Author: Tom Briglia

Round 13, 2021
St Kilda 4.3, 7.6, 8.9, 8.12 (60)
Adelaide Crows 0.0, 2.6, 6.6, 9.12 (66)
Crowd: 5,969 at Cazalys Stadium, Saturday, June 12th at 7.25pm

What started as the weekly whinge masquerading as a match “review”, like this is Pitchfork or something, ended up being a de facto mid-season review, or, just really a chance to collect my thoughts about what the hell has happened this year.

Taking a step back reveals an uglier picture than being in the weekly washing machine of lurching between pastings and moments of redemption. The West Coast win planted a seed into our heads that for every 86-point loss on a Thursday night there might be some sort of redemption just a week later; for every Max King or Jack Higgins miss that frittered away a chance to beat a premiership fancy (or similar) we may just be goal kicking practice away from solving all our issues (insert 2009 Grand Final inaccuracy reference here).

Much like we did against very unfancied North Melbourne and Fremantle last year (the latter with almost identical margin flips), we reannounced ourselves last Saturday night as a team with a flat-track bully streak. The Geelong, Sydney and West Coast (and GWS) performances aren’t enough to outweigh all the evidence to the contrary – we really CBF when things get tough. We’re back to playing like millionaires, exactly what we did when Brad Hill adorned the front page of the AFL Record heading into the Fremantle match last year as we emerged as a potential glamour and destination team.

The club again shrouded in questions about the mental – and perhaps physical – fortitude of the side that were asked earlier in the year, or at least it was before the week descended into a circus around Seb Ross and Tim Membrey and then whether what happened to Hunter Clark’s head was more within the laws of the than it was of legal consequence to the AFL in the years to come.

***

Who else can give up a game in which commentators are legitimately talking about the opposition being held scoreless for an entire half, and that record’s rare place in history? Adelaide’s 0.0 became of increasing interest as the second quarter furthered. They didn’t score until beyond the halfway mark of the second quarter, at all.

Until that point it all looked pretty slick. It felt right – you think it’s all working again, especially after another performance against a decent team in which only the goal kicking let you down. Mason Wood pulled out a couple of early goals with some slick moves, enough to prompt a teasing betting company-uses-meme Twitter post. Transition was slick. Dunstan pulled out the most direct and efficient single disposal of his career, a mark behind the centre circle, turn and long kick to the chest of Max King. Max had a couple of goals in the first half, including an excellent bit of body work at the top of the square and finesse to soccer through a goal.

Crouch was massive again. Steele is entering “needless to say” territory. Highmore was great across half back. Contested possession up by 20 at quarter time (we would end up losing it).

There were still moments of millionaire madness. Luke Darcy’s proclamation that Butler won’t miss was met with Butler missing. Lonie’s banana attempt at goal from a nothing angle. Higgins missed more set shots at goal, Max missed some too. All of this didn’t appear to matter while the Crows were still in the process of realising they were actually out on the ground. But once they did the result was two-and-a-half quarters in the making, never mind late goals in the second.

Yet again a St Kilda team was wiped away, or disappears. Maybe it chooses to, I don’t know. Maybe it chooses to just relax. There’s no killer instinct. The team wasn’t exhausted just beyond the midway point of the second quarter. Is it the effort? The effort (the lack of) seems to get a lot of the blame from the coaches. Do we just not try hard enough? Really, from the time Adelaide skittled through a few behinds, St Kilda was anonymous. Forward entries had no real design or intent, and any rare goals that slipped through (only three from that point, and none for the final hour) appeared to be met with relief.

This was going to be an Adelaide win, even if it took both of an umpire on the goal line saying “you tried to stop him from marking” to a defender, and a freak goal from a prodigy. The St Kilda extremes of bemusement and, well…bemusement. These things bend back on themselves and end up in a similar place.

And of course, the way it happens gives the opposition their own amazing highlight and hero. The Saints love making heroes of the opposition. Shane Ellen, Troy Wilson, Eric Mackenzie. The record will show Riley Thilthorpe kicked the last two goals of the game to win it off his own boot, including the winner over his head. McKay looks like a hero after Hamish had only reminded most of us early on in the broadcast that he still existed. Now he’s got more of a presence and profile than he ever did, lauded by his coach in the wash-up, free to play next week.

***

Our next game is a Friday night date with Richmond at the MCG (or, wherever it will be). We were destroyed by this team last time in a prime time slot; around that time we were drawn to play the Cats on a Friday night and considered a laughing stock by an annoyed public. We almost – almost – showed the football world we were better than that. But we didn’t, and we aren’t, and we are now in the midst of an internal review.

We’re also in the midst of a whole lot of mixed messaging and confusion. The club jumped at any going near a “Missy Higgins” headline, but behind closed doors was annoyed by Seb Ross and Tim Membrey spending time with their partners and newborns (and newborns-to-be). We want to be dynasty team, according to David Rath in the members’ forum held during the week, but after loading up at the last couple of trade periods the President’s letter from Andrew Basset suggested the “genuine window” would be open in 2022 more than 2021. Grant Thomas didn’t like like the revisionism,  saying it could easily be used – and, evidently, has been used – as a get-out-of-jail card. Do you hold an internal review if you feel like you’re on the brink? Only if you’re thinking some big changes will do it. Because a global pandemic won’t. A vaccine won’t. Not another lockdown.

Is it the name “St Kilda”? Should we have included “Moorabbin” in the club’s name as initially intended? We’d had 92 years without a premiership preceding the actual move to Moorabbin, so it’s not the plot of land at Linton Street. The red, yellow and black wasn’t wildly more successful than the usual red, white and black.

We’re back to this just being a lifestyle. Any path that appeared to be laid out before us during last year has again become overgrown. Perhaps we’re experiencing a Melbourne-style blip; until we watch them end another long premiership drought, comparisons with Geelong 2006 and Richmond 2016 remain far-fetched. St Kilda playing is again something that just happens on the weekend. I learned that I could hate the club in 2018. The Road to 2018 was actually a road to 2020 (they didn’t need to not factor a pandemic into things to get this wrong), and made as a PR exercise in response to a bewildered fan base. They even changed the fucking song for fuck’s sake. 

The St Kilda circus rolls on. It’s hard to keep caring. The only willing I felt last Saturday night was for the game to end. We knew what the result was going to be, the only thing we were waiting for was to see what it actually physically looked like, recorded on camera in high-definition video and audio. It’s beyond “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”. The joke’s worn thin and there’s nothing else to lose.

Round 12, 2021
Sydney Swans 4.6, 6.7, 10.11, 13.14 (92)
St Kilda 3.4, 5.7, 9.7, 12.11 (83)
Crowd: The AFL is still releasing these later than usual at the SCG, Saturday, June 5th at 1.45pm

Amid going back into lockdown, the Northern Territory making its biggest noise for an AFL team, and a mid-season draft, we’d quietly hit the middle weekend of the 23-week home and away season.

Going by March’s season previews, the broader footy community expected the Saints to probably come in around where they were last year at best, while at the same time many pre-empted admonishment of the club saying that they should be taking a step forward, given the younger guys coming through and the addition of Crouch, Frawley and McKernan to Hill, Ryder, Hannebery, etc.

We probably weren’t expecting to be waking up on the first Saturday morning of June in another lockdown with the Demons having cemented their spot at the top of the ladder, while our mates from the 2013 and 2014 drafts the Bont and Trac run around as the competition’s best two players. Nick Hind and Tom Hickey are the recruits of the year, and we now have Richmond’s drafting of Matty Parker to add to the anxiety files (but also I hope he’s awesome there. Mid-season draft bonus: We don’t have two tall Kings – yet – but we do have two tall Maxes.)

The Geelong loss a month ago left me feeling flat as fuck. After a couple of weeks of sorting itself our, the team came out as if it was primed to take on a premiership fancy on the Friday night stage. In front of a home crowd, The Messiah played the kind of game we hoped he would deliver, roaming around and clunking marks, doing everything except kick straight, kicking us out of it in the process. We physically took the ground the week after at most, and then turned in an uninspiring performance last week.

We were due for our once every three or four weeks decent performance, and this one would be uncomfortably, so-unbelievably-it’s-believably similar in style to the Cats loss, except the protagonist was 10 inches shorter. By the time Buddy weaved his way through the forward pocket and a 50-metre penalty had taken Rowbottom to the goal line late on Saturday afternoon, there was no air left. We were just sacks of skin on the couch.

***

Jack Higgins has ridden a wave of goodwill during his Sainthood. Footage has been readily dug up of him on camera in the crowd as a happy young Saints fan during the club’s biggest win in its 148-year history (and in the peak several weeks of the GT era) and in the final quarter of the 2009 Preliminary Final (in the peak match of the Ross era). Today, in his role as the protagonist, he was a hero turned incredibly sympathetic antagonist, and there might be some thinking they were a bit harsh on Max in the fall-out a few weeks ago.

