Red, White And Black

Round 5, 2022
St Kilda 3.3, 6.7, 9.8, 13.9 (87)
Gold Coast 3.1, 6.1, 7.4, 9.7 (61)
Crowd: 18,724 at Docklands, Saturday, April 16th at 1.45pm

This was a week in the footy consciousness that St Kilda hadn’t really had since 2010. Except maybe for when The Age called us “the story of the year” when we went 4-1 in 2019, and our coach was sacked three months later.

We were the week’s big winners for Gerard on Monday’s 360, although he said he still needed to see the next three weeks (Robbo was more sold). Nick Dal Santo uttered the words “Dusty” and “Petracca” in the vicinity of “Gresham”. We were front and centre in the Real Footy podcast. Paddy’s bump and suspension was big news, partly because of the grey area the AFL finds itself in with these incidents, partly because St Kilda actually mattered in the context of the competition. We got the deep dive and a lot of praise from David King and Leigh Montagna on Wednesday’s 360.The crowning glory of the week was perhaps the most effusive Ross Lyon we’ve ever seen: “If you’re a Saints supporter, get excited because their teamsmanship and their commitment is at levels I haven’t seen for a long time”. (Read: “since my heyday”).

St Kilda was part of Mick’s multi to cover the line at 19.5. Janice Petersen wore a top that was close to the jumper we wore from 1893 to 1914, complete with thick black collar. The hype rolled on right through to the feature article on Gresh on the AFL site on match day as he prepared for his 100^th game (by going to Elsternwick Subway with Rowan Marshall). This was all tempting fate, and the club leaned in and wheeled out Gresh’s match winner from 2018 against the Gold Coast on the socials (as well as a more extended highlights package for his 100^th).

pic.twitter.com/q2ulREGg5q

— Red, White and Black (@RWBFooty) April 13, 2022

I wanted to embrace it as much as I could. Even though there is a wild amount of media coverage (not to mention tin pot blogs like this), just as soon as you beat Hawthorn on a sunny Sunday afternoon with the sexiest football you’ve played since the GT and Ross eras, it can all be taken from you by a loss tucked away under the roof on a sunny Saturday afternoon to the Gold Coast Suns (or the Gold Coast SUNS, as they keep trying to remind us).

Really, I ended up reading into it all too much. Ross the ex-Boss’s praise had become a giant fuck-off banana peel and by Saturday I’d built up this match up to be a Gateway to Being Good. (The warm weather and hype was more suited to September than mid-April.) By the end of Saturday ABC Grandstand posed the question of whether or not we were a top four team. Dare to dream, I guess? But we have 149 years’ worth of trust issues. Let the record show that the last time we were here, the coach was sacked. There was also one year not too long ago we started 19-0, and nothing came of that.

***

The closer we got the first bounce the more panicky I got. It was an absolutely gorgeous early autumn day in Melbourne on Saturday, hitting 28 degrees with only a light wind. I got off the 55 tram and walked through the sunshine in the city, under the Gresham Street sign on Bourke Street, crossed the bridge, and was met with…the Concrete Dome roof closed. We were about to be unceremoniously dumped by the competition’s whipping boys in an echoing tin can. I put money on the Gold Coast at $3.35.

We started this one with the tried and tested method of giving up the first two goals of the game. In every one of our four wins now we’ve given up the first two (first three against Freo). Unlike the last couple of weeks, this wasn’t two in the first couple of minutes, but Gold Coast had settled into the game quickly. They were linking up with sharp, low, direct, quick kicks right across the ground. After being tagged out of their Round 3 match against GWS, Touk Miller had bounced back against the Blues and resumed looking his dangerous self and set up both Ben Ainsworth and Levi Casboult on the lead for early goals with perfect passes inside 50.

We needed Callum Wilkie’s first-ever goal and then some inspired stoppage work from Paddy and Gresh to get us on going in the past two weeks; on Saturday it was a string of multiple efforts from multiple players out of a ball up near the middle of the ground. Ross worked off Miller; D-Mac went to ground in a tackle and traded knocks with Sinclair, and then lying on his front managed to knock the ball out along the ground to Ross. That was all it took for the Saints to complete the transition from defence to offence. Ben Long was running off the back of the centre square, received the ball and gave to Sinclair, who had bounced up and handballed forward to Steele. Long kept running and thumped the ball to the top of the square. King was triple-teamed – the first time he’d be outnumbered on many occasions for the day – and Collins tried claiming the mark as the ball popped up and back down. Hayes was also there and with brute force wrestled the ball out of Collins’ hands, forced out a handball to Higgins, and Snags gathered the ball and snapped around the corner.

That’s a lot of blog space to spend on what was just our first goal of the game, but it was going to take repeated efforts like these, peppered with some individual moments of nous and brilliance, to cut through a grinding game. Higgins had a second goal not long afterwards that came from Marshall forcing a kick out of a ruck contest that was met by King up on the wing who handballed to Gresham running past. Higgins has already seen the whole thing unfolding and was sprinting ahead towards an open goal by this point, and Gresh found him. But St Kilda had a tough time getting the ball moving at the best of times and wrapping up the Suns the other way. It took all of four neat sharp kicks from half-back for the Suns (Miller again) to set up Levi to go ahead with their third. They owned the corridor a few times, together with the lone seagull who spent nearly the entire game in the centre square.

Gresh created the third with a dead butterfly kick from 45 metres out near the boundary after we won a throw-in just outside the arc. On the other side of quarter time, Marshall kicked a beautifully-weighted ball to King in the pocket, who found himself on the right side of a one-on-one for the first time, and no could do anything about the high point at which his hands met the ball for the mark. He slotted the goal from a tough angle.

