Category: Uncategorized

Round 2, 2022
Fremantle  3.0, 5.1, 6.4, 8.7 (55)
St Kilda 0.4, 2.7, 8.10, 9.11 (65)
Crowd: Halfish of capacity at Optus Stadium, Sunday, 29th March at 6.10pm

All sorts of overreactions are derived from Round 1 results. Six months of anticipation leads to two hours of footy, which leads to a manic declarations of new top four contenders and seasons written off, ripe for a whole year’s worth of 360 vignettes. For St Kilda fans, the 2022 season was facing its own mortality before the weekend of Round 1 had officially started. A whole pre-season to sort out a game plan that will make your team the centre of the universe, and then when that doesn’t work a nine-day break to fix it all. Over nine days you can mostly just hope that maybe Round 1 was a horrible massive mistake and that everyone is sorry.

The only real positive out of the previous week was Jack Hayes. He was Gerard’s Monday Hero, and for a week at least, the ruck in Matthew Richardson’s rolling All-Australian team. We held onto that as hard as we could, otherwise we were pre-emptively mourning a rebuild that had been busted (again). Maybe the Richo era had never really ended; the only change was the semantics – the long-time disconnect between kickers and catchers is now called an inability to complete our plays.

The next test was The Bizarro Rivalry (our in-depth look at the history between these two ridiculous clubs will be restored as part of our Great Server Disaster of 2021 recovery program), in the official debut of the new clash jumper (and new clash socks). Ratts noted on Fox Footy before the game that going interstate after what happened last week might be a good thing. You’d think it shouldn’t matter where we were playing after what happened in Round 1 but I guess from my couch there’s something extra to an “Us vs Them” environment.

There was an obvious increase in pressure and movement around the ground early, but it still felt like former St Kilda supporter Gerard Healy was being way too kind about it all in Fox Footy’s special comments, given the stop-start ball use and whole quarter return of 0.4. For anyone that was bothering to tune into two mediocre teams at 6.10pm on a Sunday, there were a few heated moments that included Blacres nearly taking Max King’s head off in front of goal (no free kick), and then Josh Battle summing up whether or not he should send Blake into the interchange bench horizontally. The first quarter also included Snags missing a set shot, taking his season tally to 0.5. Sinclair and Gresham were providing their “point of difference” through the middle, which is all well and good, but the Dockers had Andrew Brayshaw and Hayden Young providing genuine young midfield talent. Steele wasn’t quite himself last week (he was still quite good) but he opened up this game with a very uncharacteristic skewed pass to Max going forward that went straight to a Dockers defender. (He finished with a massive 13 tackles but maybe still wasn’t quite himself on Sunday either.)

I was at a wedding and then The Shady Lady on Saturday night and a hot topic of multiple conversations with St Kilda-supporting friend Georgia across both venues was that Ratts was maybe being a bit too nice all the time; something that might be reflected in the team’s lack of campaigner on the field (although the club has probably lacked it throughout most of its 149 years). Ratts, who has embraced a new hairstyle, pulled out the quarter-time spray and it worked to an extent. We had a lot of the footy in the second term, repeatedly winning the ball in the middle third of the ground and dominating the inside 50s for the quarter. But the old chestnut of not being able to complete our plays, kickers not connecting with catchers – however you want to describe it – was chewing up a lot of our momentum; something we couldn’t afford to happen for a second week running. The ball movement flitted between tentative and wayward. An extra split second was required for a player in a red-backed hot-cross-bun jumper to consider whether or not they would give off to the player running past, if there was actually one to begin with. Forward handballs have been on-trend in the opening rounds but we weren’t daring enough to use them out of the middle and there were never enough guys around the ball at any given time for them to happen in open play. “Ah, yes, we need more structure. More system.” is the easiest thing on the planet to write but I’m sure an organisation like this doesn’t exist with the endgame of producing unsure footy come the weekend.

It was easy to spread the blame. Butler scuffed an opportunity on the run, Gresham danced away from the mark off one step at half-forward but his kick went straight to a Freo player, Sinclair took two bounces streaming forward and kicked it wide and out on the full, Higgins got space on his opponent just inside 50 on an angle, marked the ball, kept running and kicked it to a Dockers player in the square. There were some frustrating almost-marks from the catchers, namely Wood and Hayes close to goal just moments apart. Max King was anonymous, to the point I thought he might have been concussed by the Acres hit. To kick our first goal we had to cut out the middleman of the forward line – Butler ran all the way from 70 metres after an intelligent Brad Crouch kick into space from a turnover.

It was at some point during the second quarter as we burned another forward 50 entry that I started to consider whether or not we were the worst team in the competition. I would have bet the house (that I’m renting) that in that moment we were at the very least the worst-placed team. But could we be the worst? I’m not sure where the “good” version of generating 16 to five inside 50s for the quarter for a half-time return of 2.7 left us. We might well be the most uninspiring team at the very least. Most anxious? What’s the coaching equivalent of giving your players Prozac?

***

Brad Crouch had a great contested game and was a big reason why we won the centre clearances (14-4) and overall clearances (37-26), but his scuffed set shot kick at the beginning of the third quarter was a low point. We’d watched Carlton go further past us on Thursday, Collingwood too on Saturday, Hawthorn very possibly on Saturday night (and Gold Coast as well, despite their loss), and we’d watched Paddy McCartin start trending amid the #Buddy1000 festivities on Friday. As his wobbly kick from 30 metres didn’t make the distance and trickled over the boundary line we’d gone from simply stuffing things up to trying to find the funniest ways of doing so.

Snags made up for it only a few moments later from the resulting throw-in with his second, with a quick snap around the corner intercepting Will Brodie’s handball. It was the kind of opportunistic goal we’re rare to capitalise on given we waste enough shots of our own accord. Sean Darcy leaving the ground opened the door for Lloyd Meek to become the next unheralded player made to look good by St Kilda and he pinched one back. He and Lobb had moments that made the defence look undersized in Dougal’s absence and presented a potential threat for the second half. Some people take hat-tricks on their birthday, some kick six in a two-point St Kilda win in Perth, some get COVID and are replaced in the line-up by Darragh Joyce.

There were some good things happening without the reward. Crouch was getting the ball, Sinclair and Gresham were working in the middle, Hill was trying to make things happen off half-back, D-Mac was winning one-on-ones and scooting away into space, Battle was playing a break-out game as an intercept defender, and there was a presence at ground level from the small forwards. But it wasn’t being finished off.

The turnaround started in earnest with Crouch getting to the centre bounce tap down and having his head nearly ripped off. Ross took the advantage and Hill was running past, and without breaking stride bulleted a pass to Max on the lead. The newly reinvented Facial Hair Guy had had next to no impact on the game by half-time (just two disposals), but he got a couple of metres on Kevin Parker’s on-field avatar Alex Pearce and Hill was good enough to lower his eyes, hit him up and give him his chance to get into the game. Max kicked truly from just inside the 50-metre arc.

Crouch got the resulting centre bounce clearance with a wide kick and good efforts from Byrnes and Hayes ended with a deft left-foot pass from Byrnes finding Max again about 35 out. Max again was “on the lead”, but not in the way we have known barnstorming leads from full-forwards of years gone by. Max marking on the lead is simply the opening of space between he and his opponent, and the casual receiving of the football from the air. This set shot was tougher than the first but he made it look just as simple. Two goals in two minutes. Back to five points.

Moments later, Gresham – whose pressure had created the wayward handball snapped up by Higgins’ that led the first for the quarter – ran onto a tumbling ball from Ross out of a stoppage just as it reached the boundary line and in one motion screwed a kick around to near the top of the square. Max was there, and held on to the mark despite the direct attention paid to his eyeball from Pearce. Three in four minutes. A one-point lead. And, all of a sudden, a lot of push and shove. Max had got stuck into Pearce as the ball went through and it immediately drew in Griffin Logue, Jordan Clark and premiership player Joel Hamling. Byrnes, Ross and Membrey were active in the spotfires for the red team. Max is the kind of player that looks naturally almost too lackadaisical at all times and it was almost a relief to see him getting stuck into his opponents. We don’t want him to be too nice. Maybe Ratts’ spray had sparked something. (Also very lol to see runner Tony Brown dash all the way to the goal square just give him a small hug and a pat as it was all breaking up; no verbal message relayed).

The next goal was a 47-second journey from a James Aish behind to thrilling Snags goal. The best of the 2020 season is the new reference point for what good Saints Footy looks like – simply too long has passed since the GT and Ross eras to make very easy links – and this was a neat little throwback. A Paton mark at half-back, short kick to Ross, Sinclair running past for the forwards (!) handball, and a long kick to space in attack. The bounce favoured Logue but he was pounced upon by Membrey and Higgins. Membrey found the ball as Higgins peeled off towards goal, and Butler sped past. Membrey in all honesty fluffed the handball; Butler had to correct his grasp on the footy while being tackled by Clark, and it took two attempts to get his hands free. The ball spilled out – it probably should have been paid as incorrect disposal – and Higgins threw a boot at it and it knocked it through. More push and shove came after he may or may not have said something in the celebration to some very irate Dockers defenders. Great for Max get in another shove or two.

Four goals in just over nine minutes.

