4, 6.7, 7.13, 10.18 (78)
St Kilda 3.6, 7.6, 10.7, 14.9 (93)
Crowd: 43,194 at Docklands, Friday, July 1st at 7.50pm
By Tom Briglia

The best case you could mount for St Kilda coming into this one was “we probably can’t be that bad four weeks in row”. Since the bye, the template had been guys getting knocked out and running out of players or bad, boring footy. Mostly the latter.

We were hoping this was just a Melbourne-style three-week lapse (albeit without the 10-game head start, and sevens win from the previous season that included a Grand Final). You could make some sort of case that the Lions game wasn’t that bad and if only Max and Snags had taken those shots on half-time and in the last quarter it might have been different, but the same would have to apply to Brisbane kicking 7.12 in the second half. The last two weeks, however, had been genuinely poor.

We’d had two goals on the board 11 seconds before time-on in the last quarter against Sydney. We were “comprehensively out of form”, according to Gerard. “Predictable, bland and boring”, according to Joey. Our form elicited Robbo’s elevated voice on 360. Grant Thomas was on a roll. The six losses in a row as discussed by Crunch Time the morning after the Essendon loss were in play. We thought after GWS we’d cleared the hurdle of the The Age’s “story of the year” headline three years ago that preceded unfortunate events, but now we looked like we could be heading towards another 2019. The president had erred in not quite announcing a new deal for the coach but borderline locking the club into one. How the hell do you get out of that? Never mind, apparently; Jon Ralph said that a deal would be concluded within a week and that it would be until at least 2024. The club put out a tweet of emojis in anticipation and glee of a signing, but it ended up being Rowan Marshall, and the club put out a feel-good video of Ratts and Ro announcing it to the playing group to try and lift the mood, and remind us that there is some sort of future (good, bad or Tasmania) beyond our 2022 fortunes, even if it is just turning up to play (something we can’t take for granted after the last couple of years).

I said the other week we all thought it was funny (and slightly outrageous) that lowly Essendon were gifted three Friday night games in a row after the AFL and US major league sport fetishist journos repeatedly telling us the floating fixture was a good thing. Now it was us feeling a sense of guilt, of letting the competition down, that we’re the ones sucking up the spotlight on a Friday night against the “it” team of the competition. A few weeks ago this had blockbuster (of sorts) written all over it, perhaps the rumblings of a new rivalry. Now it was set to be a victory lap for Carlton going past us.

The results didn’t matter so much suddenly. For some, they’d be thankful if the players just looked like they were trying, and trying to play a vaguely effective brand of footy. That’s how far we’d sunk. My anticipation for this one was reduced solely to seeing the delightful contrast between Carlton’s navy and our new mostly red and white clash uniform (For those of you playing at home, I do believe it needs a white number panel with black numbers to make it if not more effective then wearable to begin with against Brisbane, Essendon, GWS, and Melbourne).

***

Remember when the returns of Billings and Clark were built up as massive ins? (Billings kicked the ground while having a shot at goal in the warm up; he did think it was funny but was torn between wanting to know if anyone saw it or not.) The Unpluggered guys talked in their live Thursday night podcast about Clark and Billings’s returns – two guys whose best positions we haven’t quite figured out – messing with the team’s cohesion. The ins this week – Hill, Ryder, Higgins and Wood – should have been a bit more exciting than they really were. That was the indifference to our season’s fortunes created by the last few weeks (Zak Jones getting suspended or not for his shoulder-hit on Parker the previous weekend didn’t really seem to matter). This week, the changes in personnel, as well as a psychological change, were instantly notable to the positive. This was a different team with their heads in a different place. Hill and Sinclair’s impacts were immediate; Hill back in the team after a week out and Sinclair a different player after being tagged out of the game in Sydney. Ball movement was obviously made a focus. Daring kicks and good movement ahead of the play made for a fast start. Both played a huge part in that; Sinclair had 13 touches at quarter time and Hill had nine (there’s some good analysis of their roles on The Shinboner).

The pressure was up, too. Membrey got the first from marking a rushed Ploughman kick out of a forward line stoppage, and he took the absolute most of the space around the man on the mark and kicked a goal from 50 that he very rarely kicks. Hill and Sinclair provided the outlet out on the defensive side of a centre-wing throw in and from the work of Steele and Billings the switch was on; a perfect Sinclair kick across the ground hit Higgins and he found Paddy Ryder, wearing a St Kilda jumper. The next – after seven behinds between the two teams – came from NWM pressure in the middle creating a turnover, and Sinclair coming through again to find Butler and then Membrey in the goal square. It was 3.5 to 0.3.

This was a chance for Max King to take advantage of a severely undermanned defence (footy media had teased Jacob Weitering perhaps coming back in early for this one), but that might be the kind of thinking reserved for the way we were playing for the past three weeks, i.e. “Max will kick all the goals if we just keep bombing it to him”. While he had the unfancied Lewis Young for company, the forward line did look much better for the movement of the half-forwards and use of multiple targets. Nine scoring shots through multiple avenues that weren’t Max King in the first quarter caught the Blues off guard, brought undone only by poor accuracy. A talking point out of this game would be Carlton’s missed opportunities in front of goal, but the 3.6 we ended up with at quarter-time could easily have been 6.3 given the types of shots we had. Marshall, Butler, Ryder (St Kilda FC) and Higgins were all guilty parties. That was a little bit OK until the final few minutes when fifth-gamer Motlop put through Carlton’s first from a high Cerra ball that no Saint could read, and then the Sinclair, in the quest to keep the ball moving, attempted a 45-degree kick in-board that went straight to Saad who hit up Curnow. The turnover was very much like Sinclair’s against the Bombers across goal a fortnight earlier, and I did hope that this turnover wouldn’t discourage him or his teammates out of moving the ball quickly and being daring. That was why we’d had all those shots at goal in the first place.

***

Those missed opportunities looked like they might be costly early on in the second quarter. The game reverted to what we probably thought it would be from the start – Carlton winning the contested ball, and our movement reverting to unsure and anxious. The Blues went coast-to-coast from Marshall trying to keep it alive on our goal line through Docherty, McKay provided the link – although I didn’t mind Dougal forcing him to get touches high up the ground – and then Cripps and Silvagni on the spread and Cottrell was at the fall. McKay finally made his impact deep in a one-on-one in the pocket, fighting off Dougal to get to a dribbling ball in the pocket (McKay’s aggression is something that we don’t have in our own big key forward just yet). He kept it alive and despite a strong Sinclair smother Kennedy found the footy and his high snap went through. Carlton was in front, and for the first time, the Carlton crowd was starting to come into the game. In the third row of the St Kilda end, it felt the stadium was bearing down on us.