As soon as a very slight buffer had been established in the second quarter – it was nine points, with eight scoring shots to four – the Suns went on a three-goal run. Perhaps we were getting a bit complacent, perhaps the Suns just match up very well on us, perhaps we’re just not that good that we should be expecting an unrelenting four-quarter performance every week. Holman outmuscled Sinclair, who got distracted pleading with the umpire for a touched ball in the marking contest, and Rankine had kept running from the wing and combined with Chol and Ellis for a goal from the square; Dougal Howard outright missed the Sinclair target from the back pocket with a 20-metre kick and found Holman instead, who went back and slotted the goal; a quick Miller clearance from the wing bounced off hands and Chol was quickest to react, grabbing the ball, turning and expertly dribbling through a goal on his left. Within a few minutes, the game had turned the other way.

***

We’ve all been nervous about the Gold Coast going past us. Now that the Dees have saluted and left us with the only true long drought in the competition, the (next) final frontier may well be the AFL’s Latest Best Joke going past us, making finals, and winning premierships. We laughed them off nervously when we fell over the line against them in each of the past four seasons – by four, one, four, two and nine points – but it’s time for this St Kilda team to add other things to its highlights reel. It’s also time for Gold Coast to do anything at all. Are they our next rival? Do they have a list with a higher ceiling? Well, they might be the closest thing we have to a rival right now, and they still may have a higher ceiling. I was worried we were watching them go past us in real time (as I thought Collingwood might have) when Chol kicked his goal. Were we also about to be the first fill-in coach to lose a game for the year? The Suns had brought down the unbeaten Blues a week earlier, and we’re the kind of team that a crappy Fremantle could bring down while we were on a high two years ago.

Momentum either way had been scarce up until this point, and our missed opportunities were beginning to pile up. Max missed what should have been a regulation goal around the corner after another perfect Rowan Marshall pass to the opposite pocket. He made up for it soon afterwards with some substantial help from the umpire who let his hands in the back of Ballard go, but then Membrey – quiet by his standards – missed a shot that was an exact replica of King’s, and then Hill found some space inside 50 and missed after Long raced to intercept the kick-in. Steele then sliced a kick from 50 that landed in the arms of Lemmens.

The next goal actually brought about what would be the final lead change of the game. Paton’s 25-metre kick off half-back to Windhager in the middle had too much on it; players converged on the spill and after some contested footy Long thundered in head-on and put on a comprehensive tackle on Powell; Ross was there to put on a nice handball over the top that released Hill, and he was off; he steadied and found Hayes on the lead 45 out. In Row S, Matt and Rich sitting next to me both said he wouldn’t miss. “He loves the big moment.” He kicked it straight through the middle.

***

I was secretly thinking about the 2009 Grand Final half-time score line – we were up 6.7 to 6.1, both teams one goal shy of the same time of that very awful day. Had we burned our opportunities? It didn’t feel like this game would be broken open, or that we’d have too many more opportunities to burn. We were in for an arm-wrestle. More than nine minutes passed before a score was registered in the third quarter. It was Higgins’ third goal, courtesy of a Mason Wood spoil and a diving knock-on from Seb Ross that released Battle on the wing who found Sinclair by himself in the middle. He waited for the right movement ahead as he ran, took a bounce, danced past Fiorini and delivered expertly to Snags on the lead. After another 27 possessions and an afternoon of hard running off half-back, AFL.com.au suggested Sinclair was “the AFL’s most improved player”. A lot of Saints fans will tell you he’s certainly has been our best.

There was no Max King quarter this week, but there was a second grinding win in a month with Snags and Max kicking a combined eight goals. Like they did against Fremantle, they owned the third quarter; at least as much as a quarter in this game could be owned. It was only three goals in total this time, but enough to create a match-winning lead. Long – in arguably his best game, after having been shuffled across the ground no less – and Hill were involved again, breaking a run of several minutes played in the Suns’ forward half; Long’s quick kick out of defence skittled the slipping Powell and Hill was on the charge (it was nice to have a bounce actually go our way), speeding through to gather the ball and handball to Membrey. Snags again sensed it all and was already running into space on his own into 50, and charged in for his fourth. At a forward pocket throw-in just a few moments later, a tumbling Jack Hayes-shaped figure committed to a chaos contest that opened the space behind him; Mason Wood was the quickest to the react to the scramble but his handball didn’t quite make it to King’s hands, instead an agile Max reacted with a volley that went through and opened a 23-point lead. He’d been double-teamed all day but found a way to a third goal.

Never mind this potentially being a Gateway to Being Good; we just needed to get through the rest of the third quarter. Gold Coast took control of the game again. For all intents and purposes Lienert, Wilkie, Howard and Battle did incredibly well to soak up the pressure of repeated entries and only let one through it was only when Miller again found space through the middle to hit up Corbett on the lead that they found a clean opening.

After becoming the highest-scoring team in the competition with two thrilling weeks, we got something that wasn’t so aesthetically satisfying to watch. The crowd sat in tense silence for most of the game, perhaps hoping we’d bust things wide open yet again. It only happened bit by bit. Membrey was good enough to take his moment in the first minute of the final term, staying down while his opponent was drawn to Max, and swooped onto the ball that came over the top and goaled. Ross furthered the lead by finishing off his own forward 50 entry (with Max halving another double-team contest) that put the exclamation mark on his early season form and drew some much-deserved attention from Saints fans.