A quick coffee run at half-time to Code Black meant some in-car SEN analysis that included quick chat about Seb’s miss in the shadows of half-time. Justin Leppitsch said it wouldn’t be an issue for the players, because they would move on in the moment faster and be making their own mistakes, while it would take a lot more for a fan to let it go.

For the second time in a month we have a lifelong St Kilda supporter playing what for all intents and purposes is a their breakout game (at least in red, white and black), and a match-winning one at that. I have the feeling that no one would be more upset by this than Higgins (I’m basing this on armchair psychology and his reaction on the siren and post-match). Going by Max’s performances since then, nor is anyone more upset than he is that what happened against the Cats – notwithstanding his back injury issues heading into and during the game yesterday.

Perhaps because of that injury, Higgins played the role of a tall roaming forward, the kind that he and Max would have enjoyed from another former number 12. Higgins took 12 marks as a lead-up target, repeatedly presenting up to the wings. No one else seemed to do it, or able to do within the framework of the team – especially once Wood was subbed out early after a promising start – while Membrey had his hands full in defence and Josh Battle anonymous for most of the match.

As the game wore on, Higgins appeared to rush his set shots in the way that Max appeared to, almost as if to not give a chance for any of those doubts that might have built up in his head to creep in before he’d taken the kick. But defeating your demons doesn’t mean avoiding them (I guess; I’m crippled by fear and anxiety and a lack of confidence).

King himself was mostly anonymous outside of some very prominent moments, understandable in the context of smashed confidence, and even more so given his back injury. He took a huge mark in the goalsquare in the final seconds of the first quarter, and then in the final quarter charged at the ball at ground level to a deep entry and gave off quick hands to Membrey for a goal, and winning a 50 metre penalty for Josh Battle and then a holding the ball free kick, both in curious circumstances, in the final quarter.

He missed the set shot from the latter.

Is it a St Kilda thing? Are we carrying the only two players in the competition who could dominate a game and kick 1.5 and 1.6 in a manner that would starkly change the result? Given this team’s troubles with goal kicking after several years (since the 2009 Grand Final?) I would say yes, yes it is a St Kilda thing.

***

SEN pre-match included some light-hearted discussion around Brett Ratten’s comments that we hadn’t played well and were still sitting at 5-6. We’ve certainly played two games against top eight teams that really left us wondering about the finishing rather than anything else. Again, there wasn’t a huge amount you’d change around the ground. There were some glaring moments that you’d expect from, well, any Saints team at any point in history. Messing around with the ball a little too much in the middle of the ground was costly (Dunstan a repeat offender, and Hill also featured in the missed handballs file), as well as some wayward forward entries (Byrnes right over the leading Membrey’s head in the third, Dunstan’s daisy-cutter early in the last).

Membrey again played a herculean performance in hostile territory interstate, only to have a close match slip away, by hook or by crook or by shank. He kicked big goals in the third and final quarters around the body, while also magically appearing at the other end of the ground to hold up the last line of defence multiple times.

Brad Hill set about rectifying the almost-funny six touches of the previous week and had 18 to half-time, although finished “only” with 25. Steele willed himself around the ground. Brad Crouch was everywhere, getting the ball and giving it to teammates, and finished with 38 touches and seven tackles. Along with Steele, he seemed to step up every time the Swans appeared to get the upper hand, Sinclair continued his very good season off half-back.

Highmore was used in defence, and then attack (he got very excited about Membrey’s goal in the third and celebrated into the goal umpire), and then the wing. Byrnes and Clavarino, and both had good moments, particularly Byrnes with a couple of goals, but the idea of getting games into them adds to the idea this season is slipping away into a manic slop.

***

The Fox Footy team did their utmost to wind up the not-so-seismic Sydney Swans vs St Kilda At the SCG fixture all they could. Footage of the one-point 2009 win to go 18-0, and Plugger’s 1994 demolition derby en route to one of the more famous comeback victories (and also by one point). (They did skip the stirring 1997 win in Round 19, as well as the Swans’ two-point victory in the 1998 Qualifying Final, following St Kilda’s 101-point win earlier in the year).

The small roar of the supporters of an interstate team on the charge is a distinct sound. “He thinks he’s Stewie Loewe!” was the cry from Garry Lyon as Higgins wheeled around for what would be his fifth point. Each of Higgins’ marks in the final minutes, with the excited roar of the St Kilda crowd, were dramatic – the lead-up high mark, and then a sliding mark several deep. Could haves. Should haves. Would haves, too. The moments they would have become, what they would have meant for this season, or for this playing group.

The final seconds of each quarter yielded notable happenings. King’s big mark in the goal square and goal in the first, Parker and Hayward’s goals in the third and last, and Seb’s wild miss running in goal face ahead of half-time. Seb Ross’s miss took us to 5.7, and by the end of the afternoon we were 5-7. We went 5-7 at the SCG in what was Ross Lyon’s second season and went on to finish in the top four and played in a Preliminary Final. I don’t think anyone is thinking we could, or should, be able to pull that off just yet.

Round 9, 2021
St Kilda 0.7, 3.11, 4.13, 5.17 (47)
Geelong Cats 2.1, 4.2, 6.6, 10.8 (68)
Crowd: 26,712 at Marvel Stadium, Friday, May 14th at 7.50pm

A few weeks ago it was considered outrageous that we’d be given a Friday night match (and a Saturday night following). This Friday night had all the air of a group that had set itself to take a big scalp on the big stage and reannounce itself to its fans and the rest of the footy world. Wins against a flat Hawthorn and an unconvincing Gold Coast were enough to think we might give this a shake (but still only 26,000 to turn up).

What we got a was a microcosm of St Kilda from 2000 onwards; ultimately an example of attaching ourselves to a Saints team through attrition. All those nights we spent at Colonial Stadium watching high-intensity losses and faltering finishes of a team featuring a young Roo, Lenny, Dal, et al.; watching Roo take charge of “the worst game ever” from centre half back and Daniel Wulf run in and hit the post, right through to Ben Long and Paddy McCartin bringing back a team to level with GWS and a ballooning Stuv kick going just too high for Jake Carlisle in the last seconds, and the umpire missing an over the shoulder call.

But there was all the other side of this century rolled into it too. This club has been coming down from the Riewoldt generation for years, and – neatly coinciding with the turn of the decade – finally was able to experience the present and look to the future. It’s 12 years on from 2009 – 11 including 2010 – but it’s starting to feel old. Or part of a different era, at least? Of course there are hallmarks, but we’re not quite entirely consumed by the comedown of the Grand Finals and the Riewoldt generation. Also, the past never dies. There is something about the Cats. That rivalry of the 2000s has never gone away for us, while the Cats have gone to a decade since that has featured a premiership, another Grand Final, and constant finals appearances. The navy and white hoops perennially represent trouble.

Yes, you can find traces of history in everything if you look hard enough, but there was simply too much going on here. We had Round 14, 2009 wheeled out during the week as you’d expect. That’s an afternoon that really just now brings a sadness, that that group of players never saluted, and the frittering away of multiple shots on goal on Grand Final Day of that year, down by one goal when the siren went despite huge pressure and not doing much wrong around the ground (our final score was 68 in the 2009 and 2019 Grand Finals; Geelong last night kicked the same).

Would have, could have, should have. The tone was set early with Marshall missing. And then Max King. And then Membrey. These weren’t hard shots. Max King would have torn the game apart, but for poor kicking. Bad kicking is bad football, and his ability to take in 10 marks can co-exist with his ongoing want to shank set shots. Our equivalent of a toe-poke moment in the third quarter (see how much lower the stakes are for us) ended up with our Messiah tripping over his own feet. Membrey was right there but, given his chest mark drop just before the siren a couple of minutes later, who the hell knows how that would have turned out. Tuohy glided through and away without breaking stride. Lonie’s effort backing into two oncoming Cats deserved so much more than that, and, watching the replay, deserved BT to actually call him as “Lonie”, not “Higgins”). Anyone who watched Front Bar would have seen Heath Shaw talking about the 2010 Grand Final Replay smother. This felt like some sort of horrible reverse 2009 toe-poke and smother mash-up.

The roar and groan was the anguish and frustration of a supporter base learning in real time that tonight is not its time, and this is not yet its not yet its time. Maybe soon, but there’s more waiting required.

***

For a few days at least, Max King is his own topic of discussion. Goal kicking is something that can be fixed, and we should note that he has been building towards a performance in which his presence genuinely becomes a cause for anxiety. He’s now kicked 13.18 this year (and 35.38 in his career). He took 10 marks in an otherwise towering performance, let alone what he’s shown he can do at the fall of the ball or moving through opponents in the forward line. He is still 20 years old and has played 26 games, having missed effectively the entirety of his Under 18 year with an ACL and almost all of 2019 due to the recovery and then a syndesmosis injury. He is way, way ahead of where he should be, or where anyone else would be. He remains our next Messiah. He’s a tall unmissable forward, he grew up as a St Kilda supporter, he wears number 12.