Sinclair was part of the next goal, too. It probably came from the best non-Paddy Ryder tapwork seen for years from a Saints player. Rowan Marshall thumped the ball laterally with his right arm to the defensive side of a throw-in and the footy went straight to Sinclair. His kick went to the vicinity of Snags, Max and Membrey and Snags was ridden on by Young and received the free-kick. The ball was coming in fast and repeatedly, and the Dockers were frazzled. Snags practiced the deep breathing routine as Jonathan Brown in special comments alluded to Nick Riewoldt saying during the week he should have been dropped after not giving off to Gresham during the third quarter against Collingwood, and sympathetically noted that he’d given the handball off to Gresh early in the last quarter. It must have released something in Higgins; he wound up and the kick looked like missing – until it didn’t. The ball was heading across the face and swung back late. Snags looked relieved and a little chuffed.

Five goals in 12 minutes.

***

Much like the week before, we’d helped ourselves to a nearly irresistible run in the third quarter. Round 1 was 5.6 to 0.0 by the time Gresham put us in front early in the last. This week it was 5.3 to 0.2 in just over 19 minutes of play, and the record will show that those three behinds all came in the last four minutes of the quarter from shots that weren’t impossible. Gresham hit the post on the run in space – really good teams nail those – and then Max and Snags missed shots that were gettable considering what they’d kicked earlier in the quarter. Given the way the game was being played, any of those would have almost shut the door on Fremantle.

But this is St Kilda, and they weren’t going to let us fans get away with a comfortable finish. We hadn’t made nearly enough of our run against the Pies, and we needed to wring every little bit out of this one. Steele missed a set shot early in the last and from that point we appeared to give up on proactive ball movement in favour of seeing what dangerous levels of inside 50s we could absorb. Battle had been clunking marks all game (strangely, he and D-Mac spent the last 10 minutes on the bench) and together with Lienert, Wilkie and Joyce managed to thwart repeated entries for nearly the entire quarter, until first-gamer Nathan O’Driscoll jagged one from a tight angle on the run with six minutes of play left. This is The Bizarro Rivalry and this is where the stranger things do happen. Stress-eating hangover KFC before at the beginning of the game had given way to stress-eating M&Ms by this point (my strict regimen of tuna salads during the week gives way to denser fare on the weekends) and the 380g bag was getting a good working over.

We still needed to attack. The chance came from a free-kick to Hayes that was probably a milder version of the Acres and King collision (that wasn’t paid to Max). Hayes’ kick forward found Pearce, but in a microcosm of the input of the small forwards, Butler and Gresham pressured successive handballs backwards for the Dockers, and Snags ran onto Aish as he tried kicking it out of defence and the kick was dragged short. In his (unofficial, but effectively) first game Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera gracefully, as Huddo described it, rose up and took the mark. He waited patiently for the right movement up forward and delivered a kick that fell directly into the hands of Max, who didn’t flinch backing into more bodies. As he had done a few times that night, Mason Wood was there taking heat off Max in the contest. (Huddo: “Where’s Max King?…THERE HE IS.”)

Max went back and kicked the goal. He had a very similar shot in similar circumstances in the pre-season match against the Bombers. Joey and Bucks in commentary spoke about how important the experience would be for the real thing. They were proven right within a few weeks.

Notwithstanding a second consecutive week that saw a questionable umpiring decision in front of goal involving Jack Hayes with just a few minutes left, the gap at that point was just too much. A Jimmy Webster tackle on Travis Colyer with 30 seconds left in the Dockers’ forward line ultimately sealed it. Our second win in Perth in 11 years, and The Fable Singers played outside of Docklands.

***

OMEN WATCH: In all years* in which St Kilda has won a match 65-55, they've gone on to make the Grand Final.

* 1913#AFLFreoSaints

— Gigs (@AndrewGigacz) March 27, 2022

This wasn’t a huge redemption story for the club after Round 1. We weren’t outrageously good, nor were Fremantle. They were also missing Fyfe, Mundy, and Cox, and had an underdone Sean Darcy (and then no Sean Darcy), although it has to be pointed out we were missing a bunch of our own best 22 also. However, it was a redemption game for two lifelong St Kilda supporters. It was the game we’d been hoping to see from Max and Snags since they were at the centre of two of the most dramatic games of our 2021 – Max dominating against the Cats on a Friday night, taking 10 marks but only to trip over in front of everyone by himself and kick 1.5 in a tough defeat, while three weeks later Snags gathered 23 touches and 12 marks but kicked 1.6 in a nine-point loss to the Swans, including two set shot misses that would have put us in front in the final minutes. Last week, they’d echoed those games kicking 1.7 between them as Max dragged in his most-ever disposals and Higgins was accurate kicking away from breaking the game open. Max was a tease, Higgins, according to some, should have been dropped. Now, we have a win that we can owe to them.

For Max more specifically, it was the kind of game we’d been hoping to see from him since we picked him up at the end of 2018. It was the game he’d always threatened to play. His six goals at the same ground last year against the Eagles were for a team trying to stay in touch. His goals on Sunday ripped the game open, and then closed the deal.

A win in Round 2 doesn’t automatically halve the agonising that came with Round 1’s performance. We do, however, have a lot more positives to enjoy for this week at least.

Round 1, 2022
St Kilda 3.2, 5.6, 9.12, 12.13 (85)
Collingwood 4.5, 7.9, 10.11, 15.12 (102)
Crowd: 40,129 at Docklands, Friday, March 18th at 7.50pm

Between the time we watched yet another success-starved club break a premiership drought and unfurl their flag, the world had found another way to go to shit and now we’re all a dodgy Putin “miscommunication” away from World War 3 and/or nuclear obliteration. But there’s still time for Max King and the Saints at the Concrete Disney Store on a Friday night. Where else would you rather be? (The answer is probably “the MCG”, but this will do.)

A lot goes into the pre-season for fans. It’s rarely fear of the unknown; it’s anticipation of what might be. If you choose to do so, or you’re in a position to be able to, you pay your membership. The Saints are kept close over summer by the reminder texts that your next instalment of Saints EasyPay is coming out of your account in the next few days. You watch all the puffy preview clips of “Sounds of the Saints” on the club socials, and read all the puffy “x is having a massive pre-season” articles. You watch the new year’s membership advert. You critique the new clash jumper. You find yourself watching a livestream with nearly 70,000 other people of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant on fire (this was no ordinary pre-season). You get bumped for Saints TV after being offered to do a team season preview on a podcast. You watch the intra-club match, a day in which the club simply can’t lose. You watch the pre-season matches hoping for no injuries (there were injuries). You go through the emails sent by the club and figure out what’s what for ticketing and scanning into the ground on game day. (To your dismay, the Parker Room, AKA The Doorman, is temporarily out of action). Some 308 days since the last home game with a crowd, you reacquaint yourself with the trip into the ground. You meet up for a pre-match drink with the people you go with every week – Dad, Matt, Richie. You watch Peking Duk as the pre-match entertainment and then the brass band play the Saints theme song as a welcome back to the fans. The team runs out to The Fable Singers and you can’t wait to see what it is they’ve been working on for the past six months.

So it’s really disappointing when you go through all of that and you’re welcomed with a Daicos family homecoming, Jordan de Goey being made a hero, someone who couldn’t get a game at another team tearing you apart in the midfield, and a 19-year-old kid stepping up in the final quarter to help wrestle the game from you. A black and white victory lap for all of the changes made on and off the field by Collingwood.

***

Collingwood looked like a different team. The introductions of Nick Daicos (getting stuck into him after the early turnover in front of goal fell very flat) and Patrick Lipinski aside, this was not the dour outfit that finished 17th last year. When they had the ball, they spread across the ground and gave each other options short and beyond. They used the ball smartly. When they didn’t have the footy, they compressed quickly and strangled our ball movement. They moved with purpose.

We, on the other hand, looked like we hadn’t learned anything new. The Carlton practice match had a lot of Geelong-style short kicks and marks out of defence (assumedly brought through by Corey Enright). Perhaps we liked the short game because we can’t seem back our skills generally – that was an issue Ratts brought up afterwards, to the point of ruing not debuting Nasiah – but we didn’t bring anything obviously different to this game compared to last year. The signs were bad from the start. There’s still no obvious cohesive press or structure or system; as if we’re just hoping we win a lot of one-on-ones and that things will somehow come together in the moment.

With no Ryder and Jones and a not-quite-ready debutant in their place, the midfield was shown for its lack of depth and smashed. No surprise that the ball spent a lot of time in Collingwood’s front half in the first two-and-a-half quarters, and when we got our hands on its we couldn’t find nor present an option in their high press. We looked confused and anxious. How many times did Dougal, Hill, Wilkie, Battle et al. pause in the back half and wait for something to happen – giving the Pies even more time to get sorted – only for the ball to not hit a clean target? Inevitably a rushed or long kick would be forced; it would hit the deck and the Pies would invariably have the numbers at ground level. We can’t just have “hopefully Brad Hill runs past or Max King marks it” as a game plan. Kanye was knocked back for this.