***

For such a difficult game there were some thrilling individual moments that cut through. Hill’s charge past Powell onto the rogue bouncing ball that ended with Higgins’ fourth was the most high-octane, but the peak might have been Gresh’s banana goal from the forward pocket with a few minutes left that truly sealed the game, and bookended his 100^th match with excellent finishes from difficult shots. We’ve got guys consistently taking it upon themselves from tough situations to back themselves in, and it’s coming off in important moments (see also NWM’s bullet kick to Wood that helped set up Gresh’s sealer). Higgins did the same soon after, happily ignoring options in the 50 and banging through a set shot from beyond the arc. When was the last time before the last few weeks we could actually enjoy these kinds of moments? Gresh’s sidestep and goal against the Cats in 2016 maybe (that night actually ended well), but otherwise it reminds you how dark the days were when Jack Steven volleying a goal from the pocket while we were down by 58 points was as spectacular as it got.

At no point did this feel like a true four-quarter performance, but we actually ended up winning every quarter and have now won 10 on the trot. A lot of that had to do with 17 more clearances and 7.6 to 1.2 scored from stoppages. That tally included our first three goals to work back into the game and multiple goals from centre bounce, including the very important first early in the final quarter to settle things. We were all freaked out by the prospect of playing without Paddy, more so given Witts is one of the better big guys in the competition, but Marshall rose above his quieter form for his best game of the season in the oversized midfielder role, while the undersized Hayes (albeit with a fantastical physique) competed very admirably in the ruck and in all parts of the ground. It was secretly nice to see him punch the ground after the final siren after he spilled (another) excellent NWM pass.

The midfield has gone from one of the shallowest in the competition to one of the most effective. Seb Ross is stringing together his most impactful season without the pressure of needing to be our first or second-best mid. Crouch won’t get many plaudits for this but was always in the right spot to feed the ball out. Jack Steele didn’t need to carry the team for the midfield to have an effect, gathering “only” 27 touches, which included an overly confident one-handed grab working off Ballard in the middle. He also provided the funniest moment of the season so far, racing off half-back in the final minutes with the ball safely in his hands, being held firmly by him, not being tackled, unmarked; and for no reason the ball ballooned out of his hands and over the boundary.

Brendon Lade was quietly confident in his press conference: “We’ve got some real clarity in our roles and what we need to do”; “People look at our side and they’ve commented all year, ‘where are all your superstars?’…we play pretty well as a team.” We had Higgins and Hayes come straight back in and make an impact, Ben Long was moved to half-back and played perhaps his slickest, most reliable game (and still gave the opposition plenty to be worried about), D-Mac continued to relish his role on the wing; Howard, Battle, Lienert and Wilkie continued to work effectively as a unit. And on top of all of that, Sinclair is vindicating Champion Data’s “elite” categorising, Gresham, if he plays like this every week, will be a bona fide star of the competition, and Max is equal-leader in the Coleman Medal.

***

A month ago we were the worst-placed team in the competition. Walking out of the Concrete Disney Store on that Friday night it felt as though 2022 has instantly been reduced to reluctantly following the Saints for bright spots like Max King and Jack Hayes. A week ago we might have been the most entertaining team, certainly the highest-scoring. Saturday wasn’t the kind of sexy performance like the Hawthorn game that will have us called “the story of the year” again, nor Ross Lyon telling all us Saints fans to get excited. (There is a rude amount of teams with at least four wins at the moment, all passively competing for that air time). The State of Being Good comes with tough, ugly wins, and we’re going to need to ride a lot of uncomfortable afternoons and nights if we’re going to get near it. As this club tries to build something, those wins need to be celebrated just as much.

Round 4, 2022
Hawthorn 3.3, 5.8, 7.11, 10.13 (73)
St Kilda 6.1, 12.3, 15.8, 22.10 (142)
Crowd: 30,926 at the MCG, Sunday, April 10th at 3.20pm

A big part of this week was learning to trust St Kilda. It’s going to be a big part of the coming week, too.

Even saying “learning to trust” implies that it’s on us as fans to do the heavy lifting. Prior to Sunday I would have said, no, string together two good full quarters (let alone two full matches) and maybe I’ll come on board. It’s a bit like the 2019 membership campaign that asked us “what would you do, if you were called upon?” when we’d just seen the Road to 2018 jackhammered.

Well, we’re all very pleased to be sitting here in the knowledge that the Saints went a whole lot better than two good quarters on Sunday. We got one of the most impressive performances from a Saints team since the first half of 2020, and this was probably more complete, more dynamic and more promising. It’s a performance that has already created a shift in media narrative, for whatever that’s worth. The Age was prepared to call Max King’s three last quarter goals a “trademark” last quarter burst. That’s three games in three weeks he’s kicked at least three goals in one quarter, and he’s equal leader in the Coleman with Tom Hawkins, but I’m not sure if he’s yet quite earned the title “King of the World” that they gave him on Sunday night. Gerard and Robbo discussed on 360 whether or not we were the real deal. Gerard said he’d wait three weeks but there was something more immediate. Robbo seems convinced. Gerard also said he’s taking talkback calls on SEN about Jack Sinclair. They opened 360 with Paddy Ryder being suspended for two weeks. Very suddenly – for a week anyway – St Kilda matters again.

After however many years of heartbreak and disappointment we still need to get a kick out of these things. There’s a very, very, very fine line when supporting St Kilda in enjoying the positives – a big win, a good start to the season, promising young players – without getting too far ahead of ourselves. But we’d be silly not to indulge just a little bit at the moment. Just a little bit.