An unwillingness from umpires to not pay holding the ball or incorrect disposal against Geelong players, yet pay a mark clearly dropped at their half-back and then get sucked in by Gary Rohan’s dive, giving them a goal. When I think about this the more indignant parts of me scream that they’ve been doing it since Tom Hawkins hit the post in the second quarter of 2009 (and including to the point where several minutes of free rides from the 2010 Qualifying Final was compiled for YouTube; now sadly taken down). Brad Hill legged and holding the ball, Ratugolea awarded a mark with Ryder in front. Max King hit the post to bring the margin back to 10 points in the final term and firmly wrestle back the momentum but hit the post, and the ball went straight up the other end to the guy who hit that post in 2009, who kicked the sealer. Straight through.

The umpiring generally was enough to draw out an aggressive comment from a St Kilda coach. The last time that I really remember that happening led to Whispers in the Sky, but it’s still refreshing to have someone who is universally respected across the AFL landscape and having a crack at the AFL also be the coach of St Kilda. I think he is getting very attached to the team and the club.

For all of those wayward decisions, the St Kilda Football Club will raise us all of those set shots and missed opportunities that when into the 0.9 start and the 5.17 finish (not that we need any real reminding or convincing). King tripping over, Membrey dropping the chest mark (I smacked the seat next to me twice and my hand remains sore but in a stable condition), Ben Long being unable to land the ball anywhere near the advantage of Josh Battle charging goalward, Hunter Clark fended off an opponent and kicked over the top of the leading Membrey’s head.

The best and worst thing is that nothing really needed to change around the ground, at all. For all intents and purposes, this was our best performance of the year. Again, how much can a team rely on a 33-year-old ruckman at his third club? More than it does Rowan Marshall, who might be our second most important player. His loss in the third quarter coincided with a drop in share of the footy, but even while Crouch was off the ground and without Zak Jones, we still had the opportunities on goal. They were good chances all the way throughout, too. Whereas the 8.15 scoreline against the Suns made perfect sense because our ball use and movement going forward meant so many of the shots were rushed or from difficult angles, this 5.17 was purely waste.

***

Geelong always appeared to have another gear. The no-frills rebound that led to Hawkins’ first goal, the combination of their widely-acknowledged bigger bodies that ties in with their game style, but the addition of Isaac Smith and Higgins with Cameron, Hawkins and Rohan up forward gives them a rightful confidence they can move the ball a little more quickly. Menegola’s care-free goal off a step at that crucial moment early in the last, Rohan making the most of his gift chance, Hawkins putting the sealer straight through without a care.

And yet, we were sitting back in our usual seats, having lost lost to Richmond here in our last prime time outing by 86 points, and had the team that beat the tigers last week by 63 on the ropes. We could be going 5-4! Maybe we’re back! Some short-term redemption, at least, for a horrible three-out-of-four weeks. Instead, we left the ground like a loose cable snaking around and spitting our sparks and smoke. It’s draining and exhausting in the moment. It’s a fucking whirlwind and it’s overwhelming. It’s frustrating, comical, infuriating and embarrassing. A volatile mix of pride and frustration and indignity.

These are the games that get you attached to a team. Matt said it was a surreal night at the footy. It did feel that way. Things get surreal when they matter again, and as you learn to trust a group with representing the St Kilda Football Club, as you feel a pang of disappointment as you learn Rowan Marshall is out of the game and that Brad Crouch is being assessed. After coming down from a cagey walk in the post-game crowd crush and the tram trip home, thinking about umpires and Geelong and missed shots at goal and 2009, and after going over Friday night again and reliving it through writing this, I land back here on a Sunday evening in 2021, thinking about Max King and Rowan Marshall and Dan Butler and Jack Higgins and Hunter Clark, and that rather than pulling us down, the timeline for this team is now unfolding in front of us.

Round 8, 2021
Gold Coast Suns 1.4, 3.7, 7.9, 7.12 (54)
St Kilda 0.3, 3.7, 4.12, 8.15 (63)
Crowd: 9,271 at Metricon Stadium, Saturday, May 8th at 1.45pm

Saturdays and Sundays (rarely Fridays) throughout the Richo era usually meant one thing – watching the footy in a lounge room or at a bar while the Saints fumbled and scrambled their way to an uncomfortable loss. The game was usually over at quarter time or half-time, with the respective sirens followed by a few seconds of shared bitter silence.

Given the nomadic nature of 2020, we really only copped a proper refresher at the Adelaide Oval a fortnight ago. At Carrara on Saturday afternoon, we were again treated to all sorts of curious moments with the ball, missing midfields, and spurned shots at goal from rushed kicks and tight angles. Except this time, we…won. All those things were there, but…we won. We just…won.

“Winning ugly” is often used in terms of a good team, or a team on the rise. “You’ve got to win ugly sometimes”, “good teams find a way”, all those sorts of comments are associated with games that won’t be replayed for any real reason other than to back up any paperwork lodged to the AFL. This was a long way from the Thursday night in August last year in which we went to bed second on the ladder after what was genuinely one of the better games of the year. But neither team had been in the barnstorming pandemic-depths form going into this one. It showed. Without a bead of sweat formed, short kicks coming off half-back consistently stretched a teammate or said teammate simply dropped the ball, both acts unbecoming of anyone earning hundreds of thousands dollars at any time, let alone during a pandemic. It was like watching heaps of sensationally fit guys who aren’t too familiar with an Australian Rules football had just been told to get out there and play. Was there some weird sunscreen being used 26-degree heat? It afflicted most of the team, from relative topliners down – Billings, Hill, Membrey and Webster were all involved in some way at some point.

Hill, Crouch and Jones were all picking up disposals early again, but unlike last week the ball wasn’t doing much forward of centre. Both sides were probably guilty of this, but the Suns were at least doing it more regularly and Wilkie (he’s back!), Howard and even Darragh Joyce at times keeping the air competitive. One goal to none at the first break, and Ben King (come home, Ben)’s second came from a lazy Brad Hill kick along the wing, and the ball being ominously given up on the ground for a fast slingshot goal. Moments later, Steele snapped an excellent goal around the corner for our first. Even in the GT and Ross eras we didn’t really have midfielders that regularly kicked barnstorming goals. It was our first and it was 11 minutes into the second quarter.

The Suns stretched the lead again with another easy rebound goal, concerning because it was so easy and also because it had happened again – Weller out in space on the wing finding Izak Rankine, who threatens to become a Paul Chapman-style figure of opposition arrogance and skill in the future. After the troubles he gave us last year, he was involved in the Suns’ early goals and later boxed lightly (and comically) on Steele’s chest as the game tightened and the tension rose. Those hits will get bigger over the years.

(Max) King eventually got involved later in the quarter as the share of possession shifted. Some fast hands at ground level led to Billings’ curling snap (shortly after Higgins’ comically high and wide snap from the opposite flank), and then Max slotted a lovely set shot from near 50 on a tough angle before hitting the post from an easier one. I’m not sure if he dislikes holding onto marks near goal, or kicking goals from set shots, or if he’s a massive fan of the Paddy McCartin Three-Goal Maximum, but he’s constantly just a couple of moments or metres from grabbing hold of a game that little bit more aggressively.

That we had landed a few highlights-worthy shots at goal said something about the skill of Steele and Billings and King, sure, but it also said more about the weight of numbers of the scoring shots. Some of them inevitably had to land, and a 30% strike rate (of those that actually registered a score) was a flattering return. There was a lot of Richo-era hallmarks in the anxiety-riddled aesthetics of the ball movement, but a lot of it was a reprise of post-Gold Coast win 2020. Mostly, no clean enough ball movement to get decent and deep entries, and slower movement that meant if it did land in attack there was high traffic that created haphazard shots on goal that never felt threatening because they were rushed or coming from all sorts of angles.

I don’t know many teams have been 4.13 at any stage of a game and gone on to win. The Suns hadn’t put us away. Had the whole game just been us messing around? An arm wrestle for most of the third term actually felt a little in our favour without ever being convincing. In four minutes and 14 seconds the Suns all but broke the game open with three goals. Corbett finally got on the board, another turnover from just outside the defensive 50 arc – this time a wayward Bytel handball – meant another easy hit-up to a leading forward and a set shot goal from Holman. The Suns won the clearance and Weller got a 50-metre penalty for the now out-of-fashion infringement of breaching the protected zone around the mark.

***

In the weighty silence of three-quarter time in front of the screen at Arcadia, Matt looked up from his Carlton Draught.

“Guys, we’re going to do this.”

