Red, White And Black

Round 10, 2021
Western Bulldogs 3.5, 10.10, 15.13, 21.18 (144)
St Kilda 2.0, 3.1, 4.2, 5.3 (33)
Crowd: Reciprocal, at Marvel Stadium, Saturday, May 2th at 7.25pm

A DM landed in my Twitter inbox late on Saturday afternoon. 

“Rory, you can say no, but would you like to write this week’s report?” 

I was keen, so I replied, “I’ll do it. How many words, what’s the tone?” 

My internal monologue said, “I’m not a professional writer! I can’t write like Tom and Lethal.” 

A reply came back, “try for 1500 words – and make it cathartic”. 

After the game I considered a Bart Simpson-esque blackboard gag of writing, “We are crap”, five hundred times – but didn’t think that would cut the mustard for my blogatorial debut. 

This will be like something out of the movie, Inception (where the follower and fan becomes the content writer), so here goes. 

It was a reciprocal home game for the Saints, but I quickly realised that this does not equal a commensurate home game. While I was interstate for work, I got an email from the club at 9:30 the night before tickets went on sale for this game. Lack of organisational time meant I was destined to be watching the game at home. 

I’d heard of mates with Level 2 Premium reserved seats instead being offered nosebleed tickets on Level 3, or they could purchase another Level 2 ticket for $70 in the General Sale purchase window – reciprocal, not commensurate. 

This negative worked in my favour. Instead of a cold May night at the Concrete Disney Store, I was at home with the heater on, watching on delay. A kid’s party earlier in the afternoon spilled into the early evening. My snack of choice for the evening was leftover mini-vanilla cupcakes, with swirled blue and pink icing, dusted with edible glitter. 

The pre-game build up during the week for two teams who played finals last year was measly – probably representative of second playing eleventh. A highlight was the celebration of Josh Battle’s 50th game. Josh is playing like an early 00s Brendon Goddard (without the terrible haircut) – he’s fifty games into his career, and after two coaches and four years of development, they are still trying to figure out which position best suits him. 

Losing RoMa (again) to a foot injury (again) brought in McKernan – again, this was definitely reciprocal, not commensurate. Geary came into the side for his first game of the year to add some on-field leadership. This was on display early with an intercept mark in defence, whilst his now-regular Dogs’ opponent, Caleb Daniel, started on the bench. 

This was always going to be a clash between the much-vaunted Dogs’ midfield (actually missing a few vaunts), and the Saints’ ruck combo of Ryder and the reciprocal McKernan. So to hear the call from the umpires of, “No St Kilda”, in the ruck a few times early was just a bit weird.

It was a rough start to the game, with the first six shots at goal resulting in four behinds to Dogs, and the Saints kicking one out of bounds on the full and one reciprocal McKernan shank. Watching on replay, this was unbelievable for an AFL footballer.

Soon one of the many, many Dogs’ mids, Libba, kicked a good goal on the run. 

The Saints came back with a quick reply from Membrey, who took a strong contested mark from a long Clark Inside 50 kick. 

Billings, Clark and Hill were all busy early, and, when we got going, we kicked accurately – but the Dogs took an eleven point lead into quarter time after one of those, “what was that fifty for?” moments. 

The Dogs started to kick away early in the second with their midfield getting on top. 

Then it got ugly. 

Goal after goal after goal from the Dogs, taking the half time margin to fifty one points. It resembled the Saints of earlier this year against Richmond, Essendon and Port Adelaide. Heads dropped, the margin seemed insurmountable, so just give up. 

The first goal after half time went to the reciprocal McKernan, who had been present all game, but had failed with execution on numerous occasions. 

But all was lost… 

Halfway through the third it was twenty three scoring shots to six, and the margin was fifty four points. It could have, and should have been, a lot bigger. The Dogs sliced the Saints up with precision disposal by precision players. In the end it blew out, both in number of scoring shots and margin. 

The highlight of the third quarter was a scuffle in front of the reciprocal Saints’ home end (aka the Bulldogs’ cheer squad end). Clark dumped Weightman in the back, Weightman responded with a tap on the chest, which resulted in another fifty to the Dogs, with Weightman kicking the goal. There was no Saints’ player on the mark, as they were all still involved in the scuffle. 

Last week Ratts had questioned why bother tackling if you are not going to be rewarded. Players took this literally, with only thirty six tackles to three quarter time. It was great to see Ratts backing King in during the week though (ten marks, six shots on goal, in my mind, deserved a coaches vote or two for the Geelong game), whereas the Saints of old would have dumped a young player under the pump to Sandy. 

Unfortunately, King responded with the most recalcitrant performance of his career, taking a mark late in the game to the unnecessary Bronx cheers of the crowd. 

At this stage, I must mention Josh Bruce, so here’s me mentioning Josh Bruce. That’s all I have time for (for him, or for the word count). 