It was all on the Blues’ terms. Crouch rushed a kick out of defence after Silvagni was fortunately not paid a mark, and the kick came straight back to Fisher. It was 11 points; Carlton had kicked five goals in about nine minutes of play either side of the quarter-time break. Brad Johnson in the post-match pointed out we’re not as talented as Carlton’s midfield. He’s right; Patrick Cripps together with Sam Walsh and Adam Cerra and George Hewett and Matthew Kennedy is a better midfield than ours. How do you halt Cripps? He’s bigger and faster than any of our guys. Can you stop Walsh from getting the footy? We needed to be the unrelenting team that Ross Lyon had told St Kilda fans to get excited about on Footy Classified all those weeks ago. For the first of multiple times on Friday, this team would have to again prove it was made of sterner stuff than the 2021 outfit.

We had to get something back against the flow. At our half-forward, Wood forced Newnes to retreat to O’Brien, Wood and Higgins smothered his attempted kick, and all the forwards were in right spot to spread and turn a defensive movement into attack. King gave off to Gresham, who danced around a little, enticing a couple of opponents, before Higgins provided the option and kicked the goal around the corner. Straight out of the middle, Steele was reprising his close-checking role on Cripps of previous years, Crouch put on a huge tackle on Cerra, and the ball flung out our way and Butler barely had to break stride and kicked from 45 on the run, an echo of his best of 2020. The game had flipped, again, in 30 seconds of football.

A long Webster entry saw King – who had so far had hardly anything to do with it – rip the ball out of the sky over Newman and Young in front of goal, made sure by a soft 50. The next was an opportunistic goal from Paddy Ryder of the St Kilda Football Club; the Blues were chipping it around the back and Cerra didn’t see Paddy closing in on Newman, and he grabbed the footy and casually placed it on his boot and dribbled it through. A 13-point lead had been opened up. Paddy had 2.1 in the first half. His game would be a key reason why we would win the clearances against a much more fancied midfield – 31 hit-outs, 10 to advantage – and he also had six score involvements. His week off proved handy.

But the invitation St Kilda rolls out for rising star nominations again was opened up again and Carlton hit up Motlop near goal; he spilled the pass but beat Battle at ground level, got up, slipped through Clark, and bananaed a goal that brought the crowd back into the game. Misses from Cottrell and Durdin from close by were fortunate.

***

It’s about time for my weekly “How can I bring up anything from the Ross and GT eras?” section, and this week is extra superfluous. On Friday, sitting with Matt and Lewis, I was secretly getting 2009 Grand Final echoes. We were sitting in an almost identical position on the ground in the forward pocket at the St Kilda end, it felt like we were surrounded by 40,000 opposition supporters (this time with only a few thousand of our own); the half-time score was 48-43 instead of 49-43 (and we’d burned a few early opportunities), and this had heartbreaking loss written all over it. This was supposed to be Carlton’s night. Kennedy’s goal was a mix of Paul Chapman’s second quarter and winning goals. I remember the people in front of me – a dad and his daughter, probably my age at the time (21) getting up and clapping and saying “yes” with relief on the three-quarter time siren, as if we’d broken the game open for our lead of seven behinds. (On Friday night we ended up kicking 14.9, the inverse of the 9.14 we kicked on that day in 2009, and probably what we should have kicked on that day. Also, the team we were playing was navy and white? I could go on.)

***

Howard had looked like he’d done something to his knee late in the second and was hardly able to move. McKay finally got some separation on him. Dougal looked like he was about to come off, then he didn’t, then it was so accepted he was about to come off for good while he was still on the ground that the sub Highmore was already getting in some camera time with his shirt off.

The Blues were racking up points but one was bound to go through. Just like Sinclair had in the first quarter, Brad Hill attempted a 45-degree kick off half-back that straight went straight to Docherty, Cripps cruised and past hit McKay. It was McKay’s first goal but we was starting to get the ball in dangerous spots and now had the mismatch on Battle with Dougal off. Carlton was in front, and we’d kicked one point in 16 and a half minutes of play.

Highmore (shirt on) had to plug himself into a system that had been mostly humming for 11 weeks and then fallen apart over three weeks, so it was going to be a difficult task for him either way, but he showed why he shouldn’t be out of the team for the rest of the season after stellar VFL form and now a quality AFL game (less than half of one, really, but he made his impact in the are). One of his better moments actually came in the centre circle. Traffic that saw the hot footy worked from a centre wing throw-in into the middle of the ground had in turns the Saints almost away, then the Blues almost away. Highmore had pushed up to put pressure on Honey in the centre circle; he won the ball at ground level and gave off quick neat hands to Clark, who worked through to Ross and again our players were already working the other way. A string of possessions through Gresham, Butler and then Higgins, with a lot of should-I-shoudn’t-I hesitation moments ultimately ended with Higgins goaling. More good linking up by the half forwards after weeks of a dysfunctional attack, more good turning defence into attack with movement and field positioning.

That would prove to be the exception for most of the quarter. The Blues had it locked in their half again but Curnow missed a couple, Hewett missed, and then a high Seb Ross kick out of full-back with 17 Saints in the defensive 50 ended up with De Koning taking on Walsh to claim it. De Koning missed the set shot. Scores level.

But again, this team hit back. O’Brien’s innocuous kick into the middle from a free kick was spoiled by Butler and the break was on. Again, the Saints players had already flipped defensive structure into forward running and there were numbers. Crouch’s tumbling kick wasn’t great – Membrey had to try to knock on to advantage from the high bounce against two opponents – but Paddy Ryder (of the Saints) forced De Koning off the ball and Max charged through. A feign to the left around Newman, a step to the right, and he wheeled around onto his left and snapped; it initially didn’t look like he’d got enough on it but the ball just kept carrying and carrying, and he’d finally kicked the type of snap goal he’s been threatening to throughout his short career to date.