Matt is funny and empathetic. He follows St Kilda with the weight of what we’ve all experienced as Saints supporters, with a reverence for history and its minutiae, and with nostalgia. It means the serious and facetious are often inverted. It took me a few seconds to figure out if he was serious or not. He was serious.

Sometimes you just know. You might have the feeling during the week. On the tram on the way in to the game. Walking across the bridge to the Concrete Disney Store. Sometimes it’s just learned behaviour – the car trip to Matt’s or to a bar usually means I’m on the way to watch a loss interstate, so I wasn’t quite feeling it this week. In hindsight, part of me likes to think that I did feel there was still an escape route at that point, even if it had to defy the previous three quarters. I sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to offer a description of what it would look like.

Wilkie and Howard and Joyce had taken absolutely everything they could. Jack Steele willed himself into the contest when we needed goals, never mind a consistent presence around the contest, but he needed more. The entire midfield lifted in the final term, and it started in the air at centre bounces and stoppages with the high hand of Paddy Ryder, allowing Rowan Marshall to more reliably draw defenders and bring the ball to ground up forward. Billings started it on the scoreboard with another around-the-corner snap, stepping up again in front of goal at an important moment this season (and after King got down low again to a dirty spilled ball). Snags was not far behind but it took a rare moment of composure, with Zak Jones taking a second to run back out of the 50 metre arc and into space before turning around and delivering neatly to Snags on the lead. There was still 15 and a half minutes left at this point, and more than 10 minutes of messy football and wasted opportunities followed.

Surely we’d used up too much magic. This is the St Kilda Football Club; anything decent accomplished or sought is returned by the Footy Gods with something heavy (and if not, we’ll find a way to augment). We’d won four games in a row by less than a goal against the Suns, and winning a fifth by another single-digit margin surely means something is on its way. Why not go way too early? I get the same feeling from Rankine, Lukoscius, Ainsworth, Collins, Powell and Ben King (come home, Ben – was Tony Brown saying as much to him after the siren?). The drawn-out half-time scuffle said enough. I got that same feeling from Chapman, Bartel, Ablett, Johnson, Kelly, Mackie, Scarlett, et al. in the early 2000s. Saturday’s game would appear the last place you’d be looking for signs of your fate, or destiny.

For now, how is it that a team’s fortunes can so apparently hinge on the presence of a 33-year-old ruckman playing for his third club? Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda. Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper. This was the kind of situation that needed a player and a presence who is not of St Kilda, who can cut through the gravity of St Kilda. He’d hauled in a massive mark at half-forward, and while he didn’t nail the kick forward to King he was building ominously. We now have footage of the 10-minute plus goal drought being broken by Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, choosing to pull out of an already-started jump at a high entry, and stay down to collect the spilled ball and snap a high goal to put the Saints in front.

Moments later he won the hit-out with a soaring leap and artful tap straight down to Crouch, who quickly got low and gave out the hands out to Bytel (Bytel being given the responsibility in the middle at this point was notable in itself). Within seconds (and a Hunter Clark intercept and handball), the footy was back in Crouch’s hands on the 50 metre arc. Somehow we had breathing space.

Gold Coast weren’t going anywhere. I can’t imagine we’ll have many easy times with them. A frantic and brutal few minutes within 70 metres of the Suns’ goals somehow only ended with a wayward Markov shot. These aren’t the biggest bodies, and they were tired, but from both sides they were thrown at the ball as hard as any, and in a manner that suggested the margin was below a goal rather than a goal and a half.

Amid the frenzy, Darragh Joyce bodylined the ball in a way that Zak Jones would have been proud, collecting Holman on the way through. It illicited the immortal line from Jack Riewoldt in special comments, “Darragh Joyce came through like an absolute steam train”. Holman came off with less than 90 secons left. The tension had been taken out of the game. And as a small wink from Winx, finally, a held contested mark on the wing.

St Kilda 5.4, 10.9, 14.11, 19.14 (128)
Hawthorn 0.0, 4.2, 6.3, 9.5 (59)
Crowd: 26,433 at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, May 1st at 4.35pm

The Saints seemed to disappear over the past few weeks. Memories of the faltering 2017 campaign, the 2018 cliff and then 2019 temporary revival and then, uh, cliff are still very fresh. For most supporters and members, the way we interact with the club and our relationship with the club on a weekly basis – that is, experiencing the journey of a season by going to the games, the car, tram and train trips to and from – was indeed that 2019 season. The 2020 season was an inflection point for the club’s (very) modern history, and we landed back with them just after it. We’re still getting our heads around a few things. Saturday was the first time we’d seen Paddy Ryder in a St Kilda jumper in person.

The loss to the Bombers in Round 3 bought back memories of the Good Friday red flag of 2018, and after the stirring West Coast win we’d lost games by 86 and 54 points. Between those, we’d been given a Friday night game against the Cats in Round 9 and a Round 10 Saturday night match against the Bulldogs, drawing the ire of the Prime Time/Major League Sports Fetishists in the footy media. We had become the Carlton of a few years ago, and the Sunday night Richo-era style interstate loss to Port confirmed it.

The anticipation of the footy was already gone, just as it disappeared in 2018 and then from the midway point of 2019. The question hovered around the periphery of my mind all week: are we bad again?

***

The reintroduction of Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda, helped almost immediately; his early high centre bounce leaps brought out the same involuntary gasps of excitement as Jason Holmes’ did one night late in winter of 2015 (fortunately the result was a little better). Said gasps were probably melodramatic, but I get it, we’ve been starved of a competent ruckman (and ruckmen) for a very long time.

Novelty Stats Enjoyers would have bene superbly pleased with the 0.0 score line against at quarter time. It really did end up being an afternoon of party tricks, so who were the guys who put us in that position in the first place? Straight away it was Crouch and Jones and Hill, all the high-profile recruits that suggested the club thought we might be in some sort of contention this year. Jones finished the first quarter with 15 touches, Crouch brought his fast hands and Hill was prominent across half-back.

The movement was fluid. For once, the balance between attack and defence seemed right, but for all of the work of Hill, Crouch and Jones et al. we weren’t quite getting any entries deep and central, in the manner that created so many of our goals in the better times of 2020 (which is a strange sentence at face value, but you know what I mean). Remember long goals from set shots? Marshall and Coffield aren’t any of Gehrig, Riewoldt or Koschitzke but they made the most of the early opportunities, while Sinclair curled a snap on the run from a tight angle.

Hawthorn weren’t at their best. They didn’t offer much. We have to take all of this into account before we make the post-West Coast win mistake of thinking we’re back (With the beauty of hindsight, i.e. lived trauma of supporting St Kilda, there is no way the team of 2017 should have claimed a bigger gulf over the Hawks than the respective teams of 2021). But you know you’re on when Nick Coffield is flushing long-range set shots.

***

We were in the position in which a win is non-negotiable, which is kind of nice – you’re not so outright shit you can warrant that much on occasion – but really, wins are non-negotiable because this team should be ahead of where it is, not because we need one to entrench our hypothetical position in the top four. We’re far more concerned about watching helplessly from afar as Melbourne joins the Swans, Geelong, the Bulldogs and Richmond going past us in breaking generational droughts.

A pair of late Hawthorn goals in the second quarter dulled the applause poised for half-time. Some of the crowd seemed to still be stoked, but the quarter had only been won by nine points. Hawthorn supporters would have been very aware that their two wins this year had been comebacks from deficits of 39 and 31 points, and over the last few weeks this St Kilda team appeared to have all the confidence of a tub of butter. Those few moments feel trivial now. We had the luxury of kicking 19.14 without a care in the world.

Typically the quarters would start very well; we had four goals on the board in 16 minutes in each of the second and third quarters, first to take complete control of the game and then to quell any nerves we might have had employing default mechanisms to put those numbers together and think about how we could lose this. Either side of that, Butler had the quiet confidence to kick a banana goal from the flank, pairing with his former Richmond teammate and St Kilda supporter-turned-player Snags for the goal and celebration. Jones kicked a couple and was loud about it, and Hunter Clark kicked the first of his two Most Hunter Clark Goals of the Year, bringing his smooth moves to a smother, collect, feign, turn of direction and neat finish.

Hill was working his way into Robbo’s Monday Hero territory all the way through. The pace of stats being racked up across the team in the first quarter slowed down (Jones bodylined the ball constantly to “only” 37 touches) and Hill’s 27 isn’t wild, particularly in the back-to-full-length quarters era. After several weeks of being bashed from Robbo and On the Couch all the very long way down to Red, White and Black, his best moment might have been in the second quarter: the one-on-one win against Mitch Lewis on the defensive 50 and a quick clearance, and then when the ball returned moments later his diving smother across the boot of Finn Maginness. Of course, he provided all the run and carry and link-up and pace between the arcs we wanted him to. He set up Snags on multiple occasions with his running through the middle and inside 50s. It was his most complete game in a St Kilda jumper to date.

