Red, White And Black

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

2007 – New coach, who dis?

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

2008 – Can you smell what the Ross is cooking?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Onto the Big Dance for the first time since 1997.

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

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

2010 – Bounce baby bounce

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

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

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

Welcome to 2011.

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

What was it with this week?

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

In the meantime, make the most of the bye.

Round 9, 2022
St Kilda 2.2, 4.4, 11.8, 13.12 (90)
Geelong Cats 4.3, 6.8, 8.10, 11.14 (80)
Crowd: 32,517 at Docklands, Saturday, May 14th at 4.35pm

After pissing away a win in Cairns and then not even giving ourselves a chance against a (superior anyway) Melbourne, the anticipation of watching St Kilda had dried up. Interest was low. The bandwagon emptied. Readership down. We’d gone from Jack Higgins feature articles and David King breaking down Brad Hill’s selfless running patterns to “St Kilda counting the dollars and the cost” and then First Crack breaking down how we went out of our way to not play our game style, and picking on Ben Paton and Jimmy Webster for not tracking Kosi Pickett.

That anticipation had been replaced by trepidation. I was militantly sure we’d lose to Port Adelaide because that’s what St Kilda does when it travels interstate, specifically plays in Cairns, and specifically plays against the Power. Then it was our turn to play mere extras in the Melbourne show starring Petracca, Oliver, Gawn and Langdon. Now, we were facing a team we didn’t know how to beat.

Those expecting a St Kilda 2019 redux after the last fortnight’s stumble would have taken more interest than usual in the week’s events in Sydney. Leon Cameron was out of the job he’d effectively quit live on 360 a few weeks ago, which saw Clarko jump into a PR offensive and put his hand up for just about all 18 clubs. Every coach was put on notice. Consensus was that we were about to slide further to 5-4, another step towards repeating the anti-heroics of the 2019 team that started 4-1 and became The Age’s “story of the year” before the coach was sacked 12 weeks later.

Another St Kilda and Geelong match meant another opportunity to wheel out the 2009 epics. The St Kilda socials brought out Round 14; “A Friday flashback that never gets old”, they called it. “Time to relive the 2009 Toyota AFL Grand Final between both sides on AFL On Demand” chirped the AFL socials. But that Round 14 flashback does get old. When I think of Geelong I don’t think of the Round 14 match; I think of the 2009 Grand Final. And while we beat them twice in 2010 (including a Qualifying Final win that turned the finals series on its head) I then think of them snatching a win in the final 20 seconds of the opening round of 2011 from a totally needless Jason Blake turnover that marked the beginning of the end. Geelong was synonymous with the Riewoldt generation’s early promise in the GT era, and its opportunities lost in the Ross Lyon era. Geelong has been the marker of this club feeling like it has been in a comedown for the years since; our once-rivals won multiple premierships and have been challenging nearly every single year while we’ve never truly recovered from missing out. The Cats are triggering. Since the Riewoldt generation took us to those Grand Finals I’ve aged 12 years and seen only one win over Geelong. There was no chance in hell this week would be comfortable, whatever the result. Philip told us all to believe. I couldn’t bring myself to. It’s Geelong.

***

Both teams ran out onto the field a little earlier than the usual 10 minutes ahead of the start, a large swing from the brief period a few years ago when we started running out just a couple of minutes before the bounce. We’ve made a habit of immediately giving up goals this year and we weren’t about to be thrown off by the early appearance. Geelong took it straight out of the middle courtesy of a dodgy opening bounce free to Rhys Stanley and within a few seconds Tyson Stengle was snapping from the pocket, only to hit the post.

Paddy Ryder (in a St Kilda jumper) kicked the first after drawing a free-kick from a throw-in and going around the corner. Josh Battle had a wobbly start to the game, dropping a ball at the edge of the square that Hawkins swooped on for the Cats’ first, and he almost gave up another with a straight turnover, but the ball hit the post again.

Geelong’s seasoned, bigger bodies were making a difference early and they were a lot more composed. Jones was still rusty in traffic, Ben Long slipped over, and Gresham was zigging and zagging and into trouble. Webster kicked the ball directly to Rhys from the kick-out (prompting rare evidence of strong emotions in Jack Sinclair) and no-one bothered to notice that Tuohy was cruising past and he calmly slotted the goal.

King got our second thanks to Sinclair’s rush to spoil Knevitt as the Cats looked to switch across half-back, and D-Mac’s kick to him just hit his outstretched fingertips. Only Max could have taken it. Rather than go back and test the set shot nerves he played on and goaled from close range. Save for that moment, Geelong simply looked more organised with and without the footy. Long took a nice mark at high half-forward but then sat one on top of Higgins, and Stewart came in and instead of taking a speccy, he both thumped the ball away and concussed Snags, and the Cats went through Dangerfield, Narkle, Duncan, Cameron and Isaac Smith for one of the cleaner coast-to-coast goals you’ll see. Scores were rare in the second half of the quarter bar a modern classic Geelong chain of Selwood, to Dangerfield, to Hawkins finding 1990s skateboarder Gryan Miers on the goal line.

Perhaps it was partly adjustments to the personnel changes (although Billings was among our better players early and throughout) but we’d come out a little slow with the footy again, which you’d think would have been the first thing learned from the week before. We’d played hesitant footy against the Dees almost exclusively to avoid May and Lever; were we trying to avoid Stewart and Atkins and De Koning and Kolodjashnij in the same way?

***

Things didn’t get horribly worse in the second quarter. We were fortunate they kicked 2.5 for the term and to be just 16 points down at the main change. Our better players were getting involved for the wrong reasons. Sinclair – otherwise our best on ground and most creative – had a kick-out turned over. Jones was trying to take everyone on, and while it’s hard to fault the intent (it was a sign of things to come in the second half), the execution was yielding mixed results, but his feigning of two handballs drew Paton who found Marshall for our third. Gresham was busy but still a little too chaotic.

Geelong had picked up where they left off from the week before and were winning the uncontested possession count (they were second for uncontested possession differential in the competition over the past month), and their clean, direct game looked like it could open things up at any moment. We didn’t look like kicking a goal until the moment Steele came off with a shoulder at the same time Higgins was subbed off. Gresh had a too-cute attempted pass inside 50 chopped off but he was good enough to follow it up and wrap up Zac Guthrie. The throw-up was smacked wide and went straight to Gresh; he screwed around a high kick from the boundary that comically fell into King’s arms on the goal line.

Up the other end, Cameron and Battle tangled and then Cameron and Sinclair got involved in some push and shove in front of the members (you can see Cameron yelling, “Hey pussy come here” to Sinclair. Banter). Cameron had been quiet but now loomed as a likely villain. The members became more outraged when a few seconds later Parfitt hit up Stengle and he nailed the set shot goal right in front of us.

We were faced with an opposition that simply looked better than us; an opposition faster and cleaner with the ball, that spread and fanned more smartly than we could keep up with. How do you compete with the Cats controlling the ball like that? What are you going to do about it if you’re rushing kicks forward with no one at ground level to provide any sort of pressure, and you’re not winning the midfield battle? And what had happened to our forward line? We’d gone from the highest scoring team after Round 4, when we’d kicked 22.10 against the Hawks, to kicking 22.42 over the past three weeks, and at half-time we sat at just 4.4. Sharman in the team straightened us up and drew a defender to help out Max to a degree, but the stodgy ball movement and dump kicks weren’t helping.

***

At half-time I finally met Red, White and Black’s number 1 ticketholder Rory, after several years of sitting literally in the same bay as each other. Good thing Rory could hold court with myself, Matt and Rich; I’d had a coffee during the second quarter to perk up and switch on for our chat but it had just agitated my feelings about the game, and I was offering nothing much constructive.

***

In the post-match on-ground interview, Paddy Ryder (who plays for the St Kilda Football Club) said that the half-time changes were “about just taking care of the ball and taking a few steps and using someone that’s turning up”. There were problems to come yet but the shift started with Gresham running off half-back early in the quarter, heading towards the wing, before cutting back inside to change the angle instead of blazing away, and Windhager, Hill and Sinclair had all turned up for him. Sinclair’s had Murmurs McKenzie out wide the movement had created a five-on-four ahead of the ball; D-Mac found Membrey in the pocket for the first of the quarter. But it only took a ricochet off Hill’s shin at half-back – and despite Seb putting in a desperate chase of Close and Tuohy the length of the wing – for the ball to end back up with Tuohy and he slotted a second on the run to get one back for the Cats. From the middle, Selwood sharked Paddy’s tap and Hawkins easily outbodied Dougal, and went back and kicked the goal. All of a sudden it was 21 points. Of all people, Sinclair was the next Saint to turn it over, and from half-back the Cats went neatly through Miers and Smith to Duncan. His shot from 50 would have closed the game, but it drifted just wide. We hadn’t let ourselves off yet; Battle took the easy mark from the short kick-in and then completely missed Wilkie nearby with the handball, and the ball trickled harmlessly out of bounds.