This shouldn’t have been a huge surprise. Confidence admittedly waned while watching the Wednesday and Thursday night games (with the Bevo and Tom Morris sideshows providing all sorts of other wild distractions). We’re absolutely not going to pull off a Melbourne 2021 season. The Dogs are obviously competitive with the best. And we might have just watched the first hours of Carlton going past us (before watching Collingwood go past us in real time). We don’t look like any of those teams. We simply don’t have players that are as good, no system, no consistently uncompromising approach either with or without the ball. Sure, no Jones, Ryder, Billings, Clark, Ryder, Coffield, and even Highmore hurts, but if your system is good enough (or appears to exist in the first place) then you’ll be able to cover those outs much better than we did on Friday. And worrying about unforced skill errors feels like a very not-quite-AFL-standard problem. A running theme through the Richo era was connection between the “kickers and catchers”. Ratts referred to it as “completed plays” in the post-match press conference. It follows that basic skill errors aren’t going to help complete many plays. They were everywhere. Really basic things – Byrnes couldn’t pick up the ball at half-forward with three guys around him waiting for a handball, Kent dropped an easy mark near goal in the last quarter, Mason Wood gave off an uncommitted handball to no-one that was turned over and ended with a Collingwood goal. These are all just really easy examples to pick on out of a very large sample size. When the ball did make its way forward – we only had 47 inside 50s – the entries were wasteful and our small forwards were almost exclusively frustrating or anonymous, and the ball bounced out too easily.

***

The third-quarter flip showed again how big the gap between our best and worst is, and also how fickle we are – not just from week to week but minute to minute. Running in numbers, moving the ball more quickly and changing the angles all magically appeared once it appeared to be too late. Again like the Richo era, the best is still probably based a little too much simply on an adrenaline rush. And the best simply doesn’t last long enough, and when we’re on we have Jack Higgins doing an Adam Schneider 2009 Grand Final redux in front of goal. Two missed set shots, blazing away while off balance in space and ignoring Gresham next to him, and then missing a snap from the top of the goal square to draw the game level were wasted moments from Snags as we made our run. (He really does try.)

By the time Elliott gave off to Sidebottom out of a stoppage for a beautiful goal off one step, the margin was 34 points and the game should have been over. We had no right to be anywhere near it (an Elliott snap a few moments later almost did finish it there and then). Maybe the gravity of the situation shocked the players into action, I don’t know. Sinclair moved onto the ball and kicked a goal to start the run (helped by one of Darcy Moore’s several curious moments). Sinclair and Gresham at the bounces gave us a little more pace, and maybe there was just a bit more old-fashioned wanting the footy more. The momentum shifts from the Grand Final through to the opening games of this year have been fascinating.

The shift also coincided with Jack Hayes becoming a major influence on the game. I can’t remember the last time we brought someone new to the AFL system who made an immediate impact like that on debut. The debut of Gil’s sexy new scoreboards allowed for more real-time stats leaders throughout the game on the older screens, and so fresh was Jack to the system that his player graphic was initially accompanied by Jack Crisp’s photo, then Tim Membrey’s, then nothing at all.

He looked our most reliable set shot of the night – he kicks through the footy! – but he did great work all around the ground. His third quarter was fantastic. He cut through traffic on the forward flank and delivered to Jack Higgins (for a miss); he took an intercept mark on the wing that led to Membrey’s set shot and goal; he helped get the next clearance out of the middle after his ruck contest with Grundy, and at the following throw-in in the forward pocket earned a free-kick and slotted the goal (worth noting that both times he won the free kicks the incoming ball hit him on the body very ungracefully). Everyone’s favourite part of the night was his third goal, a curling snap on the run after he worked forward to join Butler ahead of the ball. In the vacuum of the moment between the ball leaving Butler’s hand and finding Jack, someone near us gasped, “Jack Hayes!”, and a cult hero was born. In the moments after he halved a two-on-one on the wing and won the free-kick, and then almost comically hauled in another intercept mark off-balance as he was absolutely gassed and hoping to get to the bench.

Membrey and Gresham were other rare bright spots on a dark night. Hayes’ third goal started with Membrey harassing Crisp on the wing, with the wayward kick falling to Gresham, and Membrey’s effort came with three goals, and despite missing an important set shot in the last he bullocked his way through bodies at the top of the square with a few minutes left for a snap goal to bring the margin within 11 points. We’d done everything we could to burn easier opportunities in the quarter.

Gresh was a welcome returnee – 24 zipping touches and 2.1 – but he’s still trying to kick the cover off the ball at every opportunity. Hayes’ third goal actually came from him trying to torpedo the ball over the last defender to Butler; the kick was a classic tumbler and it required all of a very kind bounce, a deft Butler tap and an excellent finish from Hayes to come off.

Max, who has turned himself into a Facial Hair Guy over the off-season, got to plenty of contests but just couldn’t quite complete enough marks around the ground and close to goal. It’s a familiar tale of this very early part of his career – drops what he perhaps should have taken, misses two set shots, and then kicks an expert dribbling rover’s goal running past a contest. His kick out of mid-air that hit the post in the third quarter was thrilling; it should also have been a quick gather and handball to Rowan Marshall on his own and running into goal.

***

Higgins partially made up for his misses in the third with a level-headed handball to Gresh in the goal square early in the last quarter that put us in front, but we’d juiced everything we could out of that run. From just on the 14-minute mark of the third quarter we’d kicked a wasteful 5.6 to 0.0, and it was met with three goals in less than four minutes from Collingwood. We never got the game back on our terms. A fair bit has been made in the wash-up about some of the umpiring – the Jack Steele deliberate out of bounds (that was a genuinely bad decision), and then the Jack Hayes no-mark and no free-kick call with a couple of minutes to go, but at the ground the latter didn’t look like much either way, and I would rather point to what was one of the more uninspiring showings for 75% of the match before blaming anything else.

The last time a Daicos debuted against St Kilda, Collingwood waltzed to a 178-point win at Victoria Park that remains their biggest ever victory, and our biggest-ever loss (and, for 13 weeks, it was the biggest winning margin VFL history). And that’s saying something for a club with the fewest premierships, most wooden spoons, lowest score ever, etc. etc. etc. Obviously – obviously – this was not as bad, but 1979 began an eight-year streak that saw five wooden spoons, two second-lasts and a third-last. Obligatory Round 1 overreactions dictate that the club is not sitting in a good place right now, and I’m not sure how much we can afford to mess around with no clear direction while other club bosses crack the shits about how much AFL assistance we’ve been receiving. All that said, we did lose to North Melbourne in the first game of 2020, and we also won the first game of last year, and look how both of those seasons panned out. (Three weeks before that 178-point loss in 1979, we’d beaten reigning premiers Hawthorn in Round 1.)

At the start of a new season we hope that maybe our team will become the centre of the football universe. SEN’s Crunch Time on Saturday morning was effusive about Collingwood’s early signs of transformation and rightfully panned the Saints for a lack of system and desire. Be careful what you wish for; in a contract year for our coach, we might well be a constant talking point for all the wrong reasons.

***

As well as the Concrete Dome’s new scoreboards, Friday marked the debut of a new lighting system for the field and in the stands, and a tacky light show to go with it all after Saints goals. (In true Sydney tacky-glam style, 120-metre-long scoreboards were installed at Homebush over last week, and were used as glorified electronic billboards in the latest of Victoria vs NSW sport dick-measuring contests). The Concrete Dome – on game day under the control of the Saints – only played the Collingwood song after the game, which was disrespectful to Pies fans given how long they’ve waited to celebrate a win in-person, and then the club’s engagement team drained Tim Membrey of whatever remaining energy he had left by interviewing him on-screen. He just didn’t want to be there after all of that, no one wanted to hear it, and the team had to wait for him longer out on the ground before they could hide themselves away. Just leave them all be.

We’ve all been morbidly fascinated (and exhausted) over the past two years by how many different ways the world can go to hell. We enter another season in which footy faces an existential reckoning, and we re-evaluate our relationship with the game yet again. And it remains that it’s nice to be at the footy watching the Saints with the people I love. It’s nice to have a head full of steam walking across the bridge in a heavy crowd after the game. It’s nice to have a St Kilda loss as the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning. It’s a luxury.

In the final home and away match of the 2009 season, the top-of-the-ladder Saints cruised to a 46-point win over hapless, helpless wooden-spooners Melbourne on a sunny Sunday at the MCG in a comfortable tune-up for September. Three weeks later, at the same ground, the Saints got over the line against the Dogs in a famous Preliminary Final.

St Kilda lost three games that year – by a total of 13 points on the sound of the respective final sirens. The Saints would beat the Dogs in the Preliminary Final again in 2010, while the Demons were condemned to spend several more years as the weakest team in the competition.

Both the Demons and the Dogs, it would prove, were closer to a flag. Richmond, too, who in the eras of Sheldon, Alves, GT and Ross had become the competition’s biggest and best joke.

Now, all of the mistakes made over 55 years have come home to roost. Blowing a 28-point lead late in the third quarter of 1971, waving away a 13-point lead at half-time in 1997, kicking ourselves out of it in 2009, giving up a 24-point lead in the first half of 2010 and not being able to score one more time late in the game; let alone the Preliminary Final should- and could-have-beens in 2004 and 2005. And that’s just the times when things seemed to be going well. There is still an element of shock that the Riewoldt generation never delivered a flag, but right at this moment it’s no surprise the club is in this position. The reassurance of “you did the best with the tools you had at the time” just doesn’t cut it.

Melbourne always loomed as an appropriate final benchmark. The worst non-expansion team of the modern era who even we could afford to pity at times. What more appropriate race to find ourselves in? 

Once the Dogs swept through in 2016, you could have made the argument that Melbourne and St Kilda were set for a repeat of the 2000s rivalries that came with other drought breakers in Geelong and (eventually) the Bulldogs. Two young teams that appeared to be on the same trajectory, both armed with high draft picks. St Kilda stunned many – from casual observers to just about every other recruiter in the land – by choosing Paddy McCartin over Christian Petracca with the first pick in the 2014 draft, setting the stage for yearslong debates about who should have done what. Some tight and some spiteful contests with the Demons over the following counted for varying bragging rights – Joey’s final-seconds goal in 2015 to extend a winning streak to nine seasons, Membrey’s emergence in both 2016 meetings as we looked like the perhaps next big thing, a late-season virtual Elimination Final in 2017, an upset narrow win in 2018.