While any terrific team would expect that much, those things don’t always happen, let alone do they come from an outside player who’s been publicly smacked around. He wasn’t the only one adding parts to his bread and butter game; Sinclair competed in the air (and won) several times, Clark played through the middle and up forward and kicked two goals, Jones kicked two himself, Coffield nailed his set shot, Max King took big marks up on the wing, Howard played a great version of his usual game but got the crowd saying his name loudly as a replacement for “BrUuuce”.

On his way to kicking a frustrating 2.4, Max again threatened to blow off the roof again with a deft move out of traffic and a curling snap (unlike his third quarter effort against the Eagles, this one curled too much). He missed shots and dropped a couple of marks up forward that he should have taken, but as well as the contested grabs on the wing he was a threat at ground level even off his own contests. The combination of the running , weaving Clark to King to the running-back-into-play-and-squeezing-in-a-snap-from-next-to-the-post Clark for Hunter’s second in the final minutes of the game was the perfect finish.

***

We all thought Saints Footy (how was that phrase stuck around?) was back for all of the five days we had to appreciate the West Coast win. I’m not sure if Saturday confirmed if we’re “very” or “far too” reliant on a) Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda, or b) both Paddy Ryder (who plays for St Kilda) and Rowan Marshall being out there.

What a beautiful day to go the footy and soak up the last sunshine of-OH NO WAIT, we’re being ushered into the Concrete Disney Store to watch another game in artificial lighting. This game took place in the middle of a few days that certainly are the last of decent weather before we plunge into another Melbourne winter. Nearly every St Kilda game now takes place in artificial lighting (and that’s forever). Of course, it remains an incredible privilege to be able to go and see your team play live right now, let alone worry about if they’re any good, or why the ground insists on playing the shit new version of the song after The Fable Singers version post-match. Going to the footy really does still feel strange, like I’m doing something a little too luxurious, or self-indulgent.

I wasn’t really expecting the most comfortable experience at a Saints match for some time. None of Ryder, Hill, Jones, Crouch, Howard, King, Butler, Higgins, Bytel and Byrnes were playing for the Saints when Victorian fans left the MCG after a loss to Carlton on a beautiful August Saturday afternoon in 2019. It’s certainly an experience going to the footy and getting used to trusting these guys, and it was nice to have an evening to relax and get used to them run around in a St Kilda jumper.

Round 5, 2021
St Kilda 3.4, 4.5, 6.6, 7.6 (48)
Richmond 3.3, 8.6, 15.12, 20.14 (134)
Crowd: 32,056 at Marvel Stadium, Thursday, April 15th at 7.30pm

It’s my girlfriend’s birthday this weekend. She’s having people over at my place on Saturday, and then we’re doing a whole bunch of stuff on the Sunday, which is her actual birthday. A lack of sleep discipline over the past couple of weeks, sprinkled with some pocked general life anxieties, had driven me to the state of “very rundown”; that feeling that you’re a mediocre sleep away from a full-blown cold. I needed the earliest night possible. I couldn’t be sick for this. Something had to give.

I sent out the warning to our Messenger group with Matt and Dad and Richie and Evan that I was probably going to be a late withdrawal. I was about to miss my first St Kilda game in Melbourne since the season opener of 2015.

In a last-ditch effort I turbocharged my tuna salad with chilli and garlic and jalapenos and stuffed some Nurofen into my face, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Defeated, I put on the Fox Footy pre-match and lodged the paperwork at 6.30pm.

But something started writhing around in me. No. This can’t be. A Thursday (???) night home game against the reigning premiers, coming off a win that we’d hope to look back on as a turning point for this era. What if something incredible happened?

Thursday night TV is made for neutrals. It’s made for MAJOR LEAGUE SPORTS fetishists and the executives and the journos who feel they’re owed the PRIME TIME experience by their association with the game; even just the ability to say “prime time”. The concept has no understanding, let alone care, for the rhythm of the week and the weekend that footy offers us, not the rhythm of the season that frames the year.

Television coverage be damned, the Fox Footy theme music be damned, the bass-heavy Channel 7 sponsor announcements (are they still narrated by Craig Willis?) be damned, my twitching eye be damned. It didn’t feel right. I had to be there. Sure, we got used to watching it all on TV last year, but this was different. Our tickets were for the second row on level two. I put my better elastic cuff chinos on. I changed my jumper. I grabbed my Maddie’s Match scarf. How did this feel? It felt like yes, I can do this. I watched via the Tramtracker app as the next Route 58 tram into the city was held up. That’s ok, I’ll only miss the first few minutes. Something had happened up on Melville Road and the tram was crawling. That’s ok, this headache isn’t too bad. Time to dump some more Nurofen into the system. Tram’s really crawling here. That’s ok, I’ll only miss the first 10 or 15 minutes. That’s ok, the pains in my legs were from my run yesterday. I’m about to fall asleep but the adrenaline and atmosphere will keep me going.

Once the tram did turn up I got the SEN app going and listened to Dwayne and Huddo and Dal Santo – Skilful call the Tigers out to the first couple of goals. It already sounded ominous. I got off the tram and hurriedly stomped down Bourke Street. Past the Gresham Street sign. Higgins opened our account, and the game seemed to have turned a little. Crossed King Street. I nervously calmed myself down; after all that, wasn’t going to be facing a five goals to zip opening once I got to my seat.

***

I left at three-quarter time.

I hate leaving games early. I very, very, very rarely do. The caveat here is that I had an external reason to, otherwise, yes I would have stayed for that last quarter of added humiliation. There was a solemn duty in staying to the end of the Essendon game; that it needed to be seen and experienced and understood. This wasn’t quite the CBF Showcase that Round 3 was, although it was uglier in some ways. This left St Kilda all on its own, as it has historically been – beaten up a supposed bottom-four team, completely dismantled (and then beaten up) by a top four team on a night that showed it up for being completely lost for intentions, never mind answers. Losses of 75 points and 86 points in the space of 12 days.

Footy moves fast. By the time I’d made it to the ground Rioli had made it three goals to one, but I got inside to see Paul Hunter’s goal and Max King’s set shot. His high mark soon after drew a roar that reminded us of a what playing for something at the Concrete Disney Store was like. The miss was forgivable, but Lonie’s skewed shot on the eve of quarter-time left a bitter feeling. We could have been up five goals to three. There was a vitality to the members’ wing; the relatively full (certainly by COVID standards) stadium had the competitive air of a game between two teams who are worth something to this season. Because for five days that’s what we were.

Max had chances enough to replicate last week’s three early goals that were a huge reason we were in touch in that game at all. The crowd was back on his side as he plucked a wildly casual one-handed mark early in the second, but the anticipation of the crowd was a short-circuited again by his miss. The Tigers were beginning to hunt together and those opportunities couldn’t keep being burned. While the stats at half-time last week suggested a more competitive than the scoreboard reflected, cracks were becoming fissures and they were about to become canyons.

There are all sorts of directions to point fingers at, but there are some moments that really stick in the thrashing. Brad Hill’s footsteps effort of dropping an easy chest mark was rightfully and immediately punished with a no-fuss goal from Marlion Pickett on the 50-metre arc. It became the singularity for what was about to transpire. Never mind that Higgins kicked his second soon after; we’d go nearly 36 minutes without scoring from that point, and in less than two-and-a-half quarters the Tigers would kick 15.11 to 3.1.

The yellow and blue opponent of Saturday was now a nastier and uncompromising yellow and black, and it wasn’t going to let anything past. The Saints crowd noticeably picked up when Butler and Lonie kicked quick goals in the middle of the third quarter to bring the margin back to that magic (???) 33 points – the inflexion point of the previous week – but Richmond immediately responded to add back those two goals through some brutal midfield work, and then some. By the final change the margin was an even 60 points.

This was clinical. It wasn’t vicious or messy. Saints players weren’t getting slammed into the turf or smacked around. The Richmond machine almost glides; it is always in contraction and expansion around the ball and across all parts of the ground. Constantly in motion. It is something to behold. It’s not soulless, however. Add to that the individual efforts: Dusty brushing off Lonie at will, and his piercing running goal in the third quarter, and the skills awareness required from Castagna, Edwards and Graham to make the most of the work that went into creating constant opportunities from in front of goal.

Richmond don’t usually destroy teams like this. In the way that West Coast were our unwitting victims after the club spent the whole week getting themselves up to make a statement, it was our turn to be in the way of Richmond making theirs. We looked clueless, sure. We also looked completely bewildered. When the ball was in motion, without the same team cohesion – at clearance or across the ground – any split-second thought of what to do with the ball was interrupted by the abrupt disappearance of time and space.

Even when the game was stationary and the ball in our hands did Richmond’s set-up expose a dark lack of answers, and perhaps a few other things.