I said last week there was reason to rage about the waste of the Port Adelaide loss. There was also reason to rage about coming into a game against the ladder leaders with your Plan B (not quite as spectacular a failure as when Grant Thomas openly ditched Plan A for the 2004 Qualifying Final against the Lions). Never mind the goodwill and the media hype, 5-1 was about to turn into 5-4. We were on the brink.

But we managed to get the ball up the other end and Jones took the moment that turned things. Marshall grabbed the ball out of the ruck and quickly handballed to Jones, who was running past and curled the ball through. Marshall and Ryder were beginning a period of dominance that saw eight hit-outs to advantage to just two and multiple goals from stoppage. Marshall repeated the dose at the ball-up, with the tap heading straight to Seb Ross who sprinted out of the middle and his deep entry was just touched before reaching Sharman. It was about this time that Matt next to me said, “Something’s about to happen”.

There wasn’t a Max King quarter in the way that we got used to earlier in the season. In fact, he didn’t kick a goal in the second half. But he was at the very least halving every contest and making an impact at the fall of the ball. He helped set up the next goal with bodywork on Atkins and then Stewart at ground level in the pocket; the ball spilled out to Mason Wood whose loose shot fell across the face to Sharman (and was lucky to not be called touched off the boot). Sharman held his nerve under the pressure of three Geelong defenders sprinting in to cover the angle. The crowd was getting into the game.

Jones was finding his rhythm. Off half-back he again feigned a couple of kicks and hit up Murmurs, and then ran past for the handball and the movement drew a holding free on Membrey and another five-on-four ahead of the ball. King almost took the mark from the forward 50 entry but he gathered to Billings who was cruising past, and found Long on his own who blasted it through from the pocket.

The next goal put us in front and was ultimately the product of Paddy Ryder, playing Australian Rules football in a St Kilda jumper, guiding a hit-out behind his head in a manner that perhaps only he can, in a most un-St Kilda-like fashion, directly to Billings; Gresham was guarding the space and Billings didn’t need to break stride before finishing expertly on his left. It’s what we drafted him with pick 3 for.

That ball had initially been won from Long, who was playing another impactful in whichever role the coaches decided to put him in for the week, rushing in to chop off a Geelong kick and Windhager putting his head over the footy to win the free kick from Dangerfield. (He switched the ball, opening up the ground and the ball ultimately ended up with King in the pocket. King’s kick was a lol and tumbled over Knevitt out of bounds for the throw-in). Like Long in Round 3, Windhager had come on as the substitute for a concussed Snags and made a telling impact. He finished with 15 touches in little more than half a game, and he played like a completely different human to the Marcus Windhager that had turned out for the Saints over the past several weeks. This was the strong-bodied, contested bull that we hoped would slip past pick 20 so we could pick him up as a Next Generation Academy pick. He put in an uncompromising shift of repeat efforts, creating contests and winning hard balls, putting himself in the right place at the right time high up the ground and in the forward line and using the ball smartly, and was part of multiple scoring chains. I should mention Long here too; he had a hand in numerous chains himself in similar parts of the ground. Two unheralded guys making these contributions makes the team that much better; it’s been the story this year with guys like D-Mac and Wood and Battle too.

We didn’t find out until Sunday that Steele would be out for up to two months but as of Saturday evening he was admirably still attending centre bounces. He and Ross worked it into possession and Ross – in perhaps the best quarter of his best season to date – again quickly turned a movement into attack and was on the break. Long found himself as the target and was out of position but managed to split the contest with Duncan. King, again, and then Gresham got to the low ball, Windhager fed out to Long, who fed out to Mason Wood, who looked everywhere except the goals before realising he had space to wheel around onto his left. Five goals in nine minutes and 30 seconds. This was the unrelenting team that Ross Lyon had told St Kilda fans to get excited about on Footy Classified all those weeks ago. The team that had earned all those print and online features and glowing reviews on 360 and On the Couch.

It was time for a brief stalemate. Cameron, the most likely villain, put himself in the middle and won the clearance. Both teams wobbled a little. A Geelong forward entry that would have normally hit a target was just out of Cameron’s reach. Gresham dropped an easy ball in the centre in space. Sharman blazed away, Dangerfield was losing his feet, Atkins’ hands became uncertain. Membrey ran into an open goal but was too slow and got caught. It was Ross who provided the breakthrough in the final seconds of the quarter, at a throw-in on centre wing, with a tackle on Selwood; quick hands from Crouch and Windhager – Ratten had bought an extra player up to the stoppages from the forward line and then backed our speed with the ball – found Ross again who was already on the spread, and off his wrong right boot hit Membrey on the lead. He made up for his missed opportunity a few moments earlier and drilled it after the siren.

It was our highest-scoring quarter since Maddie’s Match 2017, when for a brief time on that Saturday night we sat fourth on the ladder; the very brief peak of the Richo era. There was a big celebration on the siren after Membrey’s shot sailed through, but fuck me there was a long way to go. I discovered via the Kayo replay that for anyone watching live at home, Fox Footy had shown highlights of the 2016 win on the broadcast at three-quarter time, just to really mess with any Saints supporter’s heads.

***

I don’t know if a week goes by without me mentioning 2009 or 2010 (I blew this week four paragraphs in), or the GT and Ross eras generally. But, as I said, the Cats are triggering. Holding a not-too-big lead of 58 to 74 – respectively, Geelong’s scores at three-quarter time and on the final siren of the 2009 Grand Final – was one thing, but the Cats were on early in the last. Hawkins hit the post (no reference to 2009 required, but I’ll make one) from a relatively simple set shot which gave us a let-off, but D-Mac had other ideas. He marked the ball from the kick-out and weighed up the options before looking to go for a long switch across the face. The behind-the-goal shot didn’t do justice as to how specifically nowhere near anything St Kilda-related the kick was, and how directly it floated straight back to Hawkins. From a similar spot to where he kicked the first goal of the last quarter in the 2009 Grand Final, he wasn’t going to miss again (although he tried hard to).

Windhager yelled a few quick words of encouragement to D-Mac but no-one physically went to him except for Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, who was initially telling him to keep his chin up and then walked over to him and gave him a pat. He was about to have a much more profound influence in-play, although it started with a burned opportunity. We found a way up the other end – King made the contest on the wing and Long reacted fastest, Jones darted through to create and almost got caught, Steele was with him and snapped it forward and Max had worked forward and ran back with the flight into Blicavs. Windhager was yet again in the right spot and gave off to D-Mac, to Paddy, who had time and space and somehow hit the bottom of the post, and I did have the thought that if Paddy couldn’t do it then no-one could. It was one of our best passages of the evening and we should have gone out to a 14-point lead. The Cats went right up the other end, Tuohy stood up too easily in the Ross tackle, and Hawkins marked on the goal line.

Three points. Had we used up all our magic coming back into the game as we did against the Pies?

Gresham and Jones forced the ball out of the middle, out to Hill and then Wood, who in the absence of NWM perfectly weighted a kick to Crouch that broke open the play. Webster was running past and all the while Paddy had been working his way forward and all on his own. Webster found him.

This year has been about learning to trust this team and enjoy what they do. Looking forward to watching the Saints on the weekend again. Daring to trust Max King to kick goals from all angles, which had gotten us to 5-1. Daring to trust Jade Gresham to come up with a match-winning moment. Daring to trust Brad Hill to be in the right part of the ground. Daring to trust Jack Sinclair to provide speed and movement. Daring to trust Brad Crouch to accumulate and feed out. Some of that looked a little bit different this week. This was about daring to trust a team with a wounded captain that its sixth-game substitute would barrel his way through traffic; that Max King, if he wasn’t kicking goals, would be making every contest, whether it be high or low; that Jack Billings would come straight in and be in his right places at his right times; that Ben Long would play his role, wherever it may be. And, of course, to trust Paddy Ryder, playing Australian Rules football in a St Kilda jumper, in his 274^th game, to be the difference. He didn’t miss this time.

Selwood took it straight out of the middle and put the Cats into attack, but we repelled through a rushed kick from Steele and then Sinclair, who put it out to in front of the running Hill, in a sprint with Smith. Windhager, yet again in the right place, joined him in the middle, and quickly switched out to D-Mac, who had enough confidence left to just find Crouch beyond the 50-metre arc. Crouch – with what might have been the best of his 36 disposals -put it up perfectly to the group of players in the forward pocket. King had flown from three deep but Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, emerged at the front. Since the 2009 Grand Final – right up to the past few weeks – it’s been hard to trust a St Kilda team to kick straight in any situation. But rarely have I been as confident that a St Kilda player would kick the goal.