At the centre bounce, Cripps was there for the hit-out from De Koning but Steele pounced on him and the ball fell out. Crouch tumbled another ball forward that was spilled by Ploughman. Windhager, whose frame belies his status as a first-year player, had been good almost every time he’d had been near the ball and in one motion picked the ball up through his legs and turned and handballed neatly to Membrey. Steele was running past and did what a captain had to do in that moment. We had two goals in the last 70 seconds of play.

***

How often do we see a team break open the game on the eve of three-quarter time before running away with the game? While Membrey’s celebration for King’s goal was a bit too “mission accomplished” for my liking, Lewis and Matt and I were a maybe a bit too up and about. (Like the dad and his daughter in front me of me in 2009, I think I bit too up and about on the three-quarter time siren.) I think we were all daring to believe the game had swung our way.

A lot of the supporter base had downgraded expectations to simply just putting in a good effort. But standing around at three-quarter time at the St Kilda end after cheering through Max and Steele’s goals you think, well, no. I want more than just effort. I want the win from here. You get a taste of it. Effort wasn’t going to be enough, really, after that.

***

Within three minutes of play in the final quarter the lead had turned into a deficit. Matt Kennedy raced into congestion for the first of the term and then McKay bananaed from the pocket. They were in front. I remember the penultimate round of 2019. A beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon at the MCG, our last game in Melbourne pre-COVID. Finals weren’t in the picture, but Carlton fans were on the Teague train and turned up to make a crowd of nearly 52,000. When Harry McKay bent through the sealer the roar was one of a big club waking up from a slumber. In hindsight, that was a premature – the Teague era was a false start – but this Blues team was pushing for a top-four spot and was about to become to latest team to pass us in real time.

Again, we’d have to find something well and truly against the flow. We went all out with the talls; Billings was getting involved and his long kick to the forward pocket literally went to all of King, Marshall and Ryder. The ball came off King’s hands and Butler was again in the perfect spot, snapped from the top of the square and the ball squeezed in. The lead had been wrestled back but this was the kind of game in which you felt the Blues would overwhelm us in front of their crowd. Marshall went up for a mark in defence, lost his way in the air and completed a Luke Ball 2008 Port Adelaide-style landing in the pocket, landing on his back and head while almost tearing both hamstrings. We were about to face at least 15 minutes without him. Carlton had the chance to go ahead again when Motlop squeezed out a pass to McKay who was ahead of Battle in the opposite pocket to his last kick, but his run-around snap went out on the full. We were again simply holding on.

Tim Membrey was the one who rose above the cacophony. A Docherty kick off half-back just missed Newnes and Mason Wood slammed the ball high on the boot, and Membrey drew the over-the-shoulder free-kick. He went back at kicked the goal at the Carlton end. A 10-point lead with 10 minutes left. The Blues had to take risks now. They cut through the middle and Clark charged in for the Newman kick to Kennedy and went the spoil instead of the mark – it was the ideal spot for a turnover – and at the fall Clark and Butler ran into each other, leaving Butler with blood all over his face and Clark with blood all over his face and neck and shoulders because his cartilage had opened up his nose. For a few minutes we would be down to one available change on the bench. While Butler and Clark were on the ground, the Blues had gone forward through Hewett and Cerra to the pocket and McKay threw his head back and took a blatant dive right in front of us in the pocket (“right in front of me” ) and the umpire got sucked completely in. The players all got together while trainers attended to Hunter’s new face and we had to sit and stew while McKay waited to take the kick close to where he’d goaled earlier in the quarter. It was a night of single-digit free kicks for us, as we retained second-last place in the league in the free-kick differential ladder, and Carlton retained second. This was at about the 26-minute mark and it was going to be a long quarter. Lewis said he still expected to lose. Matt said this game had heartbreaker written all over it. We were just waiting to see how it would physically play out; what the footage would look like when used in Blues highlights packages for the next week and maybe the next few years. Perhaps we would succumb 2009 Grand Final style, perhaps it would be Port Adelaide 2017 and/or 2022-style.

Marshall was off still, Howard was off, Butler was off, Hunter was out. Marshall was actually helped by the delay in terms of missing less game time, although he had no idea what the hell had just happened in the middle of the ground as he came out from the rooms and gave a small fist pump when he saw we were 10 points up.

McKay finally took his kick and missed to the narrow side. Steele had a rushed shot from just inside 50 that came close to icing the game, and then we had to weather a Durdin free from a Webster knock as the Blues’ rebounded. McKay – who had loomed as the villain all night – marked just outside 50 in front of Battle again; he went long and it was Mason Wood who came across the pack and punched the ball through. He had some underrated moments in a few different of parts of the ground on Friday.

Marshall was back out there, and we managed to work the ball from one end to half-forward. Gresham, to King, who had come up, to Higgins, back to Gresham, to Crouch, who spotted Windhager out wide on the 50-metre arc and hit him with a deft kick. Matt said this would be a boy becomes a man moment for him. His high kick dropped into the goal square.

I think of the almost-but-not-quite-Herculean performance Tim Membrey put in in that 2017 Port Adelaide game, seeming to ice it when he put us in front by 10 points late, only to be the one to have Robbie Gray’s winner go over his head on the goal line with seven seconds remaining. On Friday night, he earned the title of matchwinner. He got his hands to Windhager’s kick and was perhaps unlucky to not be paid the mark in the first place when he grabbed it on the second bite, but instead of stopping to claim it he wildly threw the ball on the boot to kick it over his shoulder. The ball avoided De Koning’s afterthought smother attempt and Paddy Ryder (St Kilda Football Club)’s pointed finger that was already claiming the mark, and the ball shot through for a goal. At the St Kilda end the whole passage looked like mayhem – the ball popping up in a mass of bodies, disappearing for a brief moment, and suddenly flying through the goals at an odd angle with a sudden celebration of bodies in mostly red and white with a black cross.

Steele was still all over Cripps; the ball fell out in his tackle at the centre bounce and went straight to Marshall. King had a shot from a tough angle that served mostly to chew up another 30 seconds. The cheer squad was singing the song as the quarter length dragged into the mid-30s. Membrey dropped into defence and marked in front of McKay. Motlop missed a shot, and the Blues had gone from 6.5 to 9.18. (The Herald Sun’s expected score offered a comfortable Carlton victory.) Marshall was the target from the kick out, Sinclair’s long kick came off hands to Billings and then Gresham kicked forward. A fortunate bounce and some good bodywork by Windhager on Docherty allowed for Higgins to come through and band the ball deep into attack. A Mason Wood falcon left the ball dancing in front of Max. He kicked it off the ground and it spun through.