***

I’m one for melodrama and fatalism. During Round 2, I pondered if we were the worst team in the competition, and if not, considered us to be at the very least the worst-placed team. At 3.21pm last week I uttered the words “Clarkson 2023” to Matt and Dad sitting next to me in Row S. This week, the auto-generated push notification that comes through from the Saints app at the start of every game actually hadn’t had the chance to appear by the time Dylan Moore kicked the first. By 3.22pm he’d kicked another and if The Age can call Max King’s last quarter flurries a “trademark” then we’ve also registered and patented the two-goals-in-two-minutes head start to the opposition. Maybe we’d Saints blown all the goodwill of the past week already.

But this felt more of a levelling start; it brought us back to earth rather than dragging us below the surface. We knew that this scenario (eventually) turned out OK last week. We didn’t have to rely on powerhouse forward Callum Wilkie to steady things this time around; this week it was Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, with ruck tapwork-as-art from a ball up just inside 50 near the boundary to the unmarked Gresham. Gresham, on the move and on his opposite foot, just as artfully curled the ball through for our first. It was gorgeous, and very un-St Kilda like. And there was a whole afternoon of un-St Kilda like fun to be had.

Max made his introduction to this one a whole lot earlier. All told he didn’t quite have the singular impact on the game as he did in the previous two weeks, but that said more about the rest of the team than him. But he was there when the game was live. He saluted next with his reprisal of last week’s long set shot goal after casually receiving the ball from the air via Brad Hill. It would take a long strike from just inside 50 on the difficult side for a right-footer, but again he backed himself in from the difficult spot, and again it came off. A few moments later just outside 50 he won a free kick in a one-on-one (although the mark he simultaneously took would have been one of his best for the day), swung around onto his right and bulleted a pass to repay the favour to Hill for Hill’s first of four (yes, that’s right).

The Hawks showed what they were capable of with Ward running laterally off the mark from half-back and slicing a pass across to opposite flank to Day, and Breust was instantly out at half-forward. His long kick forward saw Gunston fly for the mark, Moore was at the fall and a handball to Mitchell Lewis in the forward square had the Hawks back in front. It wasn’t the only time the Hawks looked threatening this way, but it was the only time it came off and threatened the balance of the game. The next time they tried slicing through the middle Newcombe’s kick to Frost was interrupted by D-Mac, and with the help of Marshall and Gresham at the fall D-Mac got it back and found Butler in an open goal.

By this time Seb Ross had taken a dashing run off the back of the centre square and evaded Howe, took a bounce and found Paddy Ryder (St Kilda player) in a two on one but with a dangerous enough pass that he drew a (borderline) free kick for somewhere in between. Ryder wheeled around and had put us in front. We weren’t seriously challenged again.

***

Gerard said on 360 that we “ambushed” the Hawks. Our set-up across the ground halted the Hawks’ ball movement and we dominate the ball in play; the tackle count was won easily and while ground ball gets were led by Tom Mitchell, the stat was otherwise headed by Saints (Sinclair, Steele, Crouch, D-Mac, and then Butler and Gresham up forward). Our own fast ball movement across the ground caught the Hawks off guard and they couldn’t get their good early season turnover game going. Hill up forward took away one of the Hawks’ biggest weapons in keeping Jiath and his rebounding in check (and to the point where the relatively undersized Hill actually outbodied CJ on multiple occasions).

The ball movement and forward line were functioning beautifully – to the point at which we finished the day with the highest-ever score by a team with 46 or fewer forward entries. After looking static in Round 1 and toothless for a lot of Round 2, we’ve very quickly become very watchable and dangerous. The speed with which we moved the ball allowed for space forward targets to move into and we finished with 22 marks inside 50 to 10; otherwise Butler, Gresham and Hill were getting to work at the fall of the footy (when Max King was invariably bringing it to ground). It all amounted to plenty of shots from good range and good angles and we went into half-time at 12.3. Some awkward Hawthorn moments helped too. Gresham ran into an open goal after Scrimshaw didn’t realise he’d marked a touched ball, and Seb Ross intercepted a short kick from Hardwick out of full-back and set up Membrey.

Butler played one of his better games since 2020 and he too was prominent when the game was live. His cute stuff was coming off; King created a contest off a Lienert spoil than landed in Wilkie’s hands on the wing and Butler was at the fall, and his perfectly weighted kick found Hill between Jiath and Hardwick at the top of the square. Butler was then at the fall of a stoppage just 20 metres out and as he cruised past the ball ricocheted off him and back into the hands of Paddy Ryder (in a St Kilda jumper), who curled it through for his second (I might be kind crediting Butler’s involvement here). Butler and Steele nailed set shots from no angle. At the other end, Mitchell Lewis at one stage had 1.5, which had a lot to with Hawthorn taking shots out wide. We were denying the Hawks space in the corridor and any movement off half-back was stilted. Howard hasn’t been at his best this year but together with Lienert, Wilkie and Battle we have a tough defence to crack. Either side of half-time the Hawks kicked five behinds in their last real look. We replied with a run of misses in the third ourselves (it would have been great for NWM to kick that set shot) but it only delayed the inevitable. The Saints were humming.

***

Jack Steele is gradually returning to Jack Steele 2021 Mode. He kicked a goal in the first quarter from a strong mark on the lead (a proper running, full-chested lead, not a Max King ambient separation) and would be filthy with himself for not converting a second in the third quarter. He is assuming the role of captain again in the way he is playing and the way is with his teammates. He pulled Paddy aside after the Will Day bump and Paddy giving away a 50-metre penalty that ended with a Hawks goal, and gave him a very considered one-on-one talking-to to refocus him. As per the St Kilda Football Club (1873-present), of course the AFL decided to overcorrect after fluffing their lines with Tim English and gave Paddy two weeks. I’m sure the prosecution will argue that Paddy should have welcomed Day running directly into him. There’s no conspiracy, but of course it would be St Kilda in this situation.