There was still just over 12 minutes left, and it would be our last goal. We owned the game for a period. Wood and Hill were busy. Zac Guthrie’s rebound was forced out on the full. A couple of shallower entries were almost pulled in by Max. Billings had a long shot out wide that was never going to be a goal, Crouch was ambitious from the pocket.

The Cats now had to go for it. Stanley out of the middle didn’t find the chest of Close but it did find his run, and his snap hit the top of the post. Some nervous moments in the goal square ended with a long, high Ross get-out kick that went straight through Membrey’s hands, and the Cats immediately hit Cameron on 50. He finally loomed large. He slotted the long goal, and it was back to nine points.

But the momentum shifted again, and we’d have two chances to finish off the game. Billings went took a fantastic mark going back with the flight at half-forward, King flew and halved another contest, but Membrey’s snap missed. Gresham delivered perfectly to Wood who’d worked off Duncan, 25 metres out with little angle. It was the moment to seal it.

His shot squirted to the left.

Paddy Ryder took the intercept mark in the middle as the Cats looked to get things moving again. Long and Windhager were there at the fall, and this time Crouch cut across 50 to Billings. Now, this was definitely the kind of situation we’d drafted him at pick 3 for.

He missed. A groan from the members.

Were we about to face a Port Adelaide 2017 situation? An echo of the Cairns debacle, or, yes, of the 2009 Grand Final? If we weren’t going to finish it ourselves we’d have to defend the last couple of minutes. Sinclair was important at the fall of Tuohy’s torpedo, D-Mac dived for a low ball and won a free-kick, Windhager was involved multiple times in the contest. But just as the Geelong bench put up the “1” sign, the Cats found a break off half-back and Miers sliced across to Narkle, who found Cameron in the exact same spot as his last shot to bring the margin to within a goal.

The kick strayed wide, but there were more moments to weather. Hawkins nearly marked on the goal line but the ball bobbled out and hit the post; he then hacked a kick out of mid-air from the resulting throw-in that went straight up. The Geelong bench put up the “30” sign as we cleared the ball. A throw was paid against Paddy Ryder. Wilkie gave away a high free-kick to Smith that set up what would be Geelong’s final chance of the night. It went left.

The home crowd knew it and started to roar.

***

The ghosts of 2009 were in full howl on the night of May 14^th last year, as we kicked our way out of the game (on the way to kicking our way out of another season) against the Cats. We learned on May 14^th this year that this team is made of sterner stuff than its predecessors. Our best win of the year, and perhaps for some time.

The media bandwagon quickly returned. Max King and Sam De Koning was now being looked forward to as a “10-year battle”, likened to Carey vs Jakovich from Chris Scott through to the guys on On the Couch. Paddy Ryder is now “the best tap ruckman there is”, said Lloydy and Damien Barrett. David King was breaking down footage of Zak Jones putting in bodywork on Sam De Koning off the ball so Max could find a mismatch, and described the win as “brilliant coaching” and that he’d “never seen Geelong picked apart like that”. We were the biggest winners of the weekend, according to Gerard and Robbo.

In his post-match interview on the ground Paddy Ryder (St Kilda player) was asked about what he’d said to Rowan Marshall after the siren. “I just said to him that you’re probably not 100% fit and I can see that. I’ve played through injury before and you’ve just got to keep getting out there. All it takes sometimes is for one of your teammates or coaches to come up and tell you that they appreciate the effort, so that’s what I said. I said, ‘I appreciate your effort. I know you’re hurting a little bit, but you’re still so good for us.’” There is a care to him that elevates his teammates. He was the only one that bothered getting across to D-Mac after he gave up the goal. Amongst fans, he is at the front of St Kilda consciousness, partly perhaps because there is something incredibly un-St Kilda-like about him. No St Kilda player has played like him before. No St Kilda player has offered ruck work as art in the same way. He doesn’t yield to the gravity of the St Kilda Football Club; he is someone who can go forward and take the marks and kick the set shot goals in the last quarter against an opponent we don’t know how to win against, who represents so much of what we lost.

Just a second win over the Cats since the Grand Final years. And you wonder, where did all the time go? We haven’t had a great team since. We’ve been waiting for a new St Kilda team to emerge. Ryder, King, Steele, Ross, Gresham, Crouch, Wilkie, Sinclair. Bit-by-bit, new names are becoming St Kilda names that we look forward to seeing each week in St Kilda jumpers and, yes, that we are learning to trust. I’m not quite sure if we’ve gone through the Gateway to Being Good that it felt we might have in Canberra when we went 5-1. The state of “Being Good” doesn’t mean easy wins every week, it also means a lot of nervous moments against quality opposition in very consequential games (remember those?) over a lot of weeks, and ideally, a lot of years. You don’t know you’re there until you know. This was a necessary challenge that simply had to be met on the way to building something new.

Melbourne 4.2, 9.3, 10.5, (93)
St Kilda 0.3, 3.4, 5.7, 8.7 (55)
Crowd: 35,767 at the MCG, Sunday, May 8th at 1.10pm

One of the most disappointing parts of the Port Adelaide loss – apart from losing the game itself – was that it deprived us of a huge build-up to Sunday. A chance for the players to test themselves on a big stage, at the front of footy consciousness. The undefeated Dees facing a surprise St Kilda team that had won six in a row. For all intents and purposes this should have had match-of-the-round billing, giving more positive vibes and exposure for the club than a short-term cash injection from playing a game in Cairns ever could.

The media hype probably would have made for the biggest build-up to a home and away season game since Round 16 in 2010 against Collingwood at the MCG on a Saturday afternoon, with the winner to take top spot; 81,386 showed up that day in a record home-and-away crowd for St Kilda, and in the days of delayed free-to-air broadcasts on Saturdays Channel 10 decided to show it live. Yes, last Sunday was still first versus fourth, and Mother’s Day fixturing didn’t help, but the air had been completely sucked out of it. All things said, all comparisons made, it would have just been an outright enjoyable week as a Saints fan. But the veil had been lifted just enough. We went from our best win of the season to a loss that brought up the ghosts of five years ago, one year ago, even six weeks ago.

The media hype dried up with every shanked Max King and Jack Higgins shot at goal and Seb Ross’s just-too-short pass to Snags with a minute left and Robbie Gray slipping away from Dougal in the final 40 seconds. Fox Footy’s power rankings declared a race of three – Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle, and the Bizarro Rivalry Cold War took another turn on Friday night as the Dockers temporarily reached the top of the ladder. There were no Max King or Snags features this week, no David King breaking down Brad Hill’s selfless running patterns. All we had was Gerard opening the week saying “St Kilda is counting the dollars and the cost”, and AFL.com.au telling us “It’s time for another meeting, Saints”.

A more under-the-radar build-up suited some. A lot of us thought we were a sneaky chance. It has to happen eventually to Melbourne; after all, VFL/AFL history suggests that at 15 wins in a row you’re closer to the end of the streak than the beginning. I was less convinced we’d lose this week than last week – not confident at all that we’d win, mind you, just not militantly sure we’d be losing. Josh Jenkins reckoned we were as good a chance as any, but he was also very confident GWS would knock us off. Maybe all of their guys who were out with COVID the week before would be underdone. Maybe five changes would unsettle them. Maybe Jake Bowey’s streak would end at the hands of his father’s club. Maybe we are the real deal and maybe we’d learned a lot from Cairns. Maybe that was just a blip in the conditions, and not the beginning of ingrained performance anxiety in front of goal (we’ve kicked 14.35 over two weeks), or even when it just came when it came to executing simple passes and completing simple marks across the ground.

***

We’d all been craving our chance to be tested against the best. Finally, it was here. At the opening bounce, both Paddy Ryder and Jade Gresham slipped over and Petracca took it away to Neal-Bullen on the wing. We left the corridor wide open and for the first of many occasions Brayshaw was the man waiting for the quick switch, Bowey streamed past, Kysaiah Pickett onto the entry and finished with an expert checkside. It took all of 27 seconds before Kosi’s kick was going over the goal umpire’s hat.

That’s ok, we’d been here before. We’d spent a month of footy giving up the first two goals of the game (including at the MCG) and that had turned out ok. We gained some territory – Max King kicked a point off the ground, taking his run to 3.10 – and Gresham missed a shot; a stalemate ensued for 11 minutes, but it wasn’t one of any real thunder. We’d apparently gone in with the game plan to possess the ball and deprive Steven May and Jake Lever the chance to pick off forward entries, but just like Port Adelaide had attempted to change their game style against the Dees, this wasn’t generating any decent looks and Melbourne were just happy to sit around and wait for us to do something silly. It was a lot of short kicks in the back-half, and then eventually a dump kick to no-one in particular. Steele had Max on the break at half-forward and absurdly his left-foot kick missed him completely and the ball…still went straight to May. The ball went up the line to Ben Brown and eventually found Spargo for the second. Punished instantly.