Paddy isn’t at the Saints anymore, and his career so far has been ruined by concussion, never mind the well-documented related off-field issues he’s had to deal with. Petracca has just turned in one of the most complete Grand Final performances in VFL/AFL history, 2014’s pick 3 Angus Brayshaw there with him – and Alan Richardson, too. Billings and Bontempelli was an argument settled quickly, and 2014 now too, comprehensively. Melbourne might have flailed momentarily after 2018, but we didn’t get within an echoing Concrete Dome roar of being humoured as rivals or brave challengers or contenders alongside them at any stage. After a promising 2020 we played juddering footy in 2021 that has left us again a middling team with a questionable list and no clear path to contention (and a familiar Messiah Complex regarding the young forward wearing number 12), while the club has trashed itself aesthetically with a ridiculous version of the home jumper and a song change no-one asked for.

Two years ago I reflected on St Kilda’s 2010s – what it meant for fans, what it meant for the club. Our social construct of decades aligned neatly with that period beginning with the closest we’ve come to winning a flag outside of 1966, and then a great fall, some optimism (we finished two spots below the premiership-winning Bulldogs in 2016, with a rocket), before the arse fell out and we closed the decade with the realisation that the rebuild after the GT and Ross eras simply hadn’t worked. There would be no imminent return to contending or relevancy. We are still floundering. Meandering.

And so, we spent the last Saturday of September this year at home watching Petracca and Bontempelli running around as the best players in the game, and each as their team’s most likely matchwinners. The latter was ultimately vanquished, but he was the chief reason there was a contest at all, and he’s already won a best and fairest in a premiership year anyway. Petracca is now a Norm Smith medalist, and most importantly a premiership-winning player too. None of Nick Riewoldt, Lenny Hayes, Robert Harvey, Tony Lockett, Nathan Burke, Stewart Loewe, Nicky Winmar, Fraser Gehrig, Nick Dal Santo, nor Trevor Barker can lay claim to that.

Melbourne’s triumph is a before-and-after event for St Kilda. Any remaining semblance of cover has been blown. At least we weren’t Fitzroy, left with a 52-year drought and then nothing at all. At least we weren’t the Swans, with their move to a different city and 72-year hangover. At least Geelong had it as bad as us. At least we weren’t the Bulldogs, who couldn’t make a Grand Final to begin with. At least we weren’t Richmond, the laughing stock of the land. At least we weren’t Melbourne, who had not been fashionable in any way for 57 years.

There is now no other great drought. St Kilda has always been exceptional, from not bothering to win a game for the first three seasons of this competition as part of a 93-year wait for the singular event of 1966, through to the GT and Ross eras that were show-stopping, turbulent, and heartbreaking in extremes. Now, we again have the raw data to back it all up.

It’s just us now.

Round 23, 2021
St Kilda 3.0, 6.3, 10.5, 17.5 (107)
Fremantle 1.4, 3.5, 4.8, 6.13 (49)
Crowd: 3,082 at Blundstone Arena, Sunday, August 22nd at 12.15pm

Some things, if allowed, are instantly recognisable and familiar even this far into a pandemic. The late August sun on show, and sitting that much higher. The breeze is that much more accommodating. As 2021 developed into a worthy sequel to 2020 (off the field), the ability of the competition to retain its structure within the calendar year shouldn’t be underestimated. Bob Murphy’s Rhythm of the Season was back. The change in season again aligns with the season’s turn towards history being made, or to a relaxed Spring. Spring nonetheless.

And thus, a sunny afternoon game (in natural daylight!) to finish things off for 2021. We’ve had a bunch of these – Peter Everitt’s 7.7 in 1996 against the Crows on the eve of a much bigger final game of the year for both teams; a loss to the Cats in 2003 on the eve of the rivalry becoming real; a tight win in Fraser’s (first) last game in 2007 at the MCG after several years of challenging; a wet sail win over Carlton in 2012 to cap off an oft-forgotten positive Scott Watters season, and in what was Brett Ratten’s last game at the Blues; the Watters Phase II team smothering a Grand Final-bound Fremantle in Kosi, Blake and Milne’s last game; Roo kicking nine against the Lions in a high-scoring game at the end of 2016 – perhaps the apex of the Richo era, when all of our young kids were untradeable and Roo did in fact appear to be ageless – and a sunny Saturday afternoon in Sydney in 2019 that ended a strange, exhausting year that capped off an era, a decade and indeed nearly a century since the last pandemic.

Like several of those seasons, finals had only become realistically out of reach a week or two before the final game (in 2007, it was the night before). In these instances, the last game of the season doesn’t quite feel attached to the year in the same way. It is isolated in a way that doesn’t apply to any part of a meandering, muddling low-finish season. It lives in smouldering embers and dirt of the hopes and ambitions of a live season.

In a strange way, it’s a victory lap of the year (although by no means a casual ride down the Champs-Élysées). It’s a day to sit back and see the bits and pieces that made up the year – for better or worse – and enjoy the better parts, and know that the rest is pretty harmless, and can’t quite hurt you again in the same way, that they belong to the past now. Really, it’s an opportunity to just to watch the Saints run around. There’s nothing to really play for except whatever you’re feeling in the moment, and spontaneity has been rare lately.

***

After an all-timer 24 (27ish?) hours that rivalled the 1987 last round, trust the Bizarro Rivalry that is shared by St Kilda and Fremantle to ruin the AFL’s carefully-laid fixture plan to keep the entire round interesting. (One for the off-season is to find and re-upload our in-depth looks at the novelty freakshow that is The Bizarro Rivalry; they were lost in The Great RWB Server Calamity of 2021). We looked “on”, while the team whose season was on the line was simply not playing like a team whose season was on the line. Of the first 8.2 we kicked, 7.2 came from defence, somewhere between Freo cbf and us deciding to have another decent week when it suited, and probably not when it was expected (and certainly not when it was needed).

In an immediate sense, what we ended up getting was a strange cross between that last round of 2013 – a 71-point win over the Dockers’ thirds – and the record-setting 18th-defeated-2nd win later in 2014 by the same 58 points we won by on Sunday.

That means some of the better things we were used to seeing this year probably happened. Steele leading all comers for possessions, despite being consistently frustrated by Banfield; Sinclair and his mullet zipping around off half-back; Ben Long putting a sweetly-timed heavy hit on Brayshaw; Rowan Marshall putting in a gargantuan performance (and showing us what might have been if both he and Paddy were fully fit all year); Zak Jones looking for people to try and run around; Brad Crouch perhaps quietly accumulating big numbers; and Jack Higgins working hard up the ground and close to goal.

Of course, the urgency isn’t quite there, and our circumstances and Freo’s attitude opened the door to the slightly-different-timeline novelty happenings that also get offered by two teams just running around and having a kick. Bytel kicked his first two career goals; Zak Jones got called Zak Smith, Tim Membrey got called Stewart; Dan Hannebery played; Wilkie touched a goal with his head; Rowan Marshall handballed it into some guy’s nuts.

***

I knew saying anything about Freo “not playing like a team playing for finals” would tempt fate, and as soon as I put it into the group chat in the shadows of half-time, the umpire decided to bypass the constant coaching of players and just went straight to paying a 50 against Crouch in the shadows of half time. Ah, here we go. This is where the Bizarro Rivalry will really come to the fore – Freo will come back to add to the amazing round and add to our 2020s list of decent margins given up. Peter Carey, Longmuir after the siren, Sirengate, 2013, etc. But like the umpire, they just cbf.

Final games of the year can also be, just quietly, a chance to look forward. A last chance to grab onto something, however small to take into the off-season. Teasingly (in the bullying sense), maybe tauntingly, the AFL used its first opportunity since the handing down of the Carter Report to send a Saints home game straight to Tasmania, hoping to push the joint venture and relocation options before Peter Gutwein forces through the 19th team option early next year.

It’s not Roo’s six goals in Stewart Loewe’s final game in the last round of 2002 (or Spider’s 7.7), but Cooper Sharman minted his transformation from Novelty Name Guy out of the mid-season draft to Bob and Andy and general SEN talkback areas. He kicked 4.1 via high marks, smart leads, strong hands, and played a big presence up the ground, too, capably handling the responsibility of being the key tall target and linkman up forward in Max’s absence.

Much like Max’s first 20 minutes against the Cats, this was a tall forward performance that combined an understanding of the value of constantly being on the move, and an athletic ability to find space on an opponent, time runs, time leaps, and simply hold onto marks. He kicked goals from set shots, from marks on the lead and contested, and at a light gallop in space heading towards the sticks. While he’s a fourth gamer and looks like he’s wearing a retail version of the jumper one size too big, he is 21 and his experience working against mature bodies shows. 

The commentators noted Higgins worked from half-back up the goal mouth for the opener, but Sharman had done the same and was the one who got his hands on the ball in the forward pocket at the end of the run, and place a well-weighted kick from the pocket to Higgins. Sharman’s quick hand-to-foot movements around the ground looked slick and more naturally dynamic in a way we’re still not quite used to.