The Bulldogs’ development showed significantly in this game, with Hannan, Weightman, Dale, R Smith and co prominent throughout the game. All have been through the Footscray VFL system, whereas we still tinker with the Sandy arrangement (read: an away jumper that is a Saints’ jumper, with a block of Arial font that says “SANDY”). Ten years later, when every other team is now seeing the value of investing in their own VFL / development system….debt sucks!

Butler, Lonie and Higgins went missing again (again). Clearly the three of them can’t be played in the same team at the moment, but who comes in? The calls of “play the kids” will come, but we really have only four “kids” playing at Sandy, (a result of trading away draft picks) – Allison, Clav, Coff and Connolly. 

None of these are really medium/small forwards. Allison was recruited as a forward, and is playing down back and on the wing to learn his craft, and rightly so. And we are playing the kids, with Byrnes having his best game of his fledgling career against the Dogs and Bytel stringing games together without being mysteriously dropped to Sandy or starting as the medical sub. Calls will come to play Dunstan because of his numbers in the VFL, but this is not a numbers game, as he can’t seem to elevate his game to an AFL level. Calls will come to draft Nathan Freeman in the mid-season draft, but he did his time at the Saints, and in the system, and he is not the answer. 

We are clearly suffering from prime-time fatigue. Up on the big stage, and a big loss again (again). Seven showed highlights of the 2009 Preliminary Final before the game, and that seems a lifetime ago now. Gee beating the Dogs in the 2020 Elimination Final seems a lifetime ago. 

Unfortunately, injuries have been staining our year with Clark, Geary, Frawley and Hill all suffering various forms of injury during the game. We have the depth to put a team on the park, but it’s really starting to show. 

Sinclair and Byrnes were the only highlights in a horror performance, the fourth capitulation of the year. Our biggest loss under Ratts, our biggest loss at the Concrete Disney Store, our biggest loss to the Dogs – and our first one hundred point loss since 2016. 

Mixing metaphors, when the heat is on, the tough get going, and the Saints capitulate. 

Where to from here?

The season isn’t over, but it’s over. We have two off Broadway home games, then a Saturday night game against Adelaide in sunny (reciprocal) Cairns. Noosa to Cairns is further than Noosa to Melbourne, so I’m not exactly sure how we’re rewarding our Queensland fans for everything they did for us in 2020. We’re definitely rewarding the coffers.

Methinks the Dogs game will be the last prime time game we have on Seven for a little while. Advantage AFL for the floating fixture, for which they blame COVID, but have been wanting to implement for years. It’s here to stay. 

Earlier this year my Dad (a longer suffering Saints fan than me, who, as a 16-year-old, missed the 66 Grand Final as he was in synagogue on the Day of Atonement), apologised for making me and my brothers barrack for the Saints. He’s 70 now, and I think he believes he won’t see us win a premiership in his lifetime. I’m starting to believe him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

“Guys, we’re going to do this.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2 – Jack Sinclair
2 – Brad Hill
2 – Zak Jones
2 – Jack Higgins
1 – Dougal Howard
1 – Brad Crouch

12 – Jack Steele
9 – Dougal Howard
8 – Tim Membrey
5 – Hunter Clark
4 – Jack Higgins
4 – Seb Ross
4 – Jack Sinclair
3 – Nick Coffield
3 – Jade Gresham
2 – Brad Crouch
2 – Zak Jones
2 – Max King
2 – Rowan Marshall
1 – Jack Billings
1 – Jack Bytel
1 – Tom Highmore
3 – Brad Hill
1 – Jack Lonie
1 – Daniel Mackenzie
1 – Callum Wilkie

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

2 – Hunter Clark
2 – Dougal Howard
2 – Seb Ross
2 – Rohan Marshall
1 – Jack Steele
1 – Callum Wilkie

Progressive totals

12 – Jack Steele
8 – Dougal Howard
8 – Tim Membrey
5 – Hunter Clark
4 – Seb Ross
3 – Nick Coffield
3 – Jade Gresham
2 – Brad Crouch
2 – Jack Higgins
2 – Max King
2 – Rowan Marshall
2 – Jack Sinclair
1 – Jack Billings
1 – Jack Bytel
1 – Tom Highmore
1 – Brad Hill
1 – Jack Lonie
1 – Daniel Mackenzie
1 – Callum Wilkie

3 – Hunter Clark
3 – Nick Coffield
2 – Jack Steele
2 – Jack Sinclair

Progressive totals

11 – Jack Steele
8 – Tim Membrey
6 – Dougal Howard
3 – Jade Gresham
3 – Hunter Clark
2 – Jack Sinclair
2 – Seb Ross
2 – Max King
2 – Jack Higgins
2 – Nick Coffield
2 – Brad Crouch
1 – Jack Billings
1 – Jack Bytel
1 – Tom Highmore
1 – Brad Hill
1 – Jack Lonie
1 – Daniel Mackenzie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

I left at three-quarter time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Note: I will update with accumulative totals later.

2 – Jack Steele
2 – Max King
2 – Brad Crouch
1 – Brad Hill
1 – Jack Billings
1 – Jack Bytel
1 – Daniel McKenzie