This was more like the stagnant, anxious ball movement of Round 1 and the worst of the pre-season. We tried bringing the ball wide and switching to find a hole in Melbourne’s structure, but we moved the ball too slowly as it was and the Dees just casually rolled across the field as uncontested marks piled up. That’s not to sell the Dees short, by the way – their defensive structures appeared bulletproof. But as far as what we were doing with ball in hand, we were too scared to make a mistake and even then couldn’t work hard enough or fast enough to provide anything that would allow a safe passage through via short easy kicks. We’d effectively let two players in the opposition dictate our game style. There was no chance for our forwards.

Gawn was running Marshall and Paddy across the ground and provided a tall target in the front half on multiple occasions, bringing the ball to ground that ended with stoppages that the Dees scored goals from through a long kick from Rivers and then another delightful snap from Pickett. They were taking their half-chances. We were barely making them.

Pickett’s second goal came from one of the lower moments of the day. Ryder (St Kilda player) committed bravely to a high ball coming off half-back and rushed the kick forward to Membrey leading on the wing. He handballed inside to Gresham, and a moment of class and composure was required on the break. He had more time and space than he thought, as well as the option for a handball forward to Jones, but instead of assessing what was ahead or waiting for something to present he banged the onto his boot. The high ball wobbled in the air towards centre half-forward, to no St Kilda player’s advantage, and fell into the arms of Langdon. From one of the most dangerous spots on the ground to turn over the footy, Melbourne went up the other end, forced a stoppage, and Pickett finished. Four goals to nothing.

The real low point came just a few moments later. Higgins should have been given a too-high free 25 metres from goal, but Steele marked the rebounding ball and steadied on the 50, and delivered an excellent kick to the reach of Membrey at the top of the square just seconds before the quarter-time siren. The vice-captain went back and kicked it into Harrison Petty’s fingertips. The review was inconclusive but Petty, the Dees players and the goal umpire all knew it immediately. Maybe it was the sunshine of the MCG at the Punt Road end against a top team, but this reminded me too much of Heath Shaw’s smother on Nick Riewoldt in the 2010 Grand Final Replay. We weren’t playing our way – both by choice and permittance – and a leader had just been done on the goal line.

***

Melbourne cranked things up in the second quarter, playing some of their most clinical footy of the year. Gawn provided the get-out on the wing with a mismatch on Battle after a disputed ball in our forward line; Oliver coasted past and hit McDonald on the lead, and found Ben Brown running into an open goal.

Changing the angles helped to finally deliver our first a few moments later – Battle provided a running option for the switch out of the middle and Rowan Marshall marked his long kick to the square – but from the centre bounce there was an irresistible Gawn hit out to Oliver, quick hands to Petracca, and the ball was flipped back to Gawn, back to Oliver, and then chipped to Petracca, who off a step launched a 45-metre entry that fell right into McDonald’s hands. It was the best passage of the day. Each player understood exactly what the next move was and the execution was perfect. It’s not a necessity, but I don’t think our players can do that.

On the occasion when we tried changing things up we came unstuck. Jones tried cutting in from the wing to Hill but was chopped off by Neal-Bullen, and the Dees switched across half-forward; Langdon drew the handball to Angus Brayshaw and he goaled on the run from 50. Ben Brown and McDonald then both pounced on loose balls from a marking contest and a throw-in respectively and kicked nearly identical snaps around the corner from 30 metres out. Just like that, the margin was 47 points.

A four-goal patch either side of half-time offered something. Saints players started running for each other. Forward handballs to guys on the move were attempted. Max King got into the game on the eve of half-time, providing the get-out contested mark from Hill’s kick off half-back (Hill was visibly yelling for someone to move as he looked for options) and getting the ball in quick to a Membrey one-on-one for the first. Paddy Ryder was playing Australian Rules football in a St Kilda jumper and caught Brayshaw holding the ball in front of goal for the second. Max then offered half a Max King quarter in the third. Hill, Sinclair and Long all moved for each other off half-back and cut through the middle in a manner that we got used to in the five-game streak, Long found Membrey who passed to Gresham wide inside 50; he had to work off Brayshaw, win the ball back and dance around him, and Max took a contested mark in the goal square on Hunt, with the mismatch created through the faster ball movement. We all deep down considered the prospect of him missing this (or kicking it into the man on the mark), but he managed to poke it through.

NWM offered what might have been the best moment from a St Kilda perspective. Howard’s high rushed kick out of defence fell to him on the boundary and he had to feign a kick around Langdon, turn him inside out, and then step around him again in next to no space. He then delivered a beautifully weighted pass over to Mason Wood; eventually, the ball found Membrey and as the ball went into 50 the free-kick was paid to Max for holding the man. Max went back and kicked the goal.

There was a fleeting few moments at this point at which you started to think about what could be. Max’s confidence might be back. Just one more and we’re within three goals. Just win the quarter from here. Membrey had a shot from just beyond 50 that was always a stretch; he missed, and all Melbourne needed to go up the other end and for Ben Brown to snap another goal – this time on his left – was a Jimmy Webster attempted forward 50 entry in traffic that ricocheted Melbourne’s way. This was basically going to be a Diet Caffeine Free version of the late 2017 meeting between these teams with finals potentially on the line, also at the MCG at 1.10pm on a Sunday afternoon, in which we came back from 39 points during the second quarter to get within four points early in the last before fading out.

Hill was back behind the ball in a bid to keep things moving and we were playing our way that little bit more, but Melbourne weren’t ever going to lose this one. We’d gone away from our game style far too much to accommodate the opposition – largely just two of their players – and we never recovered. Fritsch waltzed into goal for the first of the last and took it out to 34 points. Goals from Windhager, Marshall and Higgins to bring the margin back to within four goals at stages were purely for AFL Tables archival purposes.

AFL.com.au’s weekly “Nine Things We Learnt” took a positive approach, saying “St Kilda’s second half against Melbourne was the real deal”, noting that after trailing by nine goals to one, we restricted Melbourne to just five more goals for the game, while adding seven ourselves, and winning the hit-outs, clearances and stoppage clearances from that point. But the thing is, Melbourne turned it on when they had to and kicked nine of the first 10. Many would suggest that Melbourne’s only been going at about 80% so far this year (if that), and that’s all they had to do for the rest of the game. They have proper stars that played and gathered numbers like proper stars. They have Max Gawn, who is a bigger presence live, despite being kept accountable by two very good ruckmen. They have Christian Petracca and Clayton Oliver. We decided to not tag Ed Langdon even though it had just worked out quite well for Hawthorn earlier (he went from nine possessions to 39 in the space of a week). Angus Brayshaw isn’t in the same bracket as the above guys but he played like it on the other wing and across half-back. Of course, both Petracca and Brayshaw – the two guys we passed up in 2014 – were more influential than any of our players. Never mind that we kicked a couple more goals than they did after giving up a 47-point head start and deciding only around the halfway point to try and play the kind of footy that got us to 5-1. The moment had passed.

This was a day of no real highlights; next to no genuine positives. The kind of day when Dougal Howard wins the Sainter of the Round and Callum Wilkie is one of your best because the opposition is so dominant that defenders have to be on their guard at every second. The crowd on Sunday never really got the chance to become engaged because Melbourne blew it out and then just had keep things at arm’s length. Only when Jones cannoned into the back of Langdon and then Oliver took a dive from Jones’s brushing elbow in the last quarter did the crowd arc up a little. (Of course, Jones got fined for that. There’s no conspiracy, but it’s something that would happen to St Kilda. Jones, who showed good moments despite clearly looking like someone who’d missed a chunk of footy, got one back from May a few moments later.) As Harmes, then Viney, then May and then Petracca all went to Jones after the Oliver brush, Nathan Buckley in the commentary said, “Where are the Saints boys? Get there. Doesn’t need to be too much but just get there and support.” Ross and Webster did half-heartedly. A few moments later Windhager kicked his first to a dulled response; the players either didn’t know or didn’t care that it was the first in his career. Only Seb looked like he was trying to get something going.

***

There was reason to rage about the Port Adelaide loss. It stupidly cost us four points and an enjoyable week of anticipation. We’ve sunk to seventh just over a week after David King said we were simply improving our defence to attack transition numbers away from having the strongest Champion Data profile in the league. Now, we’ve posted two losses now that aren’t overly honourable. It’s not an honourable loss when you kick 4.18 and can’t control a Sherrin, it’s not an honourable loss when you give up nine of the first 10 goals and the opposition spends the rest of Mother’s Day in cruise control. We’ve gone from 5-1 to the brink of 5-4 via Robbie Gray (again) and a couple of guys we decided not to pick in the draft a few years ago. In 2019, when we went 4-1 and became The Age’s “story of the year”, we beat the Dees at the MCG 95 to 55. This was a 93 to 55 loss and I’m dreading the prospect of heading for a 2019 repeat.