***

St Kilda’s presence alone throughout a closeish-to-normal season (in its format) mattered. The rhythm of a week, framed by footy – the Monday wash-up, mid-week surmising, the return of Thursday night teams, the anticipation of a Friday. St Kilda matches were a singular event that brought us together, whether it was the occasional game – yes, we actually were able to go to some this year – or the group chat while we watched on TV (Rory, I found a setting on my Samsung that eliminates any weird frame rate mismatch for laptop-via HDMI connections!). And, join the dots between those singular weekly events, a narrative emerges, even one that appears to judder in the same way that most of us have gone in and out of lockdown.

There might not be the same sense of achievement that last year brought, and it’s not redemption in any way, nor a celebration but there is nonetheless a burden easing. Maybe a small sense of achievement. During a pandemic, or outside of a pandemic, the season is long. As supporters, we have done the time, and just getting through right now is worth something.

Round 22, 2021
Geelong Cats 2.0, 6.2, 10.5, 13.7 (85)
St Kilda 5.1, 7.2, 10.3, 11.5 (71)
Crowd: Zero at Kardinia Park, Saturday, August 14th at 4.35pm

St Kilda’s 2021 season appeared to expire multiple times via all sorts of causes since a shoddy outing in Round 2 against the Demons, but the last rites were given by a one-two Kardinia Park punch.

When Mason Wood barrelled through our fifth goal against the Tigers in the Friday night rain at the MCG, I immediately turned to Matt and said “it’s a story if we lose”. It was our first game off the bye and after a 36-0 lead was given up to the Crows in Cairns, prompting all sorts of soul-searching inside the club and a rightful freak-out among the supporter base.

Somehow*, we went on with it at the MCG (*we didn’t know Richmond was plateauing at the time). We’ve made a habit of pissing away big leads – North (31 points) and Freo (37 points) last year, and a narrow escape against the Dogs after leading by 22 nearly 15 minutes into the last quarter of an Elimination Final. This year, that Richmond win was sandwiched between the Adelaide calamity in Cairns and a nearly more horrific calamity at the MCG against Collingwood.

Somehow, the five-goal-to-nothing start given up on Saturday evening is not the story coming out of the game. There was a lot more inevitability in this. Unlike those losses in previous seasons this was to a much more highly-fancied opponent who we knew weren’t going to just roll over with a whole lot more the line than ourselves.

The guy who’d dominated the last time we played the Cats but kicked 1.5 and looked broken for weeks was now dominating again, and in a way that was much more dangerous. He’d kicked 2.1 by the time we kicked 5.1 to 0.0, with a hand in every goal chain. Max was on the move. He wasn’t getting caught under it (it must be said, Jack Henry was doing a great job body-on-body considering he was giving away 12 centimetres) but who’s gonna stop Max once he gets some space or a run-up? Everything was sticking. This was the best footy we’d played. Pressure was good. All five goals were from turnovers and the ball movement was measured and fluid. Steele had seven touches in seven minutes and ten seconds of play. Sharman slotted the set shot from a tight angle.

Just as the camera cut to Max King moving awkwardly on the boundary, D-Mac was paid a free-kick against at half-back, in which the only alternative was for him to disappear completely, and then ex-Saint/one-time-Messiah-to-be Rhys glided across the pack from the resulting entry and kicked their first. The St Kilda fix was in. I harped on about the Cats last time. There’s a lot of grievance flying around at Red, White and Black’s Brunswick West HQ. Our best team ever got their best team ever, and we still can’t even have our best player out there on a day in which our season is supposed to die in an awkward time slot via a Kayo feed and HDMI cord.

***

Perhaps we were in for another strange week for contenders after the previous Round, as we could see Carlton skip out to an early lead over the Power on the bottom-right scorebug? Nah. Jason Dunstall uttered the famous words, “He’s on fire. He is on fire, Callum Wilkie”, but he was busy for a reason and the Cats were already shifting things. To a man, their physical presence in every contest is remarkable. Their list, recruiting and player development has suited their game style incredibly well; just like 361 days ago, when we sat second on the ladder and met them in fifth, there was not much chance we were able to go with them.

Bringing back memories of Hawkins’ poster in the 2009 Grand Final (grievance, but understandable) and the 2010 Qualifying Final (grievance; although we won, and there was a video uploaded to YouTube – since taken down – that detailed several minutes of favourable decisions to the Cats), after the D-Mac decision there were multiple occasions that would have had anyone reasonably shitty about the umpiring and St Kilda history generally. Dangerfield threw the ball just so, so blatantly. Ratugolea ran off with the footy out of the middle after a free was paid our way with no 50-metre penalty given, Menegola was given a touch-and-go decision on the goal line. Max King took a mark in the third quarter in the forward pocket and Blicavs turfed the ball in frustration, and as it trickled away and as Saints players protested, the umpire paused briefly and offered “I didn’t see it”, which is what coaches say in the post-match presser when they can’t be fucked commenting on something shitty one of their players did.

Like I do every time I bring up umpiring in a game (thank you for grounding me in the moment, St Julio), it is also worth noting the comprehensive way the ball lived in their half from the time of their first goal. Our midfielders just weren’t getting the ball, and when we did, we either got Sinclair setting up Higgins with a perfectly weighted forward 50 entry, or Sinclair setting Membrey with a perfectly weighted forward 50 entry, only for the Vice Captain, on his own and in space, to drop it. Hill gave up two shots at goal, including turning over Jack Steele’s mark going back with the flight. At the end of the day, 32 inside 50s will win you close to zero games.

Hawkins was angry and contest by contest was more of a presence from borderline fresh airing it, and by the end was giving off goals and concussing Darragh Joyce (of course he didn’t get suspended) Cameron was taking marks in the forward line and up on the wing. Jack Steele had 20 touches with 11 minutes and 20 seconds left in the second quarter. This whole result was 0% his fault by the way, but more as a reflection go the Cats flexing their top four muscle, he had only (“only”) 21 at half-time, and 30 by game’s end. In the automated app push notification that comes with the Dare Sainter of the Round result, he was referred to as “Captain Commendable”.

Dangerfield might not have necessarily wanted it more than Steele or anyone else, but he did a better job at showing it. This became a rare game in an era defined by systems that had its trajectory changed by repeated individual efforts of a single player who willed themselves across different parts of field. He could do it all on the ground and in the air, and he came up with match-sealing move.

***

By the end, decent moments were few and far between. We had them for 26 minutes, they had us for a bit more than three quarters. This is what the team is. It’s not just the side that was smashed several times over early in the season (depriving us of a slightly more interesting last week of the year), nor the side that kicked itself out of games against flag fancies, nor the side that pulled out wins against flag fancies. It’s the side that did all of those things, whiplashing between them week to week, quarter to quarter, minute to minute.

Remembering that Cooper on a couple of occasions presented with the second effort sprint high up on the wing for the run-past, reflects the mindset of a supporter whose team is done for the year and is looking to the future. Cooper is somewhere between Ryan Gamble and Spencer White for hype, physical build and an oversized St Kilda jumper. In the best and most exciting possible way, of course. Yet, the slightly too excited yelp when he casually bobbed up near goal and nailed the set shot to keep our season going reminded me that the forever competitive part of my supporter’s heart still wanted something from this.

With just over six minutes left, Fox Footy cut to the boundary level camera as St Kilda worked its way forward and Dan Butler got caught up in a tackle. At that moment, there was just a faint tweak that something actually was on the line. That yes, I do want something to come of this year after almost four months of being indifferent about our chances at scraping into the eight, and that if only a few moments had turned out differently-

Round 21, 2021
St Kilda 5.0, 8.2, 12.4, 14.9 (93)
Sydney 4.1, 5.2, 8.4, 10.4 (64)
Crowd: Zero at Docklands, Saturday, August 7th at 7.40PM AEST

This one definitely had the feeling of the Who Cares Cup. Sydney was coming off 5 wins on the trot; being one of the form sides of the competition. They’ve clipped all of the Cats, Dogs, Lions and came within 9 points of the fast-starting Dees earlier in the year. Their rep has surged at a rate of knots, to the point where teams entrenched in the top 4 were having to look over their shoulders. 

In the other corner, the Saints injury list had maintained a plumpness – no Doug or Latte for this one. And news had filtered through that Paddy might be done for the year.

The Swans are usually everything that we are not. They are nothing if not reliable. Their development of youth is probably unrivalled. Recycled recruits after oft-rejuvenated when Harbour-side. They are impeccable in their diligence and their no-nonsense approach. 

Sydney are probably to 2021 what the Saints were to 2020. They were unfancied. They’ve got a bright-fresh-new-look about them. The mainstays of the squad have ceded the limelight to the young bloods such as Dawson, Gulden, Haywood, McInerney, McCartin. Yet, it seems like a familiar tale for Swans; nothing unsurprising. They rarely let themselves hit the ropes, let alone take long to bounce back with a renewed vigour. 

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Round 20, 2021
St Kilda 3.1, 5.3, 7.7, 12.9 (81)
Carlton 5.1, 10.1. 15.2, 18.4 (112)
Crowd: Zero at Docklands, Friday, July 30th at 7.50pm

At the end of a week of unrelenting slow-motion footage of swimmers’ immediate reactions to their placings, their families back home, Abbey and Hamish being just that little bit too over-the-top about it all, the Matildas, the Boomers, Jess Fox, a spiralling COVID outbreak, and, on Friday, COVID at the Olympics, and then a sort-of-bombshell announcement that Clarko would be leaving the Hawks in a few weeks, Carlton’s review being handed in, Gary Ayres being sacked by Port Melbourne, David Teague maybe being sacked as a result of the review and also Clarko being officially available, and Sam McClure – who had run alongside Caro with the Clarko story – confidently saying on SEN the Carlton coach next year would likely be one of Clarko or Ross Lyon, St Kilda was playing Carlton at an empty Concrete Dome.