The game was over.

***

The immediate return on what is probably our best win of the season is quite small: it only brought us up from 10^th on the ladder to ninth after the rest of the round was played out. But the win otherwise had much, much more riding on it. This may count for something big later on in 2022. If you viewed the rest of the season through the lens of the previous three weeks then we were absolutely done; Crunch Time’s six losses in a row was odds-on and Brett Ratten’s contract was either already signed and a mistake, or talks would be precariously on hold. Now we have a new reference point. If Friday night is indeed the default after the black hole we’ve hopefully just emerged from, then we will win more games than we lose. That’s opposition goal kicking permitting, perhaps, but we did miss shots of our own early; we also had more possessions, won the clearances and had more inside 50s. Kicking 45 points from forward half turnovers also showed Friday was much closer to the first half of the season iteration of this team.

The new clash jumper has been minted; its first appearance in free-to-air prime time and now worn in a great win. The pandemic-era clash jumper is dead, long live the new clash jumper. That kind of win is all the more pleasurable being the away team, but it’s a hell of a route to go through. There’s knee injuries, cut faces, compound fractures, missed goals, bad umpiring, a whole stadium bearing down on you, and a lot of thinking too hard about dark days past and pre-empting the absolute worst.

The last time we played a game like this with the stakes so high? Well, it was each of the last three weeks, with a grasp on a top-four spot ours to lose. This season does have a bit of scar tissue now, and I’m not sure if we’ll get back to playing for those kinds of stakes in 2022. But for a few days, this season has a future again.

Round 15, 2022
Sydney Swans 3.1, 4.6, 9.10, 12.11 (83)
St Kilda 1.2, 2.2, 2.6, 4.8 (32)
Crowd: 31,513 at the SCG, Saturday, June 27th at 7.25pm
By Tom Briglia

Is this it? If the end for 2022 is what I think it is, then we’re somewhere towards the end of the beginning of the end.

A few weeks ago we sat in the top four and the competition was beginning to open up. An A+ on Fox Footy’s mid-year grades. Maybe we were in with a shot of playing off for a Grand Final. Brett Ratten’s contract extension was a fait accompli on Footy Classified, tempting the Footy Gods damned. Mid-March thoughts of #Clarko2023 were a distant memory. Simon Lethlean came out on Monday and told us they still are.

We’d all lashed out at the AFL for trying to push the floating fixture on us and then going ahead and giving lowly Essendon three consecutive Friday night games, especially two against top four challengers Carlton and St Kilda.

The slide has been fast. After Mitchito and D-Mac were knocked out against the Lions and we spluttered to a 21-point loss, Kane said we could be the “vulnerable” team in the eight. Eddie floated us as a candidate for Tasmania. Max King was downgraded a little from a matchwinner to “what Max King needs to do to terrify defenders”. Some bad misses between he and Snags against the Lions had them both back in 2021 calamity territory, and now Snags has been dropped altogether, playing in a game with no scoreboard and filmed by one camera and partially obscured by a tree (thank you Rory and Michael for updates) It’s been a bad few days for the cyptocurrency enthusiast.

Bad few days for Jack Higgins. https://t.co/uSya6gZ4ZF

— Red, White and Black (@RWBFooty) June 25, 2022

Of course, it was against the Bombers that things really came undone; the club that will always dick us no matter where the two teams are on the ladder (and we’re facing them in the VFLW Grand Final this Sunday). Last year was never going to be the same with the Round 3’s 75-point hammering in the back of our minds, and 2022 isn’t going to be the same either now after what we dished up against the 16th-placed team with two wins. Instantly the season turned from a top four challenge to missing out on the finals. This team was supposed to be more resilient than 2021. We thumped through five goals to roar back to level terms against the Bombers before they ended up outscoring us for the quarter and the half anyway. So disappointing was the loss that the club’s communications team got Tim Membrey to address the fans directly on the club website post-match rather than have him interviewed. There was no Uncut video for the first time this season. The peripheral buzz of anticipation for what this season and this team might become was just…gone. Crunch Time raised the prospect of losing six in a row. We were the “‘Broken’ Saints”, according to the Fox Sports clickbait headline. “Ratten revealed the football department delivered some home truths to the playing group during a brutal review at the start of the week” after a performance the club “didn’t see coming”, apparently. Luke Hodge for some reason gave us a chance and said we should back in Brett Ratten, but by Sunday night Mark Robinson declared we should be putting those talks on hold. 

Talk about 2022 ambitions had shifted to maybe scraping into finals this year and then to beyond 2022 entirely in the form of picking up Jordan de Goey, which Ratten opened the door right open for during the week. As if – as if – there is any sort of universe or dimension or worldline in which Jordan de Goey going to St Kilda works out well. As if.

***

Absolutely no one was feeling any better about the Saints by the time the weekend had officially even started. On Friday, Essendon had lost to the hapless Eagles, and the Dogs had beaten Hawthorn, knocking us out of the eight. But here we were, an excellent chance to bounce back and show everyone we’d learned something from by far our worst performance of the season with a game against a tough opposition on their home deck to keep in touch with the raft of teams in equal second.

The frantic opening few minutes was a good enough start, but as everyone settled into the game, Hamish in the Channel 7 commentary box called “McCartin to get the Saints going”, and in that moment it made sense our number one draft pick was going to be a big presence in our forward line. What else is there to say that hasn’t already been said about Paddy McCartin and St Kilda?

Really, the Swans had the game on their terms from the start. They dominated territory and their ball movement had some fluidity. Bad signs again for our own ball movement were there, on the occasion we got our hands on the ball. Players were stopping and propping. Marshall caught former Saint and Hard Quiz answer Tom Hickey holding the ball at centre-half-back and hit up Long forward of the wing but then play ground to a halt. We didn’t know what the hell to do with it even when we had clean possession. On the occasion we did get some looks up forward we weren’t making the most of it. Max dropped an easy Brad Crouch hit-up that would have been a shot at goal 30 metres out. He then found it on the lead for a longer shot that went directly out of bounds on the full.