The Age chose to run with a story about Luke Jackson probably staying put at Melbourne as the lead article for this one, using it more prominently on their site than the match report itself. That MCG Sunday game against Hawthorn just a month ago was a bright, sunny, warm afternoon made for a sexy, high-scoring St Kilda on the up; a team announcing itself to the competition. This was a much colder and ultimately overcast day set for a spluttering team. Many have fancied themselves; we just ended up as another piece of roadkill on Melbourne’s highway to another premiership. We can feel like we took it to them for moments, but in the wash-up Melbourne fans won’t be thinking too much about this one. For them, it was a comfortable four points won from an unmemorable opponent.

Round 7, 2022
St Kilda 2.3, 3.6, 3.13, 4.18 (42)
Port Adelaide 0.2, 1.4, 4.6, 5.13 (43)
Crowd: 6,645 at Cazalys Stadium, Saturday, April 30th at 7.25pm

For St Kilda supporters, the early part of this season has been about learning to trust this team, and about enjoying what that brings.

That probably reached a peak last week with a fighting win against GWS in a cold Canberra in what was arguably our best of the year. But rarely have I been more certain of a St Kilda loss than heading into Saturday night; 149 years of trust issues will trump five weeks of feel-good footy.

GWS in Canberra presented a big enough banana peel. But a 1-5 “Port Adelaide” in “Cairns”? Are you shitting me? That’s a recipe for St Kilda disaster. One win over Port in 11 years, including very tight losses in 2012, 2013, 2017, and last year. We weren’t going to get away from gravity two weeks in a row.

For anyone who was an impressionable child in the early 1990s (or older), interstate games have been fraught with all sorts of danger. Last week I reeled off a list of those late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s losses where we lost the ability to play Australian Rules football and were overwhelmed by anxiety. Round 15 in Adelaide in 1997, Fremantle in 1998, Brisbane Lions in the last game of 1998, Sydney a week later in the Qualifying Final, Fremantle in 2002, losses in Tasmania to Port in 2004 in 2005 (and then a win in 2006 courtesy of a shanked Motlop kick after the siren), “Whispers in the Sky” against Freo in 2005, West Coast in the season opener of 2006, Freo twice in 2006, including Sirengate. These were mostly played in years in which we were a much more competitive team. The Richo era was all about dire performances interstate with a hallmark of slow starts; games that were done by quarter- or half-time. Big losses at the Adelaide Oval in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, to go with the heartbreak of the Port loss in the latter year; big losses in Perth in 2015 and 2016, Canberra in 2019 – hell, even Geelong was horrible – but a more nuanced foe emerged in recent years: novelty stadiums, mostly via games (and consequently) premiership points that we sold for cheery dollars. Launceston failed while Hawthorn made it work. Wellington was zero wins from three losses. Gold Coast in Townsville in 2019 barely went OK, Shanghai not so much. Melbourne in Darwin in 2020 was a two-point loss to a (then) lesser opponent as the season spluttered. Adelaide in Cairns last year was a disaster, a 36-0 lead given up as we spent the second half waiting to lose, and St Kilda simply had to keep us in suspense until the final seconds, just to really string us along.

History was going to repeat.

The fantastical St Kilda F.C. Archive posted the entirety of that 2017 loss to Port Adelaide during the week. I had to steel myself for this week. I watched from the stoppage on the wing with about 90 seconds left, as we held a 10-point lead after a stirring comeback that should have made for what would have been the best win of the season. I watched Seb Ross put in a weak inside 50 that went straight to a Port defender, I watched Port rebound, I watched all the weak one-on-one contests that led to Aaron Young’s goal that put the rest in motion. I watched more weak and anxious one-on-ones, and then Paddy Ryder’s wonderful hit from a throw-in to Robbie Gray for a goal with seven seconds left, also made possible by a trailing Seb Ross and a disappearing Blake Acres.

Yes, history was going to repeat.

***

Tonight is absolutely the kind of the game St Kilda loses.

— Red, White and Black (@RWBFooty) April 30, 2022

The journo who opened up Ratts’ press conference after GWS with “6-1, how do you feel?” jinxed this one a week out. I absolutely jinxed it further in a meeting during the week when someone brought up the Saints and I joked “You get sick of winning”. I was obviously, obviously joking – I am a St Kilda supporter for fuck’s sake – but even before I opened my mouth to say it knew I would be tempting fate. The Footy Gods won’t allow you to even indulge in humour at your own expense without punishment. I put money on Port Adelaide out of guilt, but also out of supreme confidence that we wouldn’t be able to dodge a second banana peel in two weeks. Things just don’t work like that at St Kilda.

The media hype this week wasn’t in the same overdrive, but it started to focus on a few specifics. Bitcoin enthusiast Jack Higgins moved into the footy consciousness – one of David King’s top five in-form players in the comp; Nathan Jones was talking about him on Dwayne’s World, and he drew enough attention for Leigh Matthews put a question mark over his work rate. Andrew Wu ran a feature on Snags that described him as “the talk of the football world for his goals”. For the right reasons we were the subject of David King’s analysis; this week it was Brad Hill’s work in the forward line to make space for Max King, after he’d been praised during the broadcast on Friday for working hard to stretch the field as we tried working the ball forward. Even D-Mac got the club website treatment. David King said if we brought our defence to offence transition to mid-table we’d have the best Champion Data profile in the league.

***

The Bureau of Metereology offered typically warm Cairns conditions with a 70% chance of showers. The humidity at night on its own would make for very similar conditions to another Saturday night game against Port a few years ago. Why would the AFL schedule a game for this time of year in Cairns if they want to showcase not just the game to a non-heartland market? Of course, Port had been played into form the week before by West Coast, and they would avoid us at home in front of fans for a ninth straight year. We’ve gone to Tasmania, to Shanghai and to Cairns, and brought on a pandemic to make it all happen. This time, we’d return to the scene of one of last year’s biggest crimes (out of several whoppers).

Signs were good early despite the slippery conditions. After spending most of the year giving up the first few goals we owned the first quarter everywhere but 30 metres within goal and on the scoreboard. Tom Campbell, who for some reason plays for St Kilda now, welcomed himself by kicking the first behind. In hindsight it may have been folly to push for a second ruck to come in given the conditions. Otherwise, the Saints had a good early run with the umpires across the ground, really. Max won a soft pushing free from his most hated part of the ground – 25 metres on next to no angle – but a dissent 50-metre penalty took him to the goal line. It was the perfect chance to get his confidence up early after the 1.7 in Canberra.

Our structures and contested work were looking solid. Port could barely string a couple of possessions together and were forced into going down the line to little or no effect. By the same token, we couldn’t quite get the link up between players and much fluid ball movement happening, and even if we did, a lot of our entries were long hurried kicks that brought Aliir Aliir right into the game. We broke through by slicing through the middle to Hill, who took on Houston and Amon from the handball and delivered to Higgins, delivering exactly what he was brought to the club for. Higgins missed the set shot.

In our quest to stretch the ground, Hill was again finding space on the wings, and added to his physical game with a big hit on Jonas. Long was reprising his reliable role off half-back, and NWM was also offering some speed and run out wide. But nothing was really changing with the entries. Repeated entries, sure, and D-Mac gave us some reward for effort with a nice goal, but even with Max King launching at everything he just wasn’t bringing them down, and there wasn’t enough coming from our guys at the fall. We were too predictable.

We finished the quarter up 24 to 8 in inside 50s, but only for a quarter-time for a 2.3 to 0.1 lead. There was no way we going to have the same amount of space for Higgins to trying blasting the cover off the ball and Max to miss easy set shots on this night.

The second quarter started a little better. Aliir was everywhere still, but we managed to avoid him by cutting through the middle off half-back via Steele and Ross, who found Hill who again provided the perfect pass to a leading Higgins. Snags honoured Hill’s good work this time and a 19-point lead had been opened up.

***

Port got their first just a few moments later when D-Mac let the ball go straight through his hands and Ollie Wines shat out a goal from the spill. They were the opportunities that needed to be taken.

The ball movement dried up again as Port muscled their way into the contested ball. Ratts was starting to look frustrated in the box. Ryder missed a shot out of the ruck with more time than he thought he had. Sinclair and Hill off half-back kicked it straight to Aliir; Aliir lost his feet a few moments later and still won the crumb from Campbell’s kick. Butler and Hill had the break on the broadcast side and the ball slipped out; Gresham twice blazed away and missed. Membrey and Steele dropped sitters around the ground as the ball became almost unusable. Campbell managed to pick out three Port players. Membrey finally found space off Aliir and kicked to two one-on-ones but to no one’s advantage. NWM made a mockery of the conditions with an awesome pick up just inside 50; but he still hasn’t quite settled with ball in hand inside 50 yet. His hurried kick was turned over.