We relied almost exclusively on Steele, Ross, Crouch and Gresham at centre bounces this week. Windhager had a handy post-car crash debut and was the only other midfielder to attend a centre bounce (only six for the day). Crouch was fantastic again, leading all comers with seven tackles and generated eight clearances, while Ross played some of his best footy in years. There was no Jack Sinclair at centre bounces this week; instead, he did the damage in open play, darting off half-back and up to half-forward, delivering multiple perfect passes to Membrey and Max, including an intercept in the middle of the ground (after a comedic Brad Hill stumble) and a deft running kick on the outside of his boot to Max (who set up the recovered Hill with the next kick) that elicited an audible “Oh!” from the crowd. Maybe Champion Data was onto something when they rated him “elite” on the eve of the 2018 season (and did so again earlier this year). Wearing a famous number (with a career-best 35 touches to match) and a wild mullet, he’s motored into fan favouritism and the wider footy consciousness.

Gresham went from a 32-possession game last week to a 20-possession, four-goal game, including setting up goals for Max and Hill in the last quarter. He’s been getting better every week this year and we now have a midfielder that can accumulate possessions and kick goals. Nick Dal Santo described him as our Petracca or Dusty equivalent (nearly eight years later for the former). His work in the midfield is a big reason why Sinclair can start off half-back and Hill can go forward at the moment. So much that needed to change on the run after Round 1 has done so. Gresham, King, Crouch, Steele, Sinclair, Butler, Battle, Lienert (there’s something about the SANFL, the Saints, and composure at the moment), Ross, D-Mac, Ryder and Hill, all in different ways, have been part of it.

Last week Brad Crouch finally played the kind of game through which St Kilda fans could get attached to him. This week it was Brad Hill’s turn. He’s had a few games where he’s racked up some decent numbers and has created a lot from behind the ball, but these had been littered with too many moments that frustrated (see several dropped marks under heat, multiple scrubbed kicks). On Sunday he played a game that showed tangible, more immediate results for his work: 23 disposals, nine marks, five inside 50s, and yes, four goals; excellent reading for anyone in any position. It’s obviously not the only reason we’re playing this way but his move forward during the third quarter last week directly coincided with this team’s turnaround.

***

It felt as though the stadium was expecting a big last quarter from Max from the moment Sinclair honoured the 35 on his back with a perfectly weighted chip kick into his path near 50. Max kept up his good long-range record this year and then Butler repeated the Sinclair dose a couple of minutes later with a near-identical kick to a near-identical position, except this time Max had held space on his opponent who was caught goalside and he simply stepped towards Butler.

Max finished with a career-high 17 touches, took 11 marks and dropped a few that he could have taken, but his threat draws multiple defenders and he brings the ball to ground at the very least. He’s never beaten in a contest. He was the target in three entries in the last quarter that ended with goals, including drawing an extra defender from Ben Long’s entry to the top of the square and that allowed Membrey to stay down on his own and snap his fourth goal from close range.

Admission: I haven’t yet come to fully enjoy watching Max King because my first thought is always “Please don’t do your knee”. Yes, that obviously stems from the time he literally did his knee but it’s also renewed Ben King-induced anxiety, as well as the fact that this is the St Kilda Football Club and history proves we’re simply not allowed to enjoy any things (don’t get me started on Gresh and Paddy’s respective Achilles). Prior to the Buddy 1000 game, Tom Browne suggested Sydney go after Max King, and we do have form offloading big forwards to the Swans for big results (their first Grand Final in 51 years, and then their first premiership in 72 years), so there’s that to worry about in the future too I guess. Either way, I just hope no one touches him, ever.

For the first time in years – probably since the prime of Nick Riewoldt – we again have a player whose presence we all anticipate ahead of the ball. You can hear the crowd volume rise as the ball goes into attack, the collective sound of thousands of people exclaiming “Max King!” Party time really began as soon as Max kicked the first of the final term. Another seven goals, three of them his, and a hand in nearly all of them. Every forward foray looked dangerous. One of the better moments of hte year was Max bringing the ball to ground, chasing after it low down and handballing to NWM hard up against the boundary; NWM spun away from Scrimshaw and gave off to Gresham, who feigned a kick and stepped inside CJ and snapped his fourth. Max has become the de facto standard-bearer for the best parts of this team.

Max’s last was probably everyone’s favourite, simply for the theatre of Butler running down CJ (who had to wear a lot in defence), and Gresham kicking to Max by himself near the top of the goal square in front of the Saints end. Everyone could enjoy the flight of the footy on the way to his hands for the day’s crowning moment (he’d had a similar moment a few minutes earlier but dropped the footy, then gathered the ball and kicked it on the full). Max was there again a minute later to compete in the air for the ball that ended up with Gresham and then Hill for his fourth on the run, and a bit of well-earned Me Time with the crowd.

For the third week in a row, Max fucking King.

***

We’ve kicked 32.14 to 11.13 since halfway through the third quarter against the Tigers. Sunday was our highest score since Round 23, 2016, when Roo was wearing the number 12 and kicked nine goals and took 21 marks. Sunday equalled our 69-point win over the Hawks last year (and this one was topped and tailed by the Hawks kicking the first two and the last two goals), to share the title of our biggest win since the 71-point win over the Blues just a few weeks earlier than that last game of 2016. Courtesy of Swamp, this was the first time since Round 12 in 2016 that a team had four players kick four goals (that was Fremantle against Brisbane). The previous time before that was…Hawthorn against St Kilda at the MCG in Round 7 of 2014, when we managed to lose by 145 points on a slippery day, and that was a week after coming within a kick of going 4-2 to start Richo’s tenure.