It was looking like one of those nights where we make every one of the opposition look that little bit better. Not that he needs the extra boost but Buddy was playing some of his best footy. On the 50-metre arc he outdid both Wilkie and Dougal, working off both and reacting fastest to the popped-up ball, wheeled around and nailed a precise kick to Heeney for the Swans’ second. Ryan Clarke by the second quarter had two goals for just the second time in this career; the last time was when he was playing with North against – you guessed it – the Saints. Nick Blakey ended up with a career-high disposal count. It’s a service we provide, from gifting yet another player a Rising Star nomination to continue our best-in-the-business record the previous week, to opening things up for the guy who’s hardly played for two years, to the all-time great. Meanwhile, we had our best player this year Sinclair reading the ball beautifully in defence before slipping onto his arse when he kicked it.

Sharman was at least trying to make something happen and flying for everything; but in Ryder’s absence he was taking occasional forward line ruck duties and being thrown around by Hickey. Steele missed after a great contest by Windhager at ground level (one of the few in the forward 50 on the night) and the ball went straight down the other end, with Buddy again in the pocket grabbing it from the fall and snapping a goal. Buddy helped set up two more entries and another pinpoint hit-up of Heeney, dragging Dougal right across our defensive half of the ground. When Howard got it he did his now customary dance to get himself in trouble (it wouldn’t be the only time on the night). Cuts to the Swans bench showed a calm interchange. I’m not sure what the Qatar Airways billboards behind the players and the Swans “Mark of the Week – presented by Qatar Airways” would have thought about the Pride Match concept.

The ball movement wasn’t improving as the quarter wore on. It was either stilted movement, long down the line, iffy entries to no one in particular’s advantage with not many at the fall.  Gresham off half-back blazed away with a rushed high ball to an outpointed Membrey on McCartin, instead of running it through the middle with the three teammates immediately around him.

***

The second quarter was an arm wrestle, but there weren’t any signs we would be the ones to break things open. Buddy was prominent again; he spoiled Marshall and the Swans were away, handballing in numbers. He had another shot at goal on the 50-metre arc that was wayward, but a five-metre kick at the resulting scramble landed with Ryan Clarke in front of goal and was paid a mark. Clarke had been tagging Sinclair to good effect, and when he kicked the goal the Swans went to Sinclair and there was some push and shove. Nice to see NWM getting involved in it all, but we were borderline getting bullied.

That was the Swans’ only goal for the quarter, but going forward we were still mostly lifeless, or just making bad mistakes. Sharman had a few almost-moments, NWM missed him by himself 40 metres out directly in front, and then Sinclair finally worked off Clarke, intercepted a ball forward of the wing, ran with the footy and then delivered a perfect kick to Cooper 30 metres out but he let go of it under only a slight bit of heat. A few moments later we managed to put together a decent foray forward along the wing that elicited “One of the few times the Saints have been able to execute basic skills” from Wayne Carey, and the ball ended up with Sharman on a relatively difficult angle. Sharman’s kick squirted comically out on the full.

We were barely hanging in. Seb Ross had 17 touches with 11.39 still to play, Steele was settling in nicely and Rowan Marshall was doing OK, but that was mostly it. Missed opportunities from the Swans were the only thing really keeping us in it. Twice sharp kicks going forward hit Webster instead of a Swan, one hit NWM, and Sam Reid had a shot at goal touched on the line, and McDonald missed from the pocket.

A breakthrough of sorts came courtesy a very, very soft 50-metre penalty, with Membrey brought up into the 50-metre arc after Errol Gulden vaguely ran sort of near the edge of the protected zone. The umpire gave a short 50 – possibly the same umpire who paid the full 15 metres for the kick that ended with Clarke’s second goal – but Membrey kicked it anyway. Wayne Carey tried jinxing things by saying with six and a half minutes left the Saints players would be looking at the scoreboard thinking how lucky we were to be just 14 points down, and then Luke Darcy did similar with two minutes to go, and just as he did Logan McDonald had another shot and hit the post.

After kicking 3.3 in the first half last week we went in to the main change this week at 2.2 (as we did in the infamous 2002 draw against the Swans). We were in a much worse position on this night but still in touch on the scoreboard. Max was absolutely nowhere near it, but according to Swamp he does lead the competition for points in the third quarter, so we did have that up our sleeve. Nice try trotting all this out after Geelong and Richmond.

***

There was the briefest of flashes at the very beginning of the third that maybe we’d have a hot start to the second half as we did against the Bombers. But Sharman was outpointed from the opening bounce centre clearance, Hunter Clark gave away a terrible 50, and Papley kicked a goal from 50.

A lot of our contested work wasn’t terrible. We just didn’t know what to do with the footy, and the Swans were set up beautifully behind the ball. We didn’t want to take a half-risk. No movement ahead of the ball, no changing of angles, no forward handballs, just long kicks down the line. Max had moved a little higher up and finally got his hands on the footy a couple of times on the wing. Sharman almost took mark of the year, but those seemed to be only semblance of game plan we had. Sinclair looked like he’d been moved from half-back, and there genuinely was a few minutes in which the pressure was up; ten tackles in the first six minutes of play after just eight in the second quarter. But the margin for error was slim, and we didn’t look like scoring. What we probably feared deep down coming into this was happening – Paddy McCartin (together with his brother Tom) was mopping up. Brett Ratten said in the post-match press conference that he felt for Max because of the delivery into the forward, which probably said a lot about what the coaching staff thought about what went wrong. GT absolutely hated that approach and said so on Twitter as he unloaded on the club in the aftermath, and then he went ahead and had a crack at Max on 3AW.

Marshall and Sharman spoiled each other on the wing and not long after it looked like Sharman was moved behind the ball. Byrnes found Billings just inside 50 on a 45-degree angle. It was time for him to step up and be the pick three we made him. He didn’t get anywhere near it. The Swans finally broke the game open when a Ross handball (one of the few times we actually tried working in numbers) on the wing went straight to the Swans, Buddy drew a front-on contact from the Warner entry and Heeney kicked an easy goal from the advantage call. The pressure on the defenders had reached breaking point and the dose was repeated with McDonald drawing a free for too high and Papley kicked another from the goal square. Another anxiety-riddled interstate performance. Add it to the list.

Saints players were starting to get frustrated. Ben Long went the torpedo from a kick-out that went straight to Gulden, drawing the ire of Steele, and seconds later Max gave away a free-kick dumping Hickey well after he’d handballed. The Swans were off and Florent kicked an excellent running goal. They went straight out of the middle for a bullet pass to Hayward and another major. The game had broken open. Wilkie got dumped in a Heeney tackle and copped a massive one in the balls.