Port were good enough to change things up at half-time. As soon as the Channel 7 graphic showed “St Kilda has outscored their opposition by 146 points in second halves this season”, the Power had found Robbie Gray on the lead. They were moving the ball faster; the quarters began with a much for usable footy and they made the most of it, working into space, kicking short and sharp and fast. Farrell was hit up just a couple of minutes later, and all our inside 50s and domination of the first quarter and parts of the second had just about been wiped.

Again, we were face-to-face with 149 years of trust issues. In the lead up to the GWS game, part of me had started daring to trust. I’d dared to trust that Max King would kick goals from all angles; that Seb Ross and Dan Butler to get arsey handballs out of traffic, that Nasiah would hit targets; that Jack Steele would lead from the front; that Jack Sinclair would be used in the right part of the ground; that Jade Gresham would pop up at the right time. Simply, we have to win these. A tough draw is coming up. Melbourne, Brisbane twice, Sydney twice, Geelong twice, Fremantle again, Carlton to come. The early season honeymoon period is now giving way to games really counting for something. While Luke Dunstan is getting a game with the best team in the league, The Bizarro Rivalry Cold War with Freo took another turn during the afternoon as the Dockers announced themselves as the real deal and Blake Acres got the post-match interview treatment on Fox as one of their best. We want to announce ourselves, too. We’ve been waiting for a long time.

But the leaders weren’t really leading. Steele and Crouch weren’t at their best when we needed some more presence in the contest against Wines and Boak and Rozee. Sinclair was effective but dulled. It felt like the magic was gone. Butler went the banana that has come off in recent weeks through Gresham and Crouch, but it drifted wide. Ryder’s long set shot missed, so did D-Mac’s low percentage kick from the pocket. Butler chose to not pass to Higgins all on his own 40 metres out. Ken was looking smug in the box. Gray was gifted a 50-metre penalty that was incorrectly if it was given for Dougal moving off the mark and incorrectly given if it was for Steele running inside the protected zone. He kicked the goal. Scores were level.

***

There wasn’t a Max or Snags quarter this week, but there were Max and Snags patches.

A long entry finally came off (sort of ) when Max was dumped at the fall by Bonner and won a free kick 20 metres out. Finally, a chance to get one our way. He tossed and turned the ball in his hands repeatedly as he was walking in and fluffed the ball drop, and the weak kick went to the left. We’d gone from 3.3 to 3.11.

A spoil on 50 was forced from Port’s kick-out, and Windhager turned beautifully out of the fall and bulleted a kick to Higgins just on 40 metres out, on little to no angle. Snags missed again. 3.12. Windhager and Hill worked off half-back a couple of minutes later and it was down to a foot race between Gresham who won the free, but the banana missed again. We would go into three-quarter time at 3.13 (we were 3.12 in the 2017 game). Luke Darcy’s mic started cutting out as the game hit a penultimate crescendo, as Motlop ran in and bananaed a miss. A one-point lead at the final change with nothing trustworthy or sustainable about what we were doing. This was a horrifying mash-up of the 2017 game and the 2009 Grand Final.

There’s a magnifying glass on every moment in a loss like this. We have a second loss of this season that we can attribute largely to poor disposal and poor kicking at goal; and yet another game that for better or much worse revolves around Max and Snags. In Round 1 they combined for 1.7 and a lot of dropped marks. On Saturday night they combined for 2.5 with multiple easy shots at goal missed. We’ve had wins this year we can owe to them; we’ve also had multiple losses last year and this year we can owe to them.

Max actually opened the final quarter with a goal – it came from a Brad Hill tackle, and then another Brad Hill another excellent forward entry to Max on the lead, 25 metres out on a slight angle. Max sent it through. The margin was seven points, and we won the ball out of the middle with a Steele tackle on Rozee, Gresham hit up King again in nearly an identical spot. He had the chance to all but bust open the game then and there; to open up a 13-point lead and give the team belief that yet again we would be able to run the opposition off their legs. His shot drifted across the face.

***

Given a reprieve, Port wrestled back the game. An unlucky ricochet out-on-full free-kick led to Todd Marshall converting a very decent set shot, and then it was Port’s turn to miss opportunities. Amon delivered the perfect pass to Farrell who missed from close range, and then the ball came straight back in and Robbie Gray swooped. It was made for him; he turned around the corner but missed. Scores level. But he would have his moment yet. Of course he would.

Has anything been so pathetically inevitable? Perhaps last year, against the other South Australian team at the same ground. This was the same process – a sad, two-and-a-half-hour march knowing exactly what would happen, just waiting for it all to physically happen out so we know how it played out and what it looked like on the footage. A lot of the trust built up in the previous five weeks was being burned with every weak kick off the ground, every harried long kick into the forward line to no one in particular’s advantage, and every missed shot at goal. You keep thinking, ok, maybe someone will bob up. Maybe Gresham. Maybe Higgins. Maybe Max. But apart from that brief moment when Max had the ball in his hands with the chance to open up the game, this felt like a countdown to disaster. Certainly when a string of Port Adelaide behinds put them in front and Bonner looked set to stretch the margin beyond a goal, and even when we found ourselves in front thanks to our own run of behinds. No one was stepping up. Howard in defence tried playing on around Marshall and danced his way into trouble and a smothered kick that fell over the boundary line. Steele spilled another short hit-up, Crouch finally found time and space on the edge of 50 but grubbed the kick to King on the lead. NWM, clearly one of our best and most daring all night, put in a fantastic chase along the wing that gained the best part of the distance between the arcs but Ross fluffed his lines.

There was a turn to attack again. NWM, again, rushed himself with the sticks in sight and tumbled a ball through from just inside 50 when he probably had a little more time than he thought. Ryder followed up his own ruck contest from a forward pocket throw-in and gave off to Higgins whose kick faded to the left and hit the post. Howard and Wood did well as Port came out of defence, as they chose to go shorter from the kick-in after long kicks hadn’t worked all night. Ross’s long ball to the square came off Membrey’s hands; Battle, thrown forward out of desperation, couldn’t get to it and Aliir rushed the behind. Scores level.

There were two moments in which we had control of the ball in the final minutes that in isolation could have gone a long way to us winning the game. Long at ground level, D-Mac and Seb Ross won the ball back on the defensive side of the wing and Ross’s pass fell through Hill’s fingers, but he reacted quickly and kicked the ball off the ground and the ball went straight to Max, by himself just inside 50. Maybe he was gassed from reaching a contest in the same spot a few moments earlier, because he hadn’t moved; he picked up the ball and immediately turned and sliced it high, either unaware of or too tired to take the opportunity to take a few steps and straighten up given all the space he had around him. In the goal square, Burton had Higgins covered and rushed the ball. We were in front; it didn’t feel like it.

Port won the ball from a harried kick from Paton and skirted the broadcast side to go deep into attack. Rozee found the ball in the pocket but was chased out of it, and Butters’ snap just went across the face. Scores level again.

The second moment was actually played out in two parts. Howard went long from the kick-in to a two-on-one (that’s in Port’s favour, mind you), but the ball fell to the front into the hands of Ryder. He found Gresham on the wing, but even with plenty of space he couldn’t manage to kick it to advantage at half-forward (or into space over the top) and the ball came back. Membrey effected a spoil from Duursma’s torp and followed up his own work and we were able to relaunch of the defensive side of the centre square again. Long had time and gave off to Ross running past. Ross, whose weak kick forward in 2017 began the calamitous minute of football, had been arguably our best on this night. He only had to hit Higgins on the lead with a 30-metre kick and we’d have the ball in our hands at the top of the 50-metre arc. But his kick fell short; Higgins was left scrambling on the ground to retrieve it. Burton, Wines and Farrel worked it away and out of the disputed ball Rozee gave off to Butters, and Houston’s kick wide into the 50-metre arc found Robbie Gray, of all people, who just like five years earlier was somehow all by himself in space. The ball sat up for him and he steadied on the boundary line. Any score would probably do with just over 30 seconds on the clock. He kicked the point. Howard’s kick-out into the middle was won back by the Power, and back into Robbie Gray’s hands.

***

They’re the best games to win and the worst games to lose. They’re a lot worse when you kick yourself out of it. There was nothing honourable in this one. Just an awful of anxiety that yielded 4.18, our most inaccurate performance since…well, last year, when we kicked 5.17 against the Cats’ 10.8 in the game where Max dominated but kicked 1.5.

Richo said after the 2017 loss to Port that it was “a bloody costly way to learn your lesson”. Did we actually learn anything? Five years later, we’re still making stupid basic mistakes interstate against Port Adelaide, leaving Robbie Gray free in the dying seconds and giving Ken a licence to look smug.