Dunstan was thrown back into the team at arguably its most vulnerable moment (although we didn’t know it at the time). He played with the rust of someone who hadn’t made a senior appearance for nearly 13 months, poking it out on the full for no real reason, and on the other wing kicking to outnumbered teammates that had the ball coming back the other way. Hunter was the other inclusion and also struggled. He started OK but the undersized Nankervis spent most of the night doing as he please in the ruck and at contests around the ground. Even when he had a clear opportunity he couldn’t meet the moment, deciding to kick shallow into attack to a Richmond defender in the second quarter, ignoring a screaming and jumper Seb Ross by himself on the other side of the centre square.

Of course, the two late changes weren’t the reason for the margin, but if we’re relying on Rowan Marshall (and Paddy Ryder, and Zak Jones) then we have a lot of problems. Billings was blew a forward 50 entry from his own moment with the footy, spearing to Nathan Broad at a time when the game was still live (if you remember that fleeting sensation). This went all the way up to our top line. How many times in the third quarter did we look to come off half back and vaguely kick it to a contest? What were we expecting was going to happen? The game became embarrassingly predictable. Richmond’s midfield willed their way to a stretch of 21-1 clearances over a period spanning the second and third quarters.

***

There would have been a lot of St Kilda supporters that came into Thursday night believing there was some real substance to what transpired at the same ground five days earlier; just 72 hours earlier we remained heroes in the Monday wash-up.

The anticipation becomes all-consuming. Could the playing group replicate that after a whole week of tough talk about accountability and responsibility? Maybe we had Richmond at the right time. They’d just played a genuine finals-type game and had to travel back to Melbourne. The Saints players now had the hard evidence of what they needed to do, and that they could do it. They could face down a decent challenge even within the game. But Richmond had lost a couple in a row, surely they wouldn’t lose another? Perhaps their dynasty was over. All of those thoughts and permutations become dust over the course of two hours.

Round 4, 2021
St Kilda 4.2, 5.5, 10.11, 15.12 (102)
West Coast Eagles 6.2, 10.3, 13.3, 13.4 (82)
Crowd: Some very loud humans at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, April 10th at 4.35pm

There aren’t many bleaker places than the Concrete Disney Store when St Kilda’s season is falling apart. If the stunned silence from the small home crowd after Oscar Allen kicked West Coast’s third opening goal didn’t say it, then maybe it was the frustrated silence peppered with the usual angry cold Saturday expletives as Jack Petrucelle bulleted through his fourth goal. At that point, we were a wayward centring kick or Nic Nat-to-Kelly combination from a stoppage away. Or Liam Ryan’s shot at goal soon afterwards directed a few metres to the right.

Wayne Carey said we were both cooked and done. Roo teed off on the couch on On the Couch. Gerard almost wistfully opined about a 2-4 + ??? = 7-6 scenario for the Saints, with all of the sympathy he could muster. For a few lonely moments in the Concrete Disney Store, we’d have to be jagging that win to go 2-4 from one of the teams who’d just played a genuine finals-intensity game the night before. At best we’d have to load up for a second-half of the season assault; the type we’d seen in in 1997, 2005, ‘06, ‘07, ‘08, ‘10, ‘11 and ‘16, with all sorts of varying degrees of success and heartbreak.

***

It was about the 21-minute mark of the third quarter that Matt pulled out the uselessly optimistic, “We just need to kick two goals from here and we can be in touch at three-quarter time”. Maybe it was several beers talking. Yes, all the numbers aside from the scoreboard said we were in it, but there was no real clear reason why anything might change at that point. The Eagles players spread across the ground defensively at a pace our wayward kicking and predictable movement couldn’t contend with, and we simply didn’t have the numbers around the contest to get the ball to advantage and force things forward on our terms. They always had the extra gear. We’d worked incredibly hard over the first six and a half minutes of that third term before the ball fell into Jack Billings’ lap in front of goal. The quick reply from the Eagles was disheartening because it was so expected. Max King slotted his fourth soon after, smashing the Paddy McCartin Three-Goal-Maximum for a young St Kilda tall forward ceiling, but Kennedy and Petruccelle added majors each within a few minutes (and then Liam Ryan kicked the ball on the full).

“Momentum is a funny thing”, so the idiom goes. There isn’t really another game in the world that can express it so intoxicatingly. We also saw an excellent example of the journey a single game can take us on when played at its proper length. These were particularly long quarters too; the nearly 35 minutes of the third quarter allowed for one of the more teasing runs from a Saints team in recent years. Dan Butler reappeared in earnest after nearly six months to break a six-minute deadlock, finishing off some fast hands before hitting the post straight out of the middle seconds later. After D-Mac’s hunting tackle and goal he snapped a shot wide again from his wrong side, and then kicked another goal after a reaching mark next the behind post. Lonie missed a snap that he should have kicked while burning a couple of guys, and then Max King missed a set shot, and then almost blew that tacky roof off once and for all with a winding dash through three opponents and a running, curling snap that didn’t curl enough.

There was no real significant moment, or play, or factor that clearly turned the game on its own. The momentum probably felt like it had turned when D-Mac caught McGovern in front of goal holding the ball. It was emblematic of the pressure the Eagles were suddenly under, but also of a St Kilda team shaking off the revised expectations and labels that had been thrown at them during the week. D-Mac played his best game in a career that has somehow meandered into its seventh year. Not only did he get an equal career-best 21 disposals, they were his most telling. A deep breath in the goal mouth suggested he knew exactly what the very loud murmuring throughout the crowd as he was lining up meant (you can hear it on the broadcast). No one was backing him, but he was the one with the moment in his hands.

All of the things we saw on TV and the promises over the off-season were here, right in front of us, in real life. Max King kicked 5.2 from strong marks and crumbing his own contest, and had an immediate hand in a few more. His three goals in the first quarter breathed life into the game before it was snuffed out entirely. The midfield was different unit; Jack Steele bullocked his way to 33 touches and a vital late goal, and Crouch had 12 tackles and was helped around the ball by an aggressive Zak Jones. Hill breezed up and down the ground – yes, in a good way – in the final quarter gliding across the turf while we held the ball, constantly providing a new option, making his opponents work, changing the space around him and whoever had the ball. The returning Marshall was able to limp his way to an effective performance, combining with Carlisle to nullify Nic Nat and help wrestle the midfield battle our way (and also joining Robert Harvey in St Kilda’s Completely Snapped Plantar Fascia Tissue club, although not by choice). Higgins brought snags, pressure and smothers, whether it was diving across a boot or having the ball kicked into his face. Billings collected his 25-plus possessions across the ground and appeared when it mattered most close to goal. Butler kicked 3.2 in a performance that not just kept us in it but helped turn the game when anything short of that would have likely meant an impossible road to salvage 2021.

On top of all of that, there were pleasant surprises. Carlisle’s presence in the ruck and around stoppages overall. Jack Bytel put on seven tackles and gathered 19 touches of fast hands, neat use and composure with a maturity that belied his baby face (never mind him staying out there after a head clash that had him lying down in front of the members late in the game). D-Mac played the best game of his career. His first half was busy and his second was considered, involved in several chains of St Kilda’s last eight goals. A quick turn and duck to avoid an oncoming tackle and a tidy handball that helped set up the Butler goal that started the streak before his own tackle and goal; and in the final term a side-step through the middle to put the ball to runners out wide instead of blazing away as the team had done ineffectually so often, a low pick-up from a marking contest and quick handball over the shoulder to help set up Steele, and the intercept and collect through the middle from the resulting centre bounce after Nic Nat won the hit-out, which ultimately ended with Higgins’ sealer – with the celebration of someone who grew up as a Saints fan – and completed a run of 8.6 to 0.1 in the final 45 minutes.

***

This team – 2021’s version of it, at least – appeared to be relegated to the realm of Gallant Losses At Best during the week. A decent-case (and perhaps likely) scenario for Saturday was a dogged effort, with some occasional flourishes that bring a raucous echo throughout the Concrete Disney Store, before the West Coast US College Jocks kicked away. Despite having the momentum and the loudest small home crowd you could hear, three quarter-time felt a little bittersweet. There was a turnaround, but surely it couldn’t keep going. All those wasted opportunities, we were still 10 points behind.

The result was never a fait accompli. We still had to keep doing the hard stuff around the ball and that good work still needed to be finished off. For all of the wasted opportunities and the fast West Coast replies, the pressure stayed up (with just a hint of swagger and mischief), ball use remained wise, and accuracy was back. Whereas Coffield and Carlisle had blundered into each other on the eve of half-time, it was now the Eagles making mistakes. Darling dropped the ball in the goal square, Ryan was forced into running too far in defence, Nic Nat and Jones collided into each other as the Eagles looked set to stream through the middle on the rebound. Higgins got in the face of Nelson after he was caught with the ball from a short kick. The previous week’s tackle count of 32 more than double to 69, and whatever metrics that go into Fox Footy’s vague pressure gauge thing were off the charts. Importantly, the 3.5 kicked in third quarter run became 5.1 in the last. The came from set shots, a slick Billings gather and snap, in a goalmouth rush, on the run.