It was about this time that morbid curiosity took over. If there’s anything I like as much as footy jumper designs (there probably isn’t), then it’s novelty score lines. In modern footy, anything two goals or below qualifies as a novelty scoreline. Teams often shit out third, fourth or fifth goals late when the sting has well and truly left the game. Max finally got some space on his opponent and found a set shot and missed. Butler missed a snap and we went into the final change at 2.6, our lowest three-quarter time score against the Swans since 1920 (funnily enough, the final score ended up being the exact same as that Lakeside Oval game 102 years ago).

We’d responded to our worst performance of the year with our worst performance of the year.

***

I’d tell you to ignore everything about the last quarter if we played well; I’d also use a poor last quarter for some more whinging material in this review, so they weren’t going to get much from me from that point. What if I just…turned it off? Can I do that? Heeney on his own drew level with the Saints early on in the last quarter. There was still time for Zak Jones to earn a free and kick it straight to Paddy McCartin, and then get it back immediately from the rebound kick that went out on the full and kick it directly to Tom McCartin, before Paddy plucked a third McCartin intercept mark in a row moments after. Elsewhere, Dougal almost did his own knee and groin in one movement trying to again get around an opponent.

Billings and Windhager (from a Gresham throw) disappointingly kicked goals in the last few minutes. Until then, we were set to post our lowest score since Round 16 of 1957 when we could only muster 1.5 (11) against that year’s premiers Melbourne, and we were also set to kick just two goals in a game since a 140-point loss to Carlton at Moorabbin early in 1985. There were records out there to be taken off the shoulders of people who weren’t getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to dish this sort of stuff up. Certainly not under the pretence of top four challengers, and certainly not under the pretence of everyone being so shocked about what happened the week before against a team with two wins to its name. There were some smaller feats claimed. It was Brett Ratten’s lowest score as a head coach, taking in two clubs across 10 different seasons. Max was goalless for the first time since May 29^th last year – 392 days earlier.

Last year after the Sydney game we supposedly had a meeting that was acknowledged as a turning point in the season. It’s less acknowledged that we put in a stunning choke in Cairns against the Crows the week after, and then took some time away in the mid-season bye. Is this a reverse 2021? This time, apparently in the bye week we all got together and had a really good earnest chat about how we can turf the season in just a few weeks. Twitter and BigFooty are giving up. And why the hell not? We spent the best part of three months learning to trust the club again, and it’s been wiped in three weeks.

We’re now sitting 10^th with a very difficult draw, but as the week before showed it doesn’t matter where the opposition sits if we’re going to play boring, anxious footy. At half-time of Round 2, when we sat at 2.7, if we weren’t the worst team in the competition, we were the worst-placed team in the competition. We might be somewhere back around there if our form doesn’t change any time soon.

Round 11, 2022
St Kilda 5.2, 6.5, 12.7, 16.7 (103)
North Melbourne 2.2, 2.3, 4.4, 7.8 (50)
Crowd: 23,464 at Docklands, Sunday, May 29th at 1.10pm

What was it with this week?

In the fortnight since I last waffled on about the Saints (thanks Rich for covering for me) and treated myself to a birthday trip to the magnificent Adelaide Oval and a rare win a) at the ground and b) against an Adelaide team anywhere, St Kilda came back into vogue. The media bandwagon had returned. Josh Gabelich was on. One day he was writing about  “Why it’s no longer panic stations at Saints” in the absence of Jack Steele, two days later it was former accountant Callum Wilkie is a “bounty hunter” that “might be the League’s most underrated player”. David King was back to breaking down our selfless running patterns up forward to give space for Max King (this time it was Zak Jones). After we eventually got past the Crows, David King frankly took it too far and said on Max, “I think If this guy lights up in September they can win it, there’s no doubt about that, they can win the flag”. Looking ahead, Damien Barrett went with ““a Marvel Stadium home game against the hapless North Melbourne presents as a fill-up for him in his Coleman Medal chances” in his Sliding Doors column that isn’t really about sliding doors moments.

Brett Ratten’s contract was a talking point. If you’d have told me we’d be taking about at the halfway point as we walked out of the Concrete Dome following the Collingwood loss I’d have assumed that he was gone and we were angling for #Clarko2023; instead we’re apparently looking at extending him as we sit in the top four at the midway point of the season. Dwayne opened the lines on Midday Madness wanting to hear more from us about it all. Talk about Rowan Marshall’s contract was enough to have him on 7 news. Ratts and David Rath did the sports radio rounds.

On On the Couch, Paddy Ryder himself (in a St Kilda polo) said he’s the third-best ruckman in the comp and quite openly said we’re aiming for top four by season’s end. So, surely, against second-last, struggling North Melbourne, here was a chance to show the maturity of the team. To be un-St Kilda-like. To do this without fuss, to get the job done, to dispose of a side that had lost their last six games by 68, 60, 50, 78, 69 and 47 points, with a 108-point loss before all of that.

Then Caro decided to bring back the North to Tasmania debate and Footy Classified trashed their recruiting, while Garry Lyon had put the umpires on notice by saying “Melbourne (against North) got the greatest run from the umpires I have seen for a long, long, long time”. Sam Edmund then reported that all of Mark Finigan, Glenn Luff and Ben Birthisel from the recruiting department had all handed in their resignations on Tuesday, “frustrated at the club over its management”, and he doubled-up with the goss revealing that Jason Horne-Francis travelled to Adelaide without the club knowing, and he may or may not have missed a game with a hamstring related to racking up frequent flyer points.

North got the moody vignette treatment on Tuesday’s 360 and Gerard called the club an “old-fashioned tyre fire”, before they got another howling vignette on the Wednesday. The ABC termed them “embattled”. There’s no conspiracy; but this would only happen to St Kilda. St Kilda, who had done most things right this year, was finally about to face a lower-rung team ahead of a steamy second half of the year, only to find that said struggler had surely engaged Us Against Them mode.

***

Then we decided to drop Jack Billings, and I wasn’t sure how much more this whole situation could be tempting fate. I say it every week, but we have 149 years of trust issues. All good to send a message to the players about accountability, but would we have dropped him if we were playing Melbourne or Brisbane or Fremantle or Carlton?