The five-game winning streak is dead, long live the possibly three-game losing streak that’s heading our way. Our excellent April finishes in ignominy. This was the third of Gerard’s three weeks before he wanted to make a judgement on whether or not we were the real deal. A mini-blockbuster on a Sunday afternoon at the MCG against the Demons on a Sunday afternoon beckoned – what would have been our biggest home and away game in Melbourne perhaps since playing for top spot against Collingwood in Round 16 in 2010. It would have been better for the club than some quick dollars in Cairns could ever make up for. Those dollars certainly wouldn’t make up for finishing in certain parts of the ladder by the end of the season, if that’s what Saturday night costs us (indeed, on Monday morning, Gerard opened his show saying “St Kilda is counting the dollars and the cost”). In the pre-match, Channel 7 had played some upbeat highlights about the Saints guys enjoying themselves on their few days away in Cairns. I hope the two-minute puff piece that this game allowed for was worth it for everyone at the club, the AFL, Cairns Regional Council and the Queensland government. Playing in Cairns wasn’t the reason we lost – the Herald Sun’s expected score was 67 to 54 in our favour; we kicked 1.15 from our last 16 shots, and Port were playing on the same ground – but playing in Cairns is the reason why we played on a neutral ground in conditions that absolutely made this game a 50/50. Even with those odds, you know which side St Kilda will fall on. We’re just left to replay all those last moments in our head hoping they turned out differently.

The ghosts of 2017 remain. I posted on Twitter early on Saturday afternoon “Tonight is absolutely the kind of game St Kilda loses.” Someone replied, “I’m so tired of the whole loser narrative surrounding St Kilda. It’s about time the supporters stopped perpetuating it”. We’re tired of it too. But we’re not the ones out there. We pay for memberships and for tickets and go through the logistical rigmarole to attend and watch games and provide the clicks for the club’s feel-good content. We don’t get hundreds of thousands of dollars each year or media careers out of this. The club’s had 149 years to change our minds and build our trust. Saturday night was another chance. Again, they blew it.

Round 6, 2022
GWS Giants 3.4, 7.7, 7.9, 8.12 (60)
St Kilda 4.5, 5.8, 9.12, 10.17 (77)
Crowd: 11,207 at Manuka Oval, Friday, April 22nd at 7.50pm

Anything can be a banana peel if you’re the St Kilda Football Club. Going in 4-1 against an opposition whose premiership window is slamming shut, their coach under the pump and all the media hype surrounding the return of a game-changing bad boy? Banana peel. A 19-0 start with three middling-to-poor teams to come in the final three weeks of the year before finals? Banana peel.

This wasn’t quite the same week on media street as the flurry leading up to the Gold Coast the previous Saturday (I neglected to mention Peter Ryan’s “Saints’ King-dom come” on game day), at least, right until AFL.com.au on Friday ran with a headline mentioning the f-word – no, not the M-rated “finals”, and not even the MA-rated “four”, but the XXX-rated “flag”. The last time we were 4-1 and made it to game day The Age called us “the story of the year”. We lost, and Richo was sacked three months later.

Really, all the build-up this week was around Leon Cameron and Toby Greene. Cameron almost gave up the job mid-interview on 360 on the Monday, and Gerard and Robbo spent the next two nights discussing it, with the show giving the story the moody vignette treatment on Wednesday. Summing it all up, should Cameron go, Gerard posed of the Giants, “What was the point of 2022?”. To make St Kilda supporters nervous, I suggested from my couch.

Toby Greene was given a whole 35 minutes one-on-one with Derm in Fox Footy’s new Face to Face program, which was probably both a lazy production decision and also a reflection of 2022 demands for Content All of the Time and broadcasters’ and the media’s thirst for players to become celebrities so they can feel aggrandised themselves. A bog-standard quote becomes a news item or an intense and moody graphic on social media and then a whole Twitter conversation. I don’t know if Jimmy Webster selling his house would have quite been the news item in years past.

Toby’s six-match suspension finished just in time for him to take on the Saints. No conspiracy there, of course, just something that would happen to the Saints, much like the overcorrection from the Match Review Panel and Paddy’s bump. The extended Channel 7 intro to the main broadcast was all about Toby, including a quick mention of his assault suit played as a bad boy character quirk.

A chance for St Kilda redemption in the Friday night slot after Round 1 likely spelled more calamity given our lack of prime-time wins in recent years. Not helping was Jones out with the Health and Safety Protocols, and then Joey during the week decided to give Lachie Whitfield a rocket; he literally said “he’s doing nothing”. Just in time for him to take on the Saints.

***

After four wins on the trot that began with giving up the first two goals (three in the Freo match), we went with the bold move to not only win the centre clearance and kick the wrong way out of the middle via Brad Crouch, but also kick the first goal, through Rowan Marshall drawing a free kick against human-as-mountain Braydon Preuss. It was part of a big opening for Marshall, including a huge leap in a ruck contest and laying a big tackle, picking up where he left off from his season-best game against Gold Coast. Perhaps we’d be ok without Paddy for a second week.

Things started looking a bit dodgy not soon after when Higgins blasted a point from near the top of the square after a deft wobbler from Butler. Up the other end Greene made an instant impact, of course, recovering from a marking contest while Dougal was slipping and sliding behind Idun and his high kick to the goal square somehow ended with Bobby Hill beating all of Webster, Dougal and D-Mac. 

Higgins had a shot at redemption soon after a lucky high-tackle free as he stayed low and decided to kick around the corner. Again, he tried to kick it into Lake Burley Griffin but missed another from close range (10 months later, BT ran with the Missy Higgins gag). Kicking the first goal and Higgins missing easy shots sounded a lot like the Round 1 misadventure. The ball went up the other end for Greene to find space on Wilkie, gather, turn and just miss. He was already looking dangerous.

We didn’t look like a team that warranted any of the f-words until Long’s switch in defence and an excellent kick from Battle hit Paton, who went short to Crouch and passed perfectly to Haye, who took a classic arms-out-in-front strong mark on the lead. He went back and kicked it from decent range.

Preuss himself loomed as a banana peel. Swamp pointed out during the week we have the largest number of Rising Star nominations against in the competition. Preuss doesn’t actually qualify, but in just his 21^st game this would be the perfect chance for him to get his big break. We’re only happy to make anyone else’s dreams come true. A goal and a big mark put him on the radar.

Gresham picked up where he left off from the previous week and snapped through an awesome banana goal that was more at home on The 90s: The Decade that Delivered. We were kicking the harder ones, it seemed, but it was immediately undone as we couldn’t work with our numbers from the bounce Ward punished the clumsiness from outside 50.

The inability to get some fluid consistent movement of the ball meant another lot of Sherrins being bombed from high up onto a double- and triple-teamed Max. Again, he wasn’t losing contests but the ball use going forward was haphazard and not to anyone’s benefit. He finally found the run and jump at the end of the quarter and took a huge mark on 50, but his post-siren kick hit the woodwork. The signs otherwise were good – 24 tackles was our highest in a quarter this year – but we probably should have been up by more than seven points.

***

As soon as “Hayes suspected ACL” was mentioned on the commentary Tom Green cruised through and Matt Flynn took a huge grab in front of goal. Marshall would have to take Preuss on himself, and a forward target that could take some heat off Max was gone, but more importantly after just five-and-a-bit games we’d lost a player who’d earned the club’s respect for his work rate right across the ground, never mind the work he put in to get his career to this position. (Part of me was angry that he did the initial damage to his knee because Haynes’ forearm was being forced into his head with no repercussions). It was great to hear Ratts straight after game say he’ll be getting a new contract. He’s the kind of player that is the yardstick for effort; that you’d think that if everyone tried as hard as he did all the time we’d be nearly unstoppable.

Something was up. King took a great contested mark against Lachie Keeffe but missed again. D-Mac and NWM kicked balls out on the full, Windhager had some sloppy moments, Matt Flynn won a soft free and put GWS in front. Long slammed Bobby Hill into the turf off the ball in frustration. Toby Greene missed a shot but the ball came straight back and he made up for the miss.

The Giants had ramped up the pressure and we were -8 in ground ball gets at half-time. The running game had dried up and like Round 1, we were too often going long down the line hoping Max would bail us out with a big grab. Otherwise, if we tried holding on to the ball we were drawn into the short chip game as seen in the worst of the pre-season.

The GWS momentum was briefly broken when Crouch took it upon himself to banana a goal through from the boundary after a wayward Perryman pass. Again, it was the hard one that went through. GWS quickly got it back on their terms via some D-Mac umpire dissent for saying the ball hit the ground, and Ward cashed in immediately. The rule had been in the spotlight all week so even if the ball did hit the ground (which it didn’t) and regardless what you think of the rule as a player, just shut the fuck up for a second (we’d been lucky earlier when Ben Long was penalised for a blatant arms out). D-Mac’s reaction of controlled mild entertainment to the umpire giving the 50 was very funny.