Sunday felt a combination of Rounds 4 and 5 of 2019. Round 4 of that year was the last time we went 3-1, with a win over Hawthorn, before a remarkable win over Melbourne at the MCG the following week that had us equal top of the ladder. There was a shift in media narrative then, too. Gerard said on that Monday what we were doing was “sustainable”, and The Age called us “the story of the year”. Richo was sacked 12 weeks later.

***

Absolutely nothing beats a day game at the MCG. Our home ground is a Concrete TV studio, where games of footy are filmed on what amounts to a stage with professional lighting and sound (too much of it). At the MCG you see and feel the change in daylight as the game evolves throughout the course of an afternoon. No matter the weather, you feel like you’ve been somewhere. And there is nothing like an MCG crowd in full appreciation of a St Kilda team. The last time that genuinely happened might have been the 2010 Preliminary Final. It was a fitting result in our first outing in front of the Shane Warne Stand.

This was also the first time since 2016 that we heard The Fable Singers after a win at the MCG. It appears the club has listened (after four years) and made the change back to using the original version at all grounds (The Fable Singers was used in Perth as well). It feels like some order has been restored, and it was almost nostalgic to hear it at a day game at the MCG with crowds in all the stands. There’s a cheeky thrill in entertaining the idea of whether the Saints are back, too (but let’s not get too cheeky).

COVID made a mockery of “there’s always next week”, and Putin is threatening “there’s always next year”. What absolute decadence to sit in the open air of the MCG on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Melbourne and watch the Saints win.

Round 3, 2022
St Kilda 6.2, 8.4, 11.8, 18.9 (117)
Richmond 6.4, 10.5, 12.6, 13.6 (84)
Crowd: 31,933 at Docklands, Sunday, April 3rd at 3.20pm

St Kilda Messianism has just entered its newest phase.

I had written in my pre-match notes “Max and Higgins aren’t going to bail us out every week.” Well, well, well. (I’d also written, “Higgins this year is just as likely to kick four behinds as four goals”, so the reverse mozz didn’t quite fully work).

We’d all raved about Max and Snags last week, with Josh Battle thrown in for good measure, and Josh got the AFL.com.au feature treatment. Speaking of mozzes (reverse and otherwise), I know we need CONTENT ALL THE TIME and there’s a lot of features flying around these days, but I did immediately recall the Robert Walls’ glowing feature article in The Age about Brent Guerra following his seven goals in Round 9, 2004 and which effectively spelled the end of his better form for the Saints.

Maddie’s Match has been the only real “marquee” game we’ve had some ownership of. We did occupy the season opener in all of 2005, ‘06, and ‘07, and we all prefer to forget Good Friday 2018. (New Zealand was literally a whole different country altogether). We’ve had only the very occasional prime time game in recent years. As Rory noted, Maddie’s match 2017 remains probably the only real prime timer with something on the line that this generation of Saints has won (outside of Round 18, 2020 against the Giants and then the Elimination Final, and even then you could argue that was all off-Broadway). Sure, this was “only” a Sunday 3.20 game on Channel 7 (a look over the highlights reveals Matt Hill calling; the Saints would storm home from the turn to finish two lengths in front) but we needed to make up for our Live and Free Friday night debacle against the Pies in the season opener.

COVID unfortunately appears to have put an end to the purple jumpers. We went from what should have been the most spectacular version in 2020 – a purple hot cross bun – to now just purple socks (proudly pulled up by Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda now. I don’t know if you know this.). The flourishes on the new scoreboards and lighting system at the Concrete Dome balanced out the lack of purple on the jumper, but it’s a shame that touch has gone.

***

Daylight Savings finished on Saturday night, meaning clocks turned back from 3am to 2am. Please also adjust your body clocks further for the day ending mid-afternoon when you walk into the Concrete Dome because the roof’s shut for no particular reason and we’re sitting in artificial lighting.

After Round 1 we were lamenting that nothing had been learned over the off-season. We were set for another year of the gap between our best and worst being as wide as the gap between the fence and the boundary at Waverley. Last week during the second quarter I wondered whether or not we were the worst-placed team in the competition; at 3.21pm on Sunday I uttered the words “Clarkson 2023” to Dad and Matt sitting next to me in Row S. Five handballs out of the middle and Tigers had a trademark goal on the board in 19 seconds, and then a handball and a long kick from Bolton out of the middle made it two goals from 34 seconds of play (and that’s including the time it took for the goal umpire to signal).

Never mind the discussion of whether we’d gone into this one too tall, or how much a freshly-injured Dan Hannebery had cost us over the past few years. We’d barely sat down and enjoyed the team running out to The Fable Singers when for the third time in three weeks our season was facing its mortality. It was really fortunate that we had reliable pressure forward and set shot goal kicker *checks notes* Callum Wilkie ready to pounce on a wayward kick across the face to steady things early. The first quarter then turned into a bruise-free football shoot-out. Six goals each and a quarter-time scoreline barely heard of since the 2000s. The Richmond/St Kilda Trade Union of small forwards had got to work: Butler had a couple, Snags had one after a dashing run through the middle and well-weighted kick from Sinclair, and Matty Parker had a couple (just like pre-COVID times).