***

“And the last bit – I’ve definitely got it, I know a lot of you blokes have it – it’s ‘fuck you’. So fuck them.”
– Adam Simpson, pre-Round 17, 2020, Making Their Mark

Who else but Essendon to leave us in an early-season crisis, triggering all sorts of existential crises? Who else but the bunch of US college jocks from the MAJOR LEAGUE SPORTS team, getting it all from the umpires on the way, to give us the answers? Two Saturday twilight slots at the Concrete Disney Store; 32 degrees one week, 17 degrees the next. Anything you like. This was going to be textbook St Kilda.

Many of us who watched the Amazon documentary would have taken note of Adam Simpson giving St Kilda the “fuck them” before they pulled out an excellent late-season win, undermanned and faltering late, to seal a finals spot. It’s an attitude the Saints have lacked over the 148-year journey. The record books reflect that. Saturday wasn’t really revenge for last year’s loss (we’d be here for at least another 148 years if we tried that route), or for the retrospective knowledge that Adam Simpson said “fuck them” referring to the Saints. This was simple a time to take the evening for ourselves; whoever might be in the way, so be it. Even at 33 points down in time-on of the third quarter, it just had to happen. It’s the simple pleasures, mostly. You want to be at a packed Platform 28 with Saints fans singing the song over and over again. What’s better than being at the footy on a Saturday watching the Saints have a crack? (Well, maybe if the roof was open. And if Marvel stopped playing music after goals, and if the club didn’t curiously sneak in the shitty cover version of the song after the game.)

There are new guys, there are inexperienced guys, there are young guys, there’s a new captain in this team. For the first time in a very long time, any whistle when the ball was in defence didn’t inevitably going to mean a shot at goal for the opposition. Steele plays like and has the presence of a captain. Jones bodylines the ball. The excitement of King and Butler near goal. This was an evening of supporters getting attached to this team, right here, in the same space we are in.

Round 2, 2021
St Kilda 3.2, 6.3, 8.4, 11.7 (73) 
Melbourne 3.4, 6.7, 9.13, 12.19 (91)
Crowd: 25,903 at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, March 28th at 7.25pm

The dessert trolley of life is back for Victorian fans, as part of the weekly ritual. Footy is back, albeit not quite as we knew it. There’s been a glitch in the system. There are sponsors above the numbers. The ticket boxes at the ground don’t sell tickets but offer directions. There are DHHS messages and QR codes plastered up every few metres. Moving around the ground felt just that little bit naughty, and it was the fans who had to be cautioned about staying inside their zones. Going through foreign gates to get to foreign seats for a St Kilda home game. The Legends Bar was untenanted. The ground looked different from these one-off seats compared to our membership seats close by, but not quite the same. The usual Saints fans surrounding us were replaced, on this night, by others’ usual surrounding Saints. Are there people that aren’t able to be here tonight, or aren’t able to spend money on going to the footy, because of the pandemic?

***

Saints fans have been waiting to see Max King, Dan Butler, Dougal Howard, Brad Hill, Paddy Ryder, Jack Higgins and Zak Jones in the flesh at a home game. They’ve been waiting to see the 2020s version of Jack Steele and Jack Billings and Hunter Clark and Nick Coffield. Rich and Matt and I discussed how we’d missed the Rise to Competency of 2020.

Max King enthusiasts would not have been disappointed early, although much of the pleasure was born of adversity. OIiver, Gawn, Petracca, Tomlinson and Langdon all feasted on a St Kilda midfield that looked just a little too undersized and we needed to get our moments right. King set up the first two with handy forward 50 passes to Membrey and Steele from a higher position reminiscent of the early career of another number 12, and he kicked one on the siren with a celebration to the crowd that really brought this home crowd into the game for the first time. When he kicked the first of the second term, crumbing  contest at the top of the goal square, he’d set up two and kicked the other pair of our first four goals.

Sometimes the occasion just feels a little too much for the Saints, despite the sentiment, and things seem a bit off. The 2005 1^st Preliminary Final. Harvey’s club-record breaking game against the Cats in 2006, and a season-defining night against West Coast later that year. Grand Final Day 2009. This time it was the Homecoming. It’s that intangible quality. Everyone can see it, they can feel it, and everyone understands it with the simply interchange of the words “off” and “flat”. The reasoning isn’t always apparent, but can be attributable to some things. A hangover from the massive win last week, perhaps the weight of Spud’s Match and all that surrounds it. Perhaps the team is overwhelmed, likely they will be underwhelming. The better moments still feel a little too delicate.

Steele made up for embarrassing himself against the point post early, stepping back with the flight of a high Melbourne ball and letting it go, leaving it to thud into the turf just inside the boundary line. King put it on the lead for him and he took a tough mark that Plugger himself might have enjoyed seeing. It was a captain’s moment – of atonement, as well as chance to get things moving for the team – but there wasn’t much enthusiasm around him after it. It was left to Max King on the quarter time siren to create a connection between the team and the fans and the atmosphere around the stadium. A roar and a pumped fist to the fans who only a few years ago he was sitting with.

There was hangover from the Richo era. Playing on just a little too hurriedly can look great for the short periods when it comes off, but we’ve learned that it simply isn’t sustainable. It did put us to a threatening lead during the second quarter, and it had the home crowd taking ownership of this St Kilda team. Zak Jones and Billings combined to finish a fast-paced passage, and Josh Battle’s goal soon after provided the slick mid-game Butler/Ratten moment that we now know will probably be met with a challenge. The body language was up momentarily, forward 50 entires were plentiful and Melbourne defenders were being harassed. Battle won a free kick for deliberate next to the behind post and guys were presenting into space immediately. Battle instead casually improved the angle and slotted it. Maybe it felt a bit too easy. That the perfect moment was never too far away. Ratts had mentioned in the past that at times we’ve been trying to be too perfect. Last night this presented itself as a team-oriented complacency. Anyone would have given licence to Higgins taking advantage on his own in the forward line to head straight towards goal, but instead we ended up with multiple disposals in the opposite pocket, and then back on the flank, that was really the beginning of the error-riddled end. And just as soon as we were feeling that attachment to the players wearing St Kilda jumpers in front of us, we were reacquainted with the straining frustrated voices and the irate comments and the temperament quirks of other people around us at the footy, not just those who happened to be in our lounge room over the past 12 months.

To a man, the team was too cute going forward. Hill just wanted the home fans to enjoy him providing the slick and silky skills we’d been seeking for over a decade. He had 21 of the worst, quickly becoming a poster boy the kicks inbound that were sliced or cut off by Demons, for the Saints players streaming throughout the front half of the centre square only to miss a target and put it to no clear advantage. The precedent was set when he found open space running into attack in the second quarter and kicked it out on the full. An indifferent long shot at goal on the run in the third quarter added up to some vague Bronx cheers in the final term when he did hit a target.

***

It was only a matter of time before the game swung back hard in Melbourne’s favour. Pickett provided the X-factor that no-one else could. The Dees were well set-up around every contest, which allowed Oliver another zillion possessions and Petracca to remind us of choices made in November 2014. Perhaps we were too predictable, but Melbourne did the right thing and could pre-empt every move across the ground. Salem picked off the footy at half back at will and just had to use it cleanly coming the other way – it sounds simple, but we certainly couldn’t pull it off – and May, Lever and Gawn (when he wasn’t ruling ruck contests) shut down anything that went higher or deeper.

Whereas the previous week was a victory for contribution across the ground, this week was uneven. The small brigade of Lonie, Butler and Higgins were unsighted individually and collectively, their running patterns railroaded by unimaginative, reactive or wayward ball movement.

Steele played a captain’s game. He muscled his way into contests around the ground during the third quarter as the game demanded something be done before it was put out of reach, and his two goals in that term made it official that the game was still alive on the scoreboard. Ross looked effective being allowed to use his burst speed around the ground. Gresham was busy and agile, but again his finesse in getting past opponents was undone by his slicing kicking action that is slowly turning him into a metres-gained player before anything else. Dougal Howard may well have been our best player. High numbers feel a little more impressive the way the game has been played over the opening two rounds, but there has to be a critical mass of possessions Dougal Howard has before it reads that the opposition dominated play.

Melbourne could quite easily have put this beyond reach during the third quarter. The final margin was 18 points. A couple of mid-last quarter St Kilda goals flattered an already flattering margin. Melbourne kicked only one more goal, but the full scoreline shows 31 scoring shots to 18.