No matter that St Kilda’s season was on the line. A win would have us in 8th place ahead of the rest of the round. Between flicking across to the main 7 channel to see Sam Kerr, Teagan Micah, et al’s heroics, we were treated to the worst 31-point loss known to science (aside from the 1997 Grand Final, which “in another, more accurate way” was infinitely worse. Touché Justin.).

Three wins following the Adelaide-in-Cairns calamity and the bye, and we looked like we had the season back on track and a more definable game style. After the Brisbane win, we were suddenly favourites for a finals place, but losses of a combined 18 points to Port and West Coast put us in the awkward Mathematical Chance category on the final turn and reminded us that we probably wouldn’t capture any real sustained positive momentum this season.

Because this is the team. It either picks and chooses when to go, or it simply can’t. Hell, even parts of the team – Brett Ratten in the 7 pre-game talking about how the midfield was down last week made me think that given the number of bounce backs throughout this year – the first West Coast match, the post-bye mini-run – that after two weeks and that performance, Steele, Crouch and Dunstan would be primed for a big night. The late withdrawal of Paddy Ryder hurt immensely, in the sense that we might rely too much on a 33-year-old specifically playing with Rowan Marshall. Jack Silvagni was placed in the ruck given the lessened threat and a Carlton backing their mids over ours. We won the hit-out count 70-16 but effectively broke even in the clearances.

Steele had eight tackles at the beginning of the second quarter and finished with 36 touches. He looked genuinely disappointed in the moments following the siren. Crouch got a lot of the ball, and so did Dunstan, but for a second consecutive week their influence again felt well below what it should have been (According to Wayne Carey, Dunstan was going at 0% efficiency with his first eight touches, but this has been disputed).

Max King picked up where he left off. He looked – looks – unstoppable with space in front of him (not that he needs a huge amount at his height). Three tall marks and three goals by quarter-time, giving it to Weitering as he put through the third. A spurious free kick on the quarter-time siren offered the chance to needlessly break his goal kicking confidence – he was on a run of 17.4 from set shots over recent weeks and into that moment, and he hooked the ball trying to make the 50-metre-plus distance.

No matter – he kicked the next one with minimal fuss. The problem was that it came in the last quarter and we were back to the bad old days of April and May, of large losses and a complete breakdown of play. I’ve been thinking about what exactly to write for this part but like those performances, this was comprehensive. Without needing to rack up massive numbers, Walsh, Cripps, Kennedy, Dow and yes, Silvagni took control of the stoppages and it went from there. Another smashing at the Concrete Disney Store, another team that just seemed to disappear in-game. Dunstan multiple times kicked low balls into the 50 that gave zero St Kilda forwards a chance, ignoring the fact that the most dangerous Saint on the ground had given us nine demos in the previous five quarters on what might work. Kent, Butler, Long and Higgins had few moments of impact. Brad Hill demanded the ball off half-back but to no discernible end.

Zak Jones was trying to make things happen and again barrelled his way to the footy, perhaps trying to occasionally do just a little too much once he got it. Sixth-gamer Leo Connolly proved to be the most creative Saint with multiple dashes and slicing through traffic in attempts to make something, anything, happen.

The first quarter saw commentators – for the first time in a long time – openly willing an individual Saint to an exciting performance. That goodwill and anticipation for Max was a distant memory by the final moments of the second term. Webster lost his bearings as James Brayshaw uttered “Saints have the numbers”, and a Carlton kick that was slammed into an open forward line bounced perfectly for Fisher, who neatly gave off to Williamson. His kick on the half-time siren went through, and we’d quietly blown our season.

***

Sharman kicked his first goal as the Matildas stormed their way through to – and then held on for – a famous win. I only just caught it – I’d spent most of the lead-in to the game, quarter-time and half-time following the Matildas’ quarter final.

Outside of the team events, the Olympics is feel-good junk food, or at least is presented that way. We don’t follow individual athletes like we do a club – St Kilda has existed for 148 years and represents more than the sum of its parts. Its on-field history; the experiences of its fans and the collective. But at the Olympics, everyone’s a hero, everyone has done a nation proud, everyone is an inspiration, and according to 7, we’re almost expected to be celebrating just like Ariarne Titmus’s family or the students at someone’s old primary school, to the point where it can wrongfully dilute the passages of athletes like Saya Sakakibara.

I haven’t not watched any of the Olympics; in fact, I have watched and listened to a lot of it. And enjoyed it (but not so much the presentation). Part of me was perhaps waiting all week to watch the Saints and feel smug about how much more real the attachment is. Another showcase from the next Messiah – I was there from the start! Only footy can do this!

Following St Kilda post-2011 has just been a dour lifestyle choice rather than an observable journey. While I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to be able to pay for a souped-up membership every year, it’s silly of me to put pressure on myself (however subconsciously) to feel or experience (and then write about) every match in a horribly fatalistic manner. Friday night is the “every week” in the “I watch the Saints every week”. Sometimes that’s ok. Not every medal winner has to be an incredible inspiration, nor was the “entire country” jumping up and down in the lounge room. But I did take a few minutes out of my day to go to the lounge room and watch Jess Fox in the C-1 final. And I got a thrill out of it!

***

BT tried winding up the prospect of a potential upset with seven or so minutes left. Indeed, there was a minute or so in which the intensity clearly lifted (maybe it was just BT’s slightly-louder commentating) and it appeared we may have the momentum and just a four-goal margin with plenty of time left. The ball fell to Billings for a second set shot in the quarter, on the right side for his left boot that we all assumed several years ago would become a weapon. He missed. In that moment he may have perhaps been a victim of BT trying to keep viewers on 7mate rather than whichever of the others was showing the Olympics, but the connection between this team, its players and this season seemed to fall apart at that point.

Only a run of late goals prevented this from being the eight goals-plus margin that it absolutely should have been. The umpire himself had just given up by the end, paying a free at the top of the square in the final minutes to Jack Higgins while Cooper Sharman claimed the mark. In the spirit of a game played at a lower intensity and in a duller atmosphere than the pre-season match between these teams at the same venue, he left it to the players to decide who should take the kick.

After the bronze medals of the week – some upsetting, some uplifting, some bemusing – and the close-run silvers, and the GOLD FOR AUSTRALIA, and Alastair Clarkson, and David Teague, and Sam Kerr, and 20 rounds of a season, St Kilda is 13th on the ladder.

Round 19, 2021
West Coast Eagles 2.2, 8.6, 11.7, 14.10 (94)
St Kilda 2.1, 4.2, 7.6, 13.8 (86)
Crowd: 43,657 at Optus Stadium, Saturday, July 25th at 4.35pm AEST

Get up off your lounge room couch and move the coffee table to the side. We’re back to doing the dance we’ve done several times over the past few years – a last month of a home and away season that presents a mathematical but very unlikely path to the finals, and we have to ride every mundane and uselessly hopeful minute of it.

In the lead-up, the club wheeled out the remarkable Sunday afternoon in early 1998 in which Daniel Healy and Peter Everitt both kicked six goals on their 24th birthdays as the Saints stormed home over the Eagles at Subiaco to pinch a two-point win (never mind that we lost to eventual wooden spooners Brisbane at home a week later). I thought first-game-as-sub Cooper Sharman might have supplied the novelty material, but while our first-tier players were mostly reduced to bystanders, Max King kicked six goals for the first time in his career to almost pull off a similar heist.

When the Eagles’ lead hit 33 points during the third quarter – as it had earlier this year – I absurdly believed it more likely that we would win. I scanned fantasies of headlines and Fox Footy discussions about the Saints pulling off a pair of 33-point comebacks against the Eagles in the same season, and the tweets referencing 33 points something times two something equals 66 (something equals 1966?). (Worth also mentioning this would have echoed the difficult 2017 late season run that saw a stunning last-minute collapse against the Power and then a juddering win against the Eagles the following week.) There was a constant exchange of feeling like we were in it, that Eagles had an extra gear every time, that they were going to completely blow it open.

***

Perhaps for the first time this year we’ve posted a loss that actually lifted our feelings about the future of this team (it only took 19 weeks). This was mostly built on Max King, Zak Jones, Dan Butler and Brad Hill. The St Kilda group chat at three-quarter time discussed how quiet the captain had been during the game, while also acknowledging his massive last term against the Lions a fortnight earlier. He opened the last quarter with the break out of the centre, helped by Butler timing his run into the middle from the forward line with perfection, and weighted the kick perfectly into the oncoming hands of Max King. As much as I was willing for a bunch of history to repeat itself, Steele never quite got going. Despite 13 tackles, a late forward-50 entry between Saints players and straight to an Eagles defender was more reflective of an un-Jack Steele-like performance. 

He, Crouch and Dunstan had just 53 disposals combined and were constantly outworked by the Eagles’ own midfield. Kelly, Sheed, Gaff and Yeo were all prolific, while Kelly and Sheed kicked goals when the Eagles made their move and when the game needed someone to step up in the final minutes. It also meant the larger US College Jocks got to have their way in the forward line. Kennedy and Darling had five between them by half-time when the Eagles led by 28.