The thing is, regardless of where you think Richmond will finish this year, they just looked better, right from the time Liam Baker swept onto Gresham’s handball at the game’s opening bounce. The way they move the ball is almost hypnotic. Spent force or not, their system is more finely-tuned. Their players are more responsive with and without the ball. The yellow Sherrin moves almost on its own. Richmond players merely guide it forward and to dangerous positions using their hands and boots and bodies. Once they strung together a couple of possessions in a row and the ball got moving there was little we could do about it. The opening was ominous enough. They kept it going with the Baker, Ross, Ralphsmith, Ross handball combination along the wing, ending with a Shai Bolton flick up to Lynch for a goal. They pounced on anything slightly rogue, from the opening bounce to the Mason Wood spoil near full-back that was instantly turned into a goal by Parker.

It’s not just chaos footy all the time, either. In the second quarter, Nankervis picked up a spilled ball on the boundary and handballed to Baker, who in a second sized up a forward 50 entry and then split traffic going for a short central option in Edwards instead. Edwards didn’t need to wait before any movement ahead emerged and found Bolton on the lead. Absolutely no fuss.

It was those kinds of moments that made it feel like a matter of time before Richmond broke the game apart. Paddy Ryder, in a St Kilda jumper, was giving our mids the best service they’d had since, well, he last played. But the Tigers were more dangerous across the ground. Here I’m using Nick Riewoldt’s “Eyeball” test, i.e. “They were just better.” It’s not going to hold up in court, but it was holding up from Row S. The lead was gradually inching beyond two goals. Soldo at back of the square, short to Dow, out wide to Graham, on the lead to Castagna. Long set shot kick for a goal. Easy.

We were barely hanging on. An excellent moment from Rowan Marshall kept us in it – a strong mark on the lead on the wing and a perfect low kick to Membrey and King. They raffled it with Membrey the winner; he popped up at a few very crucial times with goals and defensive efforts when we were up against it.

Gresham was providing his much-heralded Point of Difference in the midfield on his way to what was probably a career-best game (he’s liked playing Richmond over the journey) and Ratten made the in-game call early in the third – Gresham was doing enough to allow Sinclair (perhaps our best in the early part of this year) to spend more time off half-back, while Brad Hill would spend more time in the front half. Hill only had six possessions at half-time including a kick-out that went straight to McIntosh, and the return entry fell to Parker for his third. Hill was absolutely hating footy when he gave up a soft ball in the goal square to Nankervis for a soccer goal, and then at the other end a couple of minutes later his scrubbed left-foot kick grazed the inside of the goal post.

***

Cam noted in the comments last week that we’d only played two good quarters in the first two games and still sat at 1-1. There was good and bad in that; we’d gotten away with a win, all things considered, but the fickle 2021 Saints were still here. Round 3 is probably when you can start identifying trends, and one difference emerged on Sunday: this 2022 version is made of sterner stuff. A 34-point deficit against Collingwood was reeled back, and the slow start in Perth reeled in, where in previous years both games would have turned ugly. Richmond threatened to blow us off the park. Halfway through the third quarter it would have made a lot more sense for Richmond to be the team to kick 10 in a row.

Avid watchers who have followed On the Couch to the 6.30pm time slot will have seen this week’s show highlight Membrey’s gut running defensive effort to hold up Broad as Richmond were coming out of defence at this point in the match. It gave Sinclair enough time to press over and spoil Parker and then knock the ball on, and to give Ross the opportunity to win a contested ball running head-on into Broad. He took the footy and gave off a quick handball to Membrey, who started running the other way with the ball; a give off to Gresham, a catapault throw missed by the umpire to Hill, to Brad Crouch for an excellent composed goal. A dangerous Richmond attack with a 25-point margin had been halted. The reaction from the crowd was more of relief than that we were still in the game than St Kilda having just willed themselves to the beginning of a 10-goal streak. 

Matt has mentioned a few times that Brad Crouch hasn’t yet ingratiated himself to St Kilda fans. A lot of that has to do with the type of game he plays – he accumulates possessions consistently and without too much flashy stuff. On the one-year anniversary of his debut, he played a game that supporters couldn’t ignore – 11 clearances and nine tackles, including a pressure effort early in the third when the game really was on the line, and the goal to boot. His big body created chaos against a Richmond midfield missing its best. Jack Steele finally had a well-rounded support crew humming.

***

There’s something about our third quarters in 2022. In Round 1, we went on a 5.6 to 0.0 run (including an early last quarter goal), and then last week’s third quarter yielded a run of 5.3 to 0.2. This week, it sparked a 10.4 to 0.0 run (spoiled by a pokey Dougal out on the full in the last 15 seconds). It was yet another fascinating momentum shift this year in broader AFL landscape. Something was going around this week alone: Adelaide’s heady finish on Friday, Geelong kicking the last eight in overwhelming Collingwood – who themselves had kicked nine out of 10 – while Carlton kicked eight out of the first 10 and the Hawks kicked seven of the last eight.

Why does it take a game turning to custard before the players pull their finger out? Sunday probably wasn’t a Marvel thing. We all thought Dimma’s comments about the Tigers and Marvel last year were a little bit funny because we knew they weren’t on their way to yet another premiership, and we’d only won four of our last 10 at the Concrete Disney Store ourselves. Three years after Simon Lethlean declared we were the fittest team in the comp and we’ll “run teams off their legs”, perhaps we really have something to show for the pre-season under new head of performance and conditioning Nick Walsh. Richmond has now faded from two games in three weeks.