His on-paper replacement Mitchito had more of a presence at the first centre bounce than he did for the entirety of Round 1 with a tackle, smother, smothered clearance, getting down low to the ball, forcing another stoppage with a tackle on McDonald, and then getting down low and getting it out to Crouch for the clearance. That might have settled some nerves about personnel for the twitchier among us; this line-up had three guys in their first season, no captain, no Snags, no recently-returned pick 3. By afternoon’s end, we would be revelling in the fact.

Murmurs McKenzie has made a funny habit of bobbing up for our early goals over the past 12 months. He kicked our first with a great solo effort running laterally along the 50-metre arc with Taylor; chasing a clearance he tapped it to himself, reversed and broke out of the Taylor tackle, outran Curtis and finished neatly on the left. Maybe he’s cleaner than we (mostly I) give him credit for. This is how guys like him have elevated their game to take us to 8-3.

Highlights for the first half were almost exclusively confined to the first few goals of the game. North took it straight out of the middle and Zurhaar offered a solo effort of his own, burning Sinclair and dodging Wilkie in the pocket, before we nabbed our second thanks to Max taking another step to fulfilling our wildest desires with a one-handed juggling mark in front of goal.

North were matching us early. Yet again they came up with the instant reply, straight out of the middle again, and this time it was Todd Goldstein with a nice banana from the same pocket as Zurhaar’s goal. North would actually win the clearance count 45 to 31, and it would have a lot to do with why Brad Hill and Jack Sinclair finished with the numbers they did. I’m going to do a disservice to them by not mentioning them enough this week, but surely Sinclair is leading the Trevor Baker Award right now and Brad Hill is becoming the player we hoped he’d be (Blake Acres is too, funnily enough, but on the other side of the country).

North’s short game of keepings off – at one stage it was 74 disposals to 50 as they shared the ball around – was undercut by a few moments put things where they should have been. When we actually did win a stoppage Ross accidentally kicked a goal from 65 metres out, but it came from Paddy Ryder (in a St Kilda jumper) with ruckwork-as-art at a centre wing throw-in. Ross faked a handball, outran Horne-Francis, bounced, shirked Luke Davies-Uniacke and the kick went over Long, past Max – who knows where it was supposed to go – and rolled through.

Mitchito got involved again for our fourth, with a tackle from a forward pocket throw-in, Crouch won the ball in traffic and gave it out to Paddy Ryder (for the Saints), who actually hadn’t contested the preceding ruck throw-in and he snapped the goal around the body.

Membrey won a holding-the-ball free-kick and converted and a three-goal lead had opened up without us having brought any real heat. We’d have to wait for after half-time for anything to really happen. The second quarter was really just a lot of St Kilda having the ball and a lot of missed goals; the game could have been wrapped up by half-time given we had multiple set shots from no difficult angles and North could only manage one behind. King took a now-almost-trademark grab at the unreachable point thanks to an excellent pass from Membrey, in a chain created from a – dare I say it – NWM-esque pass by Seb Ross out of defence to Windhager, but he ended his run of seven straight kicks; Zak Jones shanked one to the left and Windhager shanked one harder and put it out on the full. Sharman finally snuck one through, taking a high mark (Derm in special comments was very impressed) and a give-off to Sinclair, and like Max he marked the ball at the highest point. He did his absolutely best to force it left too, but it snuck in.

***

You wouldn’t want this kind of game at 4.40pm on a Sunday. Having this on a beautiful late-autumn afternoon at 1.10pm tucked under the roof in TV studio lighting was already treating it with the disdain it deserved, but it would be a true grind if this was played in the depths of the weekend (and I don’t have kids; that’s a whole other planet of footy logistics for me).

It wasn’t all dour footy, it was just played at a middling pace, with one team keeping the opposition at arm’s length. Hill and Sinclair were everywhere and providing some liveliness (David King declared we have the best half-back pairing in the competition in the wash-up). Their numbers by the end of the game were fantastic (32 disposals, 10 marks and 764 metres gained for Sincs; 33 touches, a goal, 664 metres gained and 10 coaches’ votes for Hill), perhaps partly because of North winning the clearance providing more work for the back half, but we had accountant-turned-bounty hunter Callum Wilkie roaming around and taking 12 marks, Josh Battle running back into the path of Larkey, and Dougal keeping Larkey to two touches. This wasn’t sizzling, there was no sizzle, but there also wasn’t anything to worry about.

The bull run did eventually come, but not in the thunderous way it did against say the Cats a few weeks ago. Windhager made up for his miss and kicked a set shot goal; his teammates got around him more for his second-ever goal than his first, perhaps making up for barely acknowledging his first against the Dees a few weeks ago. The margin had snuck out to 33 points by this point. A wayward Sinclair ball ended up with Ziebell lining up for goal in his 250th. Dwayne, ever the optimist for low-key matches in poor timeslots in artificial lighting, declared “this is huge, this is massive”. Dwayne brings energy, sometimes he brings too much energy and sometimes too much misplaced energy.

We replied with another goal that felt more like another accident than the unadulterated silk that was about to be on display. Paddy Ryder (St Kilda) and Wood broke on the wing and Max halved the contest and Gresham was at the fall running towards the boundary and got tackled without it by Hayden. He lined up to curl it around from the pocket and his shallow kick unimpressively fell over the line. It was still enough to elicit a smile from goal umpire David Rodan, and enough to elicit a “That’s crazy good!” from Dwayne, even though it went through largely because Rowan Marshall just happened to be physically existing in the way of Hayden and Walker, and Goldstein forgot where he was.

It was time for a few highlights. It’s hard to get our head around the party tricks of 2004 being that long ago now but this was the first time since then we had this many young guys making a fun impact on the game (although the Riewoldt generation this is not). The most replayed moment, rightfully, has been NWM’s kick to Max. Some traffic in the forward 50 line had pressure on the North defenders coming from all of Jones, Mitchito, Long, and Gresham, and Scott’s rushed kick out was marked at 60 by NWM. He patiently waited for some movement and Max was again set for one of his leads from the pocket, but it took a fingerpoint from NWM (in his ninth game) to get him going. The bullet kick barely scraped Max King Reaching Height and was one of the prettiest things that happened in red, white and black since the GT and Ross eras, echoing the best of Hayes and Harvey to Riewoldt and Gehrig; Harvey to Lockett; Winmar to Lockett. It was the kind of kick that literally and metaphorically cuts through a game. This match hadn’t been hitting any fantastical highs but the urgency lifted from this point. Max took it right out in front, and went back and gave it the finish it deserved. It would be part of four goals in eight and a half minutes and 6.2 for the quarter.