Zak Jones was our biggest presence across the ground, repeatedly bodylining the ball and taking hits, looking to take the opposition on and get the ball moving. Hill used up his almost-obligatory funny disposal for the match early on with a squirted handball but otherwise racked up another busy game off half-back in which he did what he could to get things moving around and ahead of him. King kicked six to make the absolute most of everything that went forward (we’ll get to that) and Butler put in his best performance of the year by far. The quick-thinking, slicker Butler we saw last year was back – good finishes, hard running, and some smart ball work up the ground (including a complete halt and turn around to kick backwards to Billings that allowed for an entry to set up King’s floating mark early in the third; also he pounced on Rotham’s wayward bounce which was a universal lol).

There were some ok moments. Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, snapping around the corner to get things going in the first quarter. Billings kicked a goal on his right. Long put on some heavy tackles. Byrnes and Connolly again looked comfortable at the level.

Quieter games and blunders weren’t just for top-liners. Oscar Clavarino made four (maybe five?) outright turnovers by foot that gave the ball straight back to the Eagles in all sorts of the ground. This was a day of few real winners.

***

Which made the result all the more surprising, and perhaps at a second glance – certainly going over the numbers – makes Max’s game all the more impressive. An aimless opening had a pantsing written all over it; no real structure, no real purpose in the forward entries.

For all the issues going forward over recent years, his teammates did the right things by him by putting the ball into the right places. But this was more about a young forward putting on a thrilling display that justified all the hype. He repeatedly flew for marks and they stuck. Edwards being put on him felt a little bit arrogant on West Coast’s part, although there is sense to it. Counterintuitively, I felt personally affronted almost for the same reason when the Eagles put McGovern on him to close out the game. Instead of wilting, he turned McGovern inside out after being outworked in the marking contest, sprinted onto the bouncing ball, got down low and gave off to Butler who brought us back within 13 points, and then a few moments later ran into space on the hill and marked the Brad Hill kick at its highest point, stared down the 43,657 interstate crowd and kicked the goal.

From his first goal – a faultless kick from outside 50 – he threatened right to the end. He got separation on his opponents, he drifted across packs, he launched over defenders. For the first time, the seemingly lackadaisical line-up, the unchanging facial expression and calm action were borne out of confidence, rather than the self-doubt we’ve been projecting that he must be feeling since the Geelong game. We now have images and footage of him flying in the afternoon shadows for a mark over multiple opponents when the team and the season really did need someone. We know what Max King being dangerous and damaging looks like.

***

Paul Hunter giving away a free-kick from the throw-in just seconds before three-quarter time was quietly stunning. Spectacularly St Kilda. All that had to happen on the wing was a break-even contest; instead the US College Jock Captain pushed the margin out to 25 points.

That was barely the reason we lost. Even in the final quarter, for all of Max King’s contested marks and straight kicking, the inability to back up goals was brutal; aside from the obvious scoreboard impact, it never allowed any serious momentum to build. Three of the last quarter’s six goals were replied to within 105 seconds, 100 seconds and 76 seconds – and that includes the time for the ball to go back to the middle and the ground to reset.

Anyone who listened to Grant Thomas on the excellent Unpluggered podcast a few weeks ago heard the former coach suggest how all of the near misses over St Kilda history really just accumulate to something inherently wrong with the club rather than 148 years that can be reduced and summarised as just entirely “bad luck” or “if onlys”. The 2012 season saw four games in which we had more scoring shots than the opposition and/or lost by less than a goal. Turn those results around, and instead of finishing ninth, we finish fourth. Throw in the game in which we kicked more goals than Collingwood and lost by six points – with Armitage running into goal in the final seconds and the umpire paying a free kick against us that the AFL said was a mistake – and we finish third, ahead of premiers Sydney. We could make the same case – as those moments become part of history, the nuances wash away and we’re left with a fossilised core. The bones spell out one premiership since 1873, they spell out a ninth finish in 2012 that no-one need bother remembering.

Imagine if we had all the guys out there! Marshall, Gresham, Clark, Higgins, Highmore, D-Mac, Paton, Battle, Geary. Other teams have injuries too, and waiting around for the perfect moment has never really worked out. If only Max had kicked straight against the Cats, if only Jack Higgins has kicked straight against the Swans, if only we’d used the ball better against Port, if only we were awake in the first part of the game and didn’t fall back asleep during the second. How would a neutral view St Kilda in the context of the wider 2021 AFL season? We wouldn’t really play any major part. There probably isn’t enough upside or time or logistical space for the season to turn from here. Our expectations for the last few weeks are coloured grey. Resurrect the St Kilda Messiah Complex – beyond that, they do look rosier.

Round 18, 2021
St Kilda 2.4, 3.5, 6.9, 8.13 (61)
Port Adelaide 1.0, 4.6, 7.11, 10.14 (74)
Crowd: Zero at Docklands, Saturday, 17th July at 1.45pm

Among the “prune juice iron” and “chicken liver pâté” tabs I can find yet another Google Docs draft that will feature too many words and too many long-winded sentences vaguely recounting a St Kilda loss brought about by poor ball use, some poor marking efforts, poor forward structure, and, of course, poor kicking at goal.

Zero goals from set shots, six behinds. Port themselves finished with a rangy 10.14 (enough to win us the 1966 premiership, mind you), but yet again it’s our mistakes with the ball in hand that are giving us grief.

Watching this felt like playing a 6pm (or perhaps 6.40) game of futsal and you still haven’t had time to get into weeknight warrior mode. Everyone had to double-check the start time close to the opening, no one knew who was going to turn up and when, nothing felt settled, no real cohesion, no sustained momentum. The only constants were not much space, and the ball being camp in one of the halves of the ground. Players couldn’t find each other or link up. It was high pressure, but not quite in the high-intensity finals way. This just needed to be played and put it in the books – yep, Port’s better than the Saints at the moment.

***

Last week may just have been a One Night Only atonement of sins committed through the season. This was the beginning of a new pile. Season on the line in the final minutes; Marshall misses a set shot, everyone drops a mark, Brad Hill does a weird dribbly kick thing twice. Two of those moments burned Leo Connolly producing the best pair of St Kilda field kicks this year, one from a turn against the boundary in the back pocket and a slashing 45-degree left-foot kick to open up the entire ground, the other from the sharpest of deliveries to a leading forward.

Just as we did earlier in the season, we’d banked some wins – the only team to win three out of three heading into this weekend – to feel as though we’d built up enough momentum to go head-to-head against a top four fancy on our home deck and win. The win over a breaking Brisbane was one better than the Max King game against the Cats, but we were going to need to do a lot more than that. All the results had gone our way by Monday night, and Thursday night saw a chunk taken out of Freo’s percentage. It was just like Round 22, 2008, when everyone lost and we beat Essendon by 108 points to finish the season in fourth. Except, it was the beginning of Round 18 and we’re ninth. Then Jack guided Richmond to a very big win and the reminder was there that not so fast – we still have to do stuff ourselves. And this week, not so lucky.

Feel the static air of a non-descript temperature on your face. Bask in the artificial lighting. No, you’re not in the glorified TV studio that is the Concrete Dome – it’s Lockdown V and you’re in your lounge room watching the Saints play another home game in front of zero people. Dwayne is doing some of what he does best – calling games played in front of low crowds. Music doesn’t work after goals at the ground, nor on the broadcast. D-Mac was adding another strong game to his career resurgence and put on a huge tackle on in defence, and was rewarded with a concussion, Georgiades landing on his chest, and a Port Adelaide goal, and having it all broadcast in high definition with some public domain up-tempo, inoffensive dance music over the top.

That was probably the moment I quietly accepted that it just wasn’t going to happen. The first quarter was dominant, in that the ball lived in our front half. Steele and Butler cut through the noise with snap goals out of traffic, and in true St Kilda fashion Port made one meaningful foray and goaled. But there was no clear purpose to a lot of touches.

King was in all sorts of contests – pushed out, outbodied, a touched ball, and then finally grabbed one and missed. Long again appeared to have more of a presence in the forward line. Butler decided to turn up for a bit. That and a 2.4 to 1.0 quarter-time scoreline was promising, if only just to show that we were still keeping the opposition to restricted scores.

But the second quarter was a mirror image of the first. Port had all the play, and made a little more of it. Their seven-point margin at the main change felt much, much bigger. Their talls were creating problems, despite Charlie Dixon being reduced to a hobble at some points, and we were sure to fast-track the rise of Mitch Georgiades, even if it meant leaving him unattended at the back of a pack three metres out from goal for him take a simple chest mark. Or giving him the honours of knocking out D-Mac.

Out only major came from a great contested Ben Long mark and a wild shanked kick as good as his 2.7 record for the season suggested. So much so, the kick was never near registering any score, but of course, Paddy Ryder (*more depressed voice than usual*: in a St Kilda jumper) crumbed the pack and goaled. Of course. Callum Wilkie could have turned the novelty dial up to 11 but missed his set shot.

By half-time, Trent McKenzie – you know, the absolutely not full-back guy – was all over Max King, capped off with a free on half time. The nature of the game made it a certainty that Steele and Crouch again were most prominent, joined by Luke Dunstan. Brad Hill was doing what he could off half-back (and there were plenty of opportunities given Port’s territorial dominance). While the game never quite broke open, Port always seemed to be the next goal away from exactly that happening. 