But what did we actually do well? It’s hard to reconcile the gap between Richmond’s best and our best. When Richmond is switched on I look at them and think, “Ah, yes, that’s what a good football team looks like. I remember now.” We’re not quite as structured around the ball – it seems as though our guys are left to their own devices to win contests more than other teams. But we outworked and outran them. We outlasted them. The passage that led to Crouch’s goal was an excellent example, and you could follow that right through to the last of the 10-goal streak. A fast tackle from Brad Hill on McIntosh at the throw-in, Steele out to NWM with a quick kick forward; Butler was out of position but created the contest against Jayden Short, and as the ball was knocked out both Hill and NWM had already run ahead to meet the contest. NWM gathered the ball and gave it off to Butler, who had sprung back up, and gave off to Membrey who found Hayes, who had sprinted forward.

The midfield was a different beast. This game did nothing to dispel the notion that a 34-year-old ruckman carrying an Achilles problem might be our most important player (Spoiler alert: It’s Paddy Ryder, who plays for St Kilda). But Gresham has added speed and agility in the middle (his cat-like pounce and turn on the ground and then follow-up knock at the start of the final quarter helped set up King’s first), and Sinclair has been there with him helping to reshape this midfield. Crouch has found some excellent form, Ross had some great moments around the footy in one of his better games for a long time, and Steele is gradually returning to his best (and he’s still among our best anyway).

Until we’d had the game won the first two goals were in the back of my mind. What if we’d lost the game in the first 34 seconds? We’d spent our petrol tickets against Collingwood getting back to parity. This ended up being a mash-up of the first two games. It looked like we were heading for a carbon copy of the Pies game with an early goal in the last quarter (courtesy of Max King marking the centre clearance with his legs) to put us in front, following a third-quarter rush that kept the game alive for another half-hour at least. (Membrey had run in on an angle to put us in front but missed late in the third with a weak banana kick that some of Higgins’ Round 1 misses). The first echo of Fremantle came a few minutes later when Max rose in the pocket among four players to bring down the Ben Long kick, landed lightly and scooted off and snapped his second goal. He was on his way.

***

For the second week in a row, Max had spent much of the game in virtual anonymity. Last week it was two disposals at half-time, before three goals in a few minutes in the third and what proved to be the sealer late. This week, it was six touches and a behind to three-quarter time, before four goals from six shots.

Grimes going down certainly helped. But the forward line was functioning differently with the way the team was playing higher up the ground. His second goal came from one of the more thrilling passages of recent Saints Footy; Sinclair working into space out wide out of defence, a neat quick kick to Hill and then to Long, both of whom had worked ahead of their opponents. Long went long, and Max rose.

Max had more space to work in with this type of movement and once he got separation on Tarrant and Gibcus and a half-decent delivery there was nothing anyone could do. Long, Membrey, Paton, Gresham and Steele all obliged through the quarter. Like I said last week, he doesn’t need to make barnstorming leads and mark the ball at full pace on his chest, Plugger-style. He simply finds space and calmly receives the ball from the air.

Footy is heavily reliant on system. It means a lot of goals are from low-risk situations, usually closer to goal. The rush that comes with mercurial solo efforts in all parts of the ground are rare now. There is a joy to seeing Max take a mark on the 50 metre-line, on a tough angle, and for him to turn his back on the play and take the responsibility to kick the goal. He did it again a couple of minutes later on a sharper angle when he won a holding free-kick, and shut the door. After 1.3 in the first game at this ground he could so easily have dropped his head, let alone the first half last week, and the first three quarters on Sunday. Instead he was backing himself in to be the matchwinner when the game was on the line.

He’s only 41 games in and this is the St Kilda Football Club after all, so I’m not going to call anything yet. But it is such a thrill (that word again) to watch someone from the side you barrack for play in this way. We were spoilt for choice in the 1990s and 2000s for these types of players; not so much in the 2010s. Few have promised great things ahead. And it is that much more special knowing he playing for the club he grew up loving.

While we’re feeling good, special mentions have to go to Mason Wood, who played one of his best games (to go with Gresham and Crouch). His goal from a step outside 50 came when we needed a moment of brilliance and helped get the run on, and he moved very well through traffic to have a hand in multiple goals. Ben Long too, who was thrust into the game kicked two goals from uncompromising attack on the opposition. Also, NWM for some of the cleanest possessions in a Saints jumper in years. His 40-metre bullet pass inboard to Rowan Marshall out of defence in the last few minutes was itself a small victory lap for the day. D-Mac has found himself.

The last quarter saw 7.1 from 14 inside 50s. Max could have made it more from his six shots. It took inside 50s efficiency for the game to 55% compared the Tigers’ 35%. Watching on the replay the light show makes it look like there’s a constant power failure at the ground after every St Kilda goal. (Sure, we kicked a lot of goals but that’s not enough to short an entire stadium’s lighting system.)

Anyway, Max fucking King.

***

The last time St Kilda won a match with the final scoreline of 117-84 was Round 22 of 1997 against Port Adelaide. It was the last game of the home and away season and secured top spot on the ladder on the way to the Grand Final loss. Last week was a 65-55 scoreline; the only time we’d won with that was in 1913, another Grand Final year (there have been only seven). So the omens tell us we’re on track to lose another. Otherwise, the last time we went 2-1 was 2019, and we played Hawthorn in Round 4 then too, and that season saw our coach get sacked.

***

St Kilda turned 149 years old this week. Congratulations / Happy Birthday to all who celebrate. Or sorry that happened. There’s a whole lot more to commiserate over the journey. But footy is a week-to-week proposition. When the darkness descends early again and the wind starts to bite a little, you revel in 10 goals in a row and Max King kicking four in the last quarter, and the Saints going 2-1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four goals in just over nine minutes.

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

Five goals in 12 minutes.

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

* 1913#AFLFreoSaints

— Gigs (@AndrewGigacz) March 27, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s just us now.

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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