NWM’s game also included a four-bounce sprint along the members’ wing before he ran into trouble (although there wasn’t anyone really giving him anything), and almost a thrilling first quarter goal from a crumb from a high spoil, before he turned left, then right, and then right some more and lined up but missed (for some reason, he just can’t quite settle in front of goal). He also offered an already-trademark bullet to Marshall on the wing in the last quarter. Yowza.

The next was a little more fortuitous but had a fun result. There was not quite a Max King quarter – there was as much a Max King quarter as much as there was a Mitchito Owens quarter, as much as there was a Mitchito Owens minute, that took the margin from 39 to 51 points and well and truly shut the game. All three of this year’s debutants were involved in varying ways for the first. Windhager was caught holding the ball at half-back, Hayden went laterally and the footy fell straight to NWM on the arc. He had King available with an arguably easier kick than what was required a few moments earlier, or he had Long over the top, and he kicked it straight to Turner in between them. Turner spilled it, in only a way that a defender playing for a team anchored so low can (we’ve been there before ourselves), and Long swooped and fed it out to Mitchito, who calmly, off a step, curled the ball through for his first goal. A light show and a team celebration for the 18-year-old.

At the following bounce, Horne-Francis came through the middle but was worried out of it by Paddy Ryder (of the St Kilda Football Club) and Paddy collected the ball that was meant for Tarryn Thomas and gave off to Jones. Young stuck out a hand to Zak’s kick and gathered the ball but it came out in a Long tackle – possibly before or after Young outright spilled the ball himself, and Mitchito reacted fastest and kicked the ball off the ground through for his second in just over 20 seconds of play. As it goes these days it was time to immediately come off the ground, and this time he got a light show an ovation from the crowd. As well as the two goals he finished with 10 tackles, playing the kind of game we thought he’d play when we called him a “bull” and “contested beast” (a little bit like Windhager).

Goldstein put in his shot for mark of the year over Mason Wood, getting as high as someone that big probably can. Trying to shake the stepladder stigma, Mason found the ball on the wing and launched forward to all of King, Marshall, Ryder, Sharman and Membrey. None of them could take the mark but in the traffic Marshall cut off the handball to Hayden and gave it out to Max. Max pirouetted onto his left and slotted it around his body, yet again doing the things we’ve been projecting that he’d be doing since we drafted him, this one a moment of agility belying his size.

Rich and I discussed after the game that it is becoming possibly apparent (??) that this rope-a-dope business might actually be by design. As the Melbourne game showed (Collingwood too), there is huge risk involved if you let a team get too far ahead, but we’ve pulled out several game-changing third quarters (Rounds 1 – even though we used up all our magic – and 2, 3, 6, 9 and now 11) and fourth quarters (Rounds 3, 4 and 10). We’re obviously backing our fitness to run out games, but seven of our eight wins (plus the Collingwood game, plus some decent second-half footy against the Dees) have had a defining second-half run. Through a quasi-retrospective mid-season review lens: It’s been fun, once it’s actually materialised.

***

The final quarter was played at the pace of an afterthought, as if we everyone was really just waiting to take in the last bit of sunshine before winter officially set in. Hill (courtesy of an excellent Gresham double attack and Mitchito aerial effort) curled through a nice goal; Marshall roved and kicked a replica after Ben Long chased the ball hardest and spun on the spot; D-Mac gave away another 50; Long helped set up another goal by attacking the ball from a throw-in and taking the tackle, a fast handball to Mitchito, and quick hands from Seb to Zak Jones and an excellent pass to Membrey on the lead. Curtis kicked straight to NWM in the last 40 seconds, Sinclair ran past and lobbed a high ball, Membrey was goalside and marked and gave to Gresham running past into an open goal. Gresh actually ended up with the ball on the siren and played on (his kick was nowhere near it either way); for hardcore fans of score lines this created the first-ever game in VFL/AFL history that finished with a final score of 103 to 50.

We probably could have gone a little bigger with the margin if we’re wanting to be totally uncompromising and ruthless. What decadence to have this moment in which we are able to say that. We won the first quarter by three goals and won the third by 25 points, but the second and fourth were a little tighter. Not tighter in the way that it was a highly pressurised game, just tighter in the can-we-really-be-arsed way. We didn’t have to fear the repercussions of the media pile-on or a club in crisis ready to lash out or a tyre fire getting out of hand. We did what we had to do.

Freo appeared to have denied us the chance to claim the very small marker of being in the top four at the halfway point of the season, but they temporarily allowed just that little bit of belief that yes, the Dees can be beaten, and rather than a race of one with a trailing group it’s a race of one, still, but that trailing group might be a little closer. Then the Blues lost anyway. So yes, we are in the top four at the halfway mark of the season.

The absence of Jack Steele will be more telling after the bye but there is plenty to like. Right now, we have Max King (who I still can’t fully enjoy because I’m worried he’s going to get injured), we have a team playing selfless footy, we have everyone playing their role, we have players improving, we have three first-year players making genuine impacts. Save for pissing away a win in Cairns we’d be a game off top spot. To boot, Sandy is third on the VFL ladder, behind only Melbourne’s Casey and, uh, Southport. 

***

It’s about this time of year we get to the “every week” of “supporting the team every week”. Feeling the cold. Catching the tram to the game. Meeting the people you watch the game with on the Bourke Street bridge. Getting a Parma at Platform 28. Getting the drinks. Lining up for too long to go to the bathroom because Marvel’s getting redone. And there’s no guarantee of an enthralling game, or a Saints win. By now, the game itself doesn’t have its early-season novelty. Days of listening to Whateley into Midday Madness and nights of watching 360 bleed into each other.

And just as we settle into it all, we run into a bye. We’re going to need it. And I mean, we as fans are going to need it. The second half of the year isn’t going to be easy in any way. We’ve set it up so that if we finish top four it’s going to be exhausting and emotional, and if we fall out of the top four it’s going to be exhausting and emotional. We haven’t exercised this supporting muscle for a long time.

Two seasons ago we were second on the ladder after Round 10 of a 17-match season; last year it was a second-half turnaround that had us within touching distance of the finals. Here’s hoping we can put together both halves, plus finals, this year.

In the meantime, make the most of the bye.