***

Marshall accidentally kicked a goal from the pocket in the third but the next couple to Port saw the margin out to 20 points. Webster won an important one-on-one out wide as they looked to land what would have really been a finishing blow, and then found himself with the ball just a few moments later on 50 and utilised his left boot in a way that hasn’t happened enough. Game on? It was time to show the footy world what we do best – poor skills and weird bits. On the break with numbers, the ball to a two-on-one to a small forward (Long) who was rightfully pissed. Butler was on very good terms with himself and at the fall of the ball in the final seconds of the quarter dished an over-the-shoulder handball towards goal, and I like to think of his face still looking composed for a moment while the ball trickled away behind him. Ryan Burton was a big presence for the Power all game but made the curious mistake of soccering off the ground backwards to McKenzie in the goal square. King was right with him, found the right positioning and kicked it off the ground himself for a goal.

Going over the game again I was surprised that we were actually in front halfway through the last quarter. I barely remember it. Naturally, the result colours how you see the rest of the game but I’m as convinced of the inevitability of the result as I was during the last quarter. Much like the back end of last year – namely ill-fated late charges against the Lions and the Lions – nothing drastically changed in the way we were playing the game; we were just doing it a little better. Marshall’s snap goal at the beginning of the quarter was huge, his late set shot miss equally so.

What else stands out? The Seb Ross nothing kick deep into the forward line, Crouch’s miss on the run, and Butler running into an open forward line, not seeing or ignoring Hill running with him, no-one leading to him, and he deciding not to kick anywhere near the advantage of the one-on-ones but to two Port Adelaide players 30 metres out from goal. Hill’s two kicks off half-back within moments of each other, which are pretty funny when I watch them over.

If we’re going to be reductive, these may be the hinge moments of a season that from the beginning hasn’t been convincing. It has not found any genuine momentum, or rhythm, or whatever you want to call it. Much like St Kilda’s own, the broader season has been played in social conditions lumpy at best. We could be about to embark on an indifferent and stumbling end to the season. There’s a very good chance we’re 13^th by the end of next weekend.

***

The Fox Footy production team, in another failure to read the lounge room, had Eddie and co talking over the top of the scenes after the final siren, rather than let the song play and the players’ reactions speak for themselves, and to give us a few moments to take in what had just happened and (depending on who you follow) experience the highs and lows of what it means for the afternoon, for your season, or for your lockdown. I know we can’t really go anywhere or do anything at the moment, but just give us a second.

Brisbane Lions 1.5, 4.8, 7.8, 8.15 (63)
St Kilda 1.3, 6.6, 9.9, 14.11 (95)
Crowd: 9,075 at Metricon Stadium, Saturday, July 10th at 7.25pm

Footy moves fast. Within games, weeks, seasons, rebuilds. I said it the other week on this (not that I’m the first, nor the only one to say it.) As we ticked past the halfway point of the second quarter in Cairns, a 5.6 to 0.0 lead over the Crows following a horribly frustrating but encouraging loss to Sydney suggested our mojo was back -never mind the 111-point loss that broke up the similarly frustrating/encouraging Geelong defeat, and a nondescript win over North (which quietly had its own late fade).

Just a couple of hours later on that Saturday night, St Kilda was again decidedly a club looking silly and lost, all over again. We had a whole two weeks to think about it and hate it all, while the president’s letter to members that was intended to calm instead raised anxieties, was slammed as revisionism. That mid-season break was spent pre-empting, and if not, lamenting another failed rebuild.

Seven excellent quarters at the MCG in cold and wet conditions suggested that perhaps we’d established some sort of definable brand of dour footy. For six quarters, 30 minutes and 31 seconds, we’d conceded 4.17 before a dire last term tainted the lot.

***

Only 24 hours before Saturday night, we were given a showcase of the difference between St Kilda’s lack of killer instinct and teams that have earned the praise of the wider footy world. For the second time in 2021, Adelaide went goalless until the second half of the second quarter – they beat the Saints the first time, while on Friday night Essendon went on with it to win by 63 (the 11.18 prevented it from being any more). I know we kept the Tigers to 2.10, but that was the exception in a season of fading finishes, wayward what-ifs, and outright smashings.

Some of these wrongs accumulated over the season were righted, if only for one night. A thundering passage proved the breaking point. Ben Long leapt into the air from a high Wilkie kick and brought that thunder (and the footy) down with him (I love watching on the replay the St Kilda bay going off after the mark). A blatant hold in two acts on Max King’s jumper was not seen (in the same way Daniel Rich’s throw in front of our goal in the second quarter was simply not seen), but Butler was at the fall and spun his way to Billings, who casually roamed the space and found D-Mac, who couldn’t have been a better person to finish off a play that was equal parts thrilling, representative, and novelty. Get the royal fuck out of here.

Max King tore the game apart with three goals in the second quarter. Two of them came from towering marks as he had to deal with All Australian Harris Andrews, and the conversions dismissed any nerves or doubts that might have quickly grown in his head after an early shot from an angle strayed wide. Bringing him higher up the ground kept him active and in the game, and he held his marks – 10 of them – in another big stride.

Play as well as you want, you (we) still need to kick straight. A start of 1.5 reflected the ongoing yips as well as a number of shots having to be taken from out wide. From that point we kicked 13.6, but until the last quarter storm we were again anticipating a side going into preservation mode. Kent and Billings missed set shots on the eve of three-quarter time; Brisbane had made a fast start to the second half, and while their forward set-up had suffered after Hipwood went down and we’d held off their flourish, those shots felt like the last best chances we’d get.

All players taking responsibility was a big theme of the night. D-Mac continued his rise, running hard along the wings and providing a presence at more extremes of the ground. He has added goals to his game, and played provider with a neat hit-up to Membrey in the third. Connolly kicked his late third-quarter goal after running off half-back earlier in the chain. Long shook off his 1.7 record to deliver a massive blow in the final term before touching the Gold Coast sky.

Despite three misses last week, Long has found himself again as a forward after the break. It’s probably where he should have been playing (opening the spot for Nick Hind to play where he should have been played, too, but I digress), although it might have something to say for learning about the game in the back half. Either way, he appears much more likely to make a physical impact on a contest, it seems – his accidental hit on Payne in the last quarter that created Steele’s goal wouldn’t have happened with anyone else – and he’s had eight shots at goal since the bye.

Meanwhile, the Brisbane forward line became Tom Highmore Country. It’s widely known he was picked up as a mature-age recruit from South Adelaide; just two years ago he was playing for the Canberra Demons. Now, he’s joined Callum Wilkie as a no-fuss inclusion into a backline that all of a sudden looks a lot more difficult to navigate. By game’s end he’d moved into “Guess who?” Territory on-sight from the commentators (thankfully Jason Bennett is on greater duty), as well as Post-Match Interview Guy Territory. Combined with Wilkie and Howard, the aerial presence allows for more considered rebounds. Hill can time his runs, Sinclair is there to mop up, and if there’s a mark taken there’s also the chance to take a more measured approach. He’s calm with the ball too. Leave the hot stuff to Dougal.

While Long and D-Mac and Hill and Sinclair have changed and added to their games, Dunstan continued his higher-profile resurgence while adding “annoying campaigner” to his repertoire. He got some back in the last quarter too, and it’s fun to see a Saints player getting their hands really dirty. Some more big numbers, and by the time we woke up on Sunday morning he was SEN news trade talk fodder.

And yes, the inclusion of Zak Jones immediately made the midfield look more complete, bringing a helter-skelter approach to moving through traffic and away from stoppages to go with the grunt of Crouch and Dunstan, while Steele added another dynamic performance to his resume. It wasn’t entirely a four-quarter performance, but that’s what made it more notable. The game needed a St Kilda midfielder to lift after a quieter third term, not just for the immediacy of winning stoppages but also to bring his teammates with him when surely there would be doubts again about finishing off a game. Fifteen touches, a set shot goal to extend the lead early in the last and then a running snap across the body to seal it. While we watch Bontempelli and Petracca and Parish become the in-form mids in the competition, for the moment we have Steele and a midfield that looked that little bit more complete.

***

Hipwood’s injury could be calamitous for Brisbane’s premiership hopes. They’d won 10 out of 11 coming into this, and despite Zorko’s efforts their forward line couldn’t adapt in-game. There’s no positivity in that happening, even if when saying “sometimes it’s just your night” (evidently it was). And yet, at the same time, St Kilda got the fundamentals down. Pressure up, running in support off half-back when the ball was in play and in our hands, working hard to provide options laterally when we had control. Ross, Byrnes and D-Mac all hit leading targets with no fuss. Neat and tidy.

As per last year, Membrey was rewarded by his teammates (mostly D-Mac’s hit-up) and the result more broadly for another Herculean performance interstate. A pair of goals in the third (including one from tight in the pocket where several others had failed) helped weather the Brisbane fightback, and he took 14 marks. They were at both ends as he quietly builds his leadership presence.

That can all add up and give way. The rush of an interstate team that shouldn’t be winning, yet has forced its way in front has all the running, is irresistible. There is no other context in which the ball is turned over by Ross and Marshall, Long takes that mark, and the ball ends up a King fly, the manic Butler and casual Billings combination, and D-Mac snapping the goal. Also, did the umpire give Dougal a pass for the deliberate out of bounds because it was just so obviously a brain fade?

***

With the return of a proper season (for as long as that will last), the year is again framed by the footy season. I woke up on Sunday morning and walked up to get a coffee from John Gorilla, past the trees and dogs of Gilpin Park. The sun was higher, the lighting just that little bit warmer. It tells me we’re already heading into the final part of the season, and – whoever may be playing – that finals are on their way. Footy moves fast.