***

The last St Kilda game I had been to was at the MCG against the Blues on a beautiful August Saturday afternoon. A late-year inconsequential fixture; a day to relax, to sit out in the sun, and watch two young teams representing foundation clubs on a Saturday afternoon at the MCG. Away from the TV production studio noise and roof of the Concrete Disney Store. To enjoy the footy.

How much can I complain about the Concrete Disney Store being…a, you know, Concrete Disney Store? About the hundreds of millions of dollars burned by individuals and companies in creating what is just another office building amongst office buildings? The AFL has done its best, then and now, to eradicate the experience of going to the footy in favour of creating an of award-winning whatever-the-fuck, but what simply remains a monotonous grey bowl with seats. An “experience” rather than going to the footy, to see footy, to be in a space at the footy. An “experience” rather than an experience.

It’s times like these, we tell ourselves, to just be thankful for what we have. Rightfully, the AFL brought back the Saturday afternoon Grand Final, and acknowledging the importance of traditions and rituals in this period. An olive branch, but perhaps also a distraction or a bargaining tool. While we’re busy trying to remind ourselves “How good’s this?”, people in power will take the opportunity to make self-satisfying, self-fulfilling changes. Thus, music after goals is back at the request of no one, to the excitement of no one. Not to the addition of excitement after a goal and to what it might mean for a team, but to the short-circuiting of atmosphere that had specifically been created by what is happening in the game and in the crowd, not by the ego of the marketing team. I can tell you that there were zero Saints fans concerned about fighting for their right to party after a meaningless goal was kicked in the second half with the game out of reach.

And still, yes, how good it was to be at the footy. There is hardly a point to a St Kilda premiership if I’m not there with Matt or Dad or Evan or Rich. There is certainly no purpose for the journey – to that promised land, or elsewhere – if I can’t share that journey with them. This was a pertinent night to remember Spud and what we can learn, and to be reminded of what we hold dear.

The anticipation of driving into the ground on the AM dial with the tram line interference cutting in and out. Hell, driving from the ground, after a loss, listening to the post-match on the AM dial with the tram line interference cutting in and out. Getting annoyed at poor umpiring decisions, getting annoyed at Brad Hill skill errors. The rush of a forward line entry with Max King nearby. Watching the Saints with my brother and my dad and my cousin and my friend.

Round 1, 2021
GWS Giants 2.3, 4.5, 8.9, 11.12 (78)
St Kilda 1.2, 5.6, 9.6, 13.8 (86)
Crowd: 5,014 at Giants Stadium, Sunday, 21st March at 3.20pm

Maybe the pandemic and the seeming disintegration of the United States has been enough to upend the norms of the western world. Perhaps this was what we needed to shake up the natural order that has dealt St Kilda the cards of Bob Keddie, Shane Ellen, Darren Jarman, Gavin Wanganeen, the Bloods, Sudden Inaccuracy and the Toe Poke, and the Bounce of the Ball. Perhaps making the finals in 2020 signalled a cosmic shift. But then Max King got hit in the head by a golf ball.

Footy is about rituals. Sharing the supporter’s journey with the people around us. The rhythm of the season. We were stripped of these in 2020, never mind everything else. St Kilda didn’t get the home game first up in 2021, so we welcomed the return of (COVID normal) footy and the new season with the other side of the supporter’s life – the nervousness of being dumped into a stadium via TV broadcast just a few minutes before the bounce, most probably as the Saints run out in foreign territory, with the neutral commentary of Channel 7 or Fox Footy broadcasters. This weekend included a car trip in the rain from Brunswick West to Elsternwick, a little closer to St Kilda heartland. This year, we are able to watch the Saints with the people close to us at the game and in the home.

***

A couple hundred millimetres of rain was forecast to be dumped on Sydney over a few days that included match day. St Kilda had pre-season matches canned in 2012 and 2016 for wild conditions, but the small patch that this game took place on appeared to be spared the most dramatic of the fall. Maybe Jack Bell’s shank at Brighton wouldn’t hurt so much. Toby Greene put forward a high-rise case that the weather wouldn’t completely dictate terms, and while it did turn out that key forwards would be particularly prominent in the goals columns by the end, this wasn’t a day to echo the slicker reasons the Saints rose up the ladder in 2020. There was going to be grittier stuff needed, too.

Some players didn’t play their “best” in the way we came to know them in a finals team. Butler wasn’t his “best” but was there when it mattered, Steele’s impact was quelled by Coniglio and was more isolated to the tackles column (where he was assisted by Bytel). Billings was busy, Seb Ross kicked his two on-the-run goals from the year, Membrey kicked three from varying methods (burning a couple of teammates in the process) and was rewarded for a brave performance, Hunter Clark retained his disarming calmness, and Gresham’s agility was more than useful, particularly late, but scrambled kicks forward were the order of the day. On a day not designed for him, Brad Hill did deliver one of the game’s smoothest moments with a skidding goal on the run late in the second to take the margin to 14 points. It was the only act really straight out of the 2020 playbook – a moment usually around this point in the game that gave the Saints the appearance of a youthful, boisterous team on the up (see: BUTLER BUTLER BUTLER) before an inevitable challenge.

We were probably right to be expecting a close game in the weather, although perhaps a little lower scoring. Wet weather usually puts the emphasis on the ability to win the contested ball and gain ground. Rather than metres gained, telling moments came down to a few inches to the left or right. Ward and Coniglio had more than kept GWS well in the game with some sneaky snaps, and Himmelberg’s set shot on goal in the final quarter would have shut the gate but hit the post instead (Higgins hadn’t hit it hard enough in the second quarter). Lonie wobbled a high snap though from just inside the boundary a few minutes later to break the Giants’ momentum and begin what would ultimately be the deciding run.

A curious decision to leave Flynn unopposed at a throw-in on the forward flank – allowing the debutant to belt the ball to the Giants’ advantage and ultimately to within two points – blew the result wide open again. Membrey capped off game with a timely mark in defensive 50. Deft touches, by boot from Gresham and by hand from Sinclair, helped keep the ball in the front half. Within moments a pair of probably-not-quite-right umpiring decisions first gave a charging Callan Ward the ball at half-back with 80 seconds left, and then Butler a shot at goal to seal the game – or to miss and give the Giants the footy (and a few extra metres) to go up the other end within little more than 30 seconds. For dramatic effect, Butler exhausted his allowed time and had to kick over the man on the mark rushing him.

One captain was held, the other captain was missing. There was no King (this wasn’t quite Jack Bell’s revenge), no Marshall, no Ryder, no Paton, no Zak Jones, no Crouch, no Hannebery. Five named in the 23 (not a typo) that hadn’t played for us before, plus two that didn’t play at all last year. This is still a young team, and that can be fickle at the best of times. The tension of watching from the couch and hoping that whatever appears in the next wide shot is kind – that never really leaves. Nor does the relief and ease of the aftermath of a win on the road. Perhaps the relief was a little stronger this time. After another pre-season of promise, for this week at least, we were justified in being optimistic about 2021 and beyond for this club. Maybe the magnitude of this win isn’t immediately apparent. Those are only confirmed in hindsight.

***

This was a short pre-season. It felt it, so some of those supporter sensations were close at hand (including dismay of the not-really-the-clash-jumper-they-said-they-would-have, and the not The Fable Singers version of the song being used: Mention These Every Week Challenge). Some things weren’t a break of stride. Clark, Billings, Battle, Gresham, and Steele, of course are now recognised as reliable, regular fixtures. We enjoyed getting used to new guys making an impact last year – Howard, Butler, Ryder et al; yesterday it was the turn of Higgins, Highmore and (Paul) Hunter.

Plenty was made about Jack Higgins’ childhood as a St Kilda supporter in the off-season, including Fox Footy occasionally editing the original footage of the 2009 Preliminary Final to show a much, much younger Jack Higgins on TV celebrating in the MCC section post-Nick Riewoldt’s sealer (he was actually shown a few minutes earlier; attempts to rewrite history are in vogue). Higgins’ attack on the ball and any contest in the postcode is something that has been consistent throughout his time at Richmond up until Sunday’s game, and his mark in front of goal outnumbered by GWS defenders for his second goal was a thrill. But the St Kilda supporter in Jack Higgins re-emerged in front of Tim Membrey when Skunk held on to a high reaching mark in front of goal just a few moments after Seb had put us in front. He raised his hands in the air. The rush of a St Kilda team on the charge late in a tight game. Of a team maturing in real time to push past an onslaught interstate.

Yes, footy – now, more than ever, the dessert trolley of life – is back.

So, we’ve lost the past 11 years of the blog in The Great RWB Server Disaster of 2021.

Using the Wayback Machine and anything we still have on file we’ll be manually putting as much of the archives back together as we can, bit by bit.

The weekly match reviews will continue.

Thank you as always for reading. xx