Max finally got the jump in a one-on-one closer to goal next to Flynn and it was time for him to hit the scoreboard, but he missed with a limp shot that floated left (after putting some alpha bodywork into Flynn after he took the mark). Idun, who was creating problems in his move to the forward line, just missed a snap. The Giants were up and about and we were barely hanging on. At half-time, Hill and Gresham each had only five touches. GWS was winning score from stoppages 4.1 to 2.1 as Marshall was getting worked over (last week we’d won the stat by 40 points). Hill finally found the footy on the wing in an attacking position and went for a long run; he cut in to Max who gathered the ball on 50 and wheeled around and the ball floated wobbled in the air before falling on the wrong side of the post. This was a different type of Max King quarter.

***

It’s at this point we were face-to-face with 149 years of trust issues. During the week I’d dared to trust Max King to receive the ball from the air and to kick goals from all angles; to trust Seb Ross and Dan Butler to get arsey handballs out of traffic, to trust Nasiah to hit targets; to trust Jack Steele to lead all day and night; to trust Jack Sinclair to create, to trust Jade Gresham to both create and finish (also from all angles). But how many times have we seen Saints teams wobble like this interstate? This had all the hallmarks of those late 1990s and early-to-mid 2000s losses where we appear to either outright lose the ability to play Australian Rules football on the plane or are overwhelmed by anxiety, and possibly some misfortune. Round 15 in Adelaide in 1997, Fremantle in 1998, Brisbane Lions in the last game of 1998, Sydney a week later in the Qualifying Final, Fremantle in 2002, losses in Tasmania to Port in 2004 in 2005, “Whispers in the Sky” against Freo in 2005, West Coast in the season opener of 2006, Freo twice in 2006, including Sirengate. That’s just some of them.

King opened the second half with another mark and another miss. Five kicks for 0.5 in just over 37 minutes of football. It didn’t help that a lot of the shots were from tough angles, but by the time he’d taken his night to an absurd 1.7 halfway through the last quarter you would have thought a few of them would have gone through given some the shots he’d kicked over the last few weeks (I think he becomes the first Saint to kick seven behinds since Stephen Milne kicked 4.7 in a draw against Richmond early in 2011). We found the ball back from the kick-out and Gresham wheeled around from 50, and Haynes touched the ball on the line. Our magic was running out.

But the moment came soon after. Preuss took the mark on the 50 from a quick GWS rebound, but rather than go long or assess his options, he quickly went for the handball to Green going past and completely missed him. Steele won the ball and got the handball out; he’d been taken high and Hill ran onto the ball and took the advantage along the wing. During the game and in the wash-up he was praised more for his hard running to stretch the field while we looked to move the footy (great interview with Brad Crouch on Saturday discussing it here), but here he had his moment with the ball in hand and deftly cut in to find Higgins by boot. Still inside the centre square and with no one in the forward line, he wheeled around without looking and blasted the ball again. The ball simply had to go through. The bounce wasn’t perfect, but it found its way. The Jack Higgins quarter had been activated.

***

During the replay of the goal, the inset shot showed Marshall was off and into the rooms, with a corkie on top of the corkie he copped last week. This one was worse, and he’d spend most of the rest of the game on the exercise bike. Josh Battle would have to complete the set of positions he’s played on the ground and have to give away centimetres and kilograms against Preuss in playing as the ruck and effectively an extra midfielder. Soon after being thrust into the role he worked off Preuss to charge into defence and chase down Himmelberg as the Giants entered 50 on the rebound.

Higgins followed his goal just over a minute and a half later with a snap from 25 out after a tumbling Gresham kick found Keeffe, and Max pounced on him and forced a wayward handball that Snags was there to immediately deal with, and then gave some to Keeffe as the ball sailed through. A bit of swagger is creeping back. Seb Ross helped engineer Snags’ third in six minutes with some good bodywork on Whitfield who was trying to complete a mark, a steady gather and tidy enough pass on his non-preferred to Higgins on the 50; as he had against the Suns Higgins had read the play expertly and was already running into space. Like a number of important goals that this season has conjured up so far, this one would require an excellent individual effort. Snags turned his back on the play and rocketed the ball through.

Max finally broke through for his first of the match after winning a holding free in front of goal. A 13-point buffer had been opened up – all four goals were from turnover – and we really should have had more by the end of the third. Wood and Paton burned entries, Snags was smothered on the goal line, and Wood missed an easy shot under Taylor’s pressure. But we’d needed to change what we were doing within the game, effectively two men down, and it was happening. By game’s end we’d be 19 to the positive in ground ball gets.

***

GWS hadn’t won a final quarter this year. Really, all we had to do was break even, but that wasn’t going to be as comfortable as it sounds. We spent most of the quarter weathering an orange and charcoal storm. Repeated stoppages, repeated defensive 50 entries. The game finished with a comical hit-out count of 77 to 19, with Josh Battle playing one of the best one hit-out games from a ruckman you’ll ever see in really what could be a career-defining performance as he was repeatedly worked over by bigger bodies but competed and competed at the stoppages.

The Giants would win the stoppage clearance count but good opportunities in the final quarter were few and far between as Steele, Crouch, Ross, Gresham, Battle and even Windhager went to work in close. Preuss was consistently trying to create movement and clear the congested space by thumping the ball and it finally paid off when Whitfield ran onto a knock for a deep entry and Paton got caught holding the ball at the top of the square.

This was going to be a true grind. Marshall tried coming back on and planting himself in the goal square but Hill missed him. Max bobbed up with two more behinds – including a painfully close snap around the corner from another tough angle – and he and Gresham had opportunities to ice the game late. Wilkie dropped an easy mark at centre half-back to keep things interesting, but we also got help from the Giants. Flynn took a contested mark just 20 metres out on an easy angle but unnecessarily gave the ball off the Himmelberg, and his snap was lucky to be called a point. It bought the margin to 11 points, and a reverse Aussie Jones point against the Lions in 2004 ran through my mind. Gresham’s set shot from near 50 was thumped through for behind from an unmarked GWS defender who could have easily taken the mark, and took the margin back to an even two goals.

There was barely time to take a breath. BT and James Brayshaw started talking about the game as if it was a done deal in the final couple of minutes. I impolitely requested them to stop this from the couch, and there was just a little more to play out. Greene broke through a Webster tackle on the boundary line and Coniglio and Taranto worked through Sinclair; Coniglio could have hit up Whitfield or Flynn on a much better angle but he elected to go the banana. It clipped the inside of the post, and instead of a potential 2017 vs Port Adelaide-style finish we got something closer to Round 7, 2013 vs Carlton.

***

Games like this are often sealed when the team that has been weathering the storm find an opening late. Something breaks. Ours came from Butler’s pressure on the wing on Haynes and some quick hands from D-Mac, Max and Crouch that released Ross, and his pass was excellently-weighted to Higgins who again had worked forward to a great spot. Crouch had kept running, overtaking his opponent, and Higgins showed again how much he’d learned from Round 1 and gave off to Crouch for an easy goal. The game was done. Exhausted, victorious. We would be able to listen to The Fable Singers post-siren on the broadcast and watch all the Channel 7 prime time post-match faff about the Saints, including heartfelt questions from Richo to Jack Steele about what he’s liking about this team the most and BT asking Brad Hill about which pizza he wants. We would get through without Greene kicking four and being the story of the week, we would get through without GWS pulling their season out of the fire under all sorts of pressure against a team supposedly on the up. We would avoid the banana peel, we would be able to enjoy another week.

The spotlight shifts a little away from Max this week and onto Snags. Every game this year has been largely about either or both (by game’s end they averaged the most and second-most scoring shots this year respectively); we now have three wins in five weeks that we can largely owe to Higgins. He has now kicked hauls of four in a 10-point win, five in a 26-point win, and four in a 17-point win, each of them with game-turning bursts.

This may well have been the best win of the five. Two weeks ago we played the sexiest football this club has produced in years on a beautiful afternoon at the MCG. On Friday night we won ugly, coming from behind with two men down and no ruck in the freezing dark of Canberra, and it was at least as satisfying. Battle’s game typified the entire team’s performance; he finished the game Hollywood-placed cut under his eye with a blood drip that was happy to walk around with and show off afterwards.

I’d built up beating Gold Coast way too much that in my mind it became the Gateway to Being Good, completely forgetting there’s the weekly grind of a season to get through. As we settle into the colder months and Bob Murphy’s rhythm of the season, another test awaits next weekend. For now, it’s about this team looking like it wants the challenge, and we as fans learning to trust it and enjoy it again, bit by bit.