Red, White And Black

Never has the football maxim “a week is a long time in football” rung truer in my ears.

‘Tis three nights after the Saints unexpectedly, and stylishly, toppled the much-fancied Carlton, and the football media is still giddy with the heights that the side reached and has thus anointed them as contenders in 2012. The term ‘flavour of the month’, has surely been replaced by ‘flavour of the week’?

Granted, it was one of the side’s most satisfying victories in recent times, despite playing in countless significant battles over the last three or four seasons. The victory was sparked by some of the sides newest faces, and gave the fans a glimpse into the full potential of how well some of these players could play in the new setup that Scott Watters has implemented.

But that was it.

A glance at the current ladder will show you the logjam that fills up the majority of it. Two wins separate first and tenth – who are last years premiers, by the way – with the Saints in the thick of it, sitting in eighth. They return to the ledger should they succumb to a strengthened West Coast outfit on Sunday, with the Swans up next in round nine.

Monday night’s exciting performance was a glimpse; but contenders are not born on glimpses. “We are what we repeatedly do” is what Aristotle once muttered, and it still applies.

So before we all start getting Milera printed on our foreheads, calling our babies Ahmed, or getting Rhys Stanley’s haircut, let’s take a deep breath and take in the task that lay ahead for these new kids on the block.

The Saints got the better of the vaunted Blues engine room last week. Clint Jones put the clamps on Marc Murphy, whilst the combined efforts of Lenny Hayes, Jack Steven and the forgotten Farren Ray outshone even the great Chris Judd. This week though, the challenge does not get any easier in the midfield. Though a fitness cloud still sits over the Eagles premier clearance man Matt Priddis, they regain Daniel Kerr, Adam Selwood and Nic Natanui. Again, the midfield battle will be crucial. Scott Watters loves using the word “opportunity”; the strength of the West Coast midfield presents their Saints counterparts with perhaps the best chance to properly whip it’s faithful into a song and dance about their prospects this year.

So far the ruck triumvirate of Jason Blake, Justin Koschitzke and Rhys Stanley has done a good job at masquerading as a decent ruck unit. Going up against Dean Cox and Nic Natanui definitely presents the trio with its most difficult assignment to date. On the wide expanses of Patersons Stadium it will be interesting to see if Blake and Stanley in particular can be useful around the ground and curb their counterparts influence.

Despite having a well-documented lack of leg speed in recent years, the Saints have a surprisingly good record in Perth, having won three of their last four battles there against the Eagles. West Coast though, with their rise to power over 2011, have now only been beaten once in their last fifteen encounters on their home turf. It’s a daunting task for anyone; can the side’s newbies stand up at the ground dubbed the ‘House of Pain’?

It is that term, the ‘House of Pain’, which convinces me that Jimmy Gwilt should not make his long-awaited return this week. Jimmy’s precise delivery and composure in the back 50 would be a great addition to the team’s back six, but I don’t think it’s wise to include a guy returning from a knee reconstruction at a ground that has witnessed many horrendous injuries.

Fortunately, the likes of Tom Simpkin, Sean Dempster, and Sam Gilbert have held the fort down back very well, and against bigger bodies. Quentin Lynch and Jack Darling will present them with sizable challenges this week. To borrow a line from every coach league – it will be about the team defense though, and stopping the supply to said forward beasts.

And on that note, though the side has aspired to being much more free flowing in  attack, to this point they have done so without losing the ability to reduce the oppositions scoring opportunities. This will again be critical on Sunday. We have seen Lyon’s cage work just as effectively on the wide expanses of Patersons Stadium as it did at the Dome; will Scott Watters high defensive press adapt as well?

Though they are a relatively young club, West Coast is a proud one; it has been very successful in a short time. They will be smarting big time after being smacked off their perch by quasi rival Essendon. The Bombers did not hoodwink the Eagles; rather they bombarded them. In the words of The Age’s Rohan Conolly, the Dongs “chased, harassed, and tackled with the sort of relish the Eagles had been used to inflicting on others”. No doubt the Saints will have noted this pressure as being a key to clipping the Eagles wings. Essendon limited the Eagles to 41 inside 50s, limiting any chance for their weakened forward line to excel. Interestingly, one of the constants of the 2012 Saints so far has been their ability to reduce the oppositions inside 50 count. Should this continue on Sunday then they will give themselves a say in the end result.

The one thing that really lit the fire of Saints fans, and made the conquering of the Blues outstanding, was the aplomb with which the side was able to score and those who carried out these tasks. Twenty-seven scoring shots from 47 inside 50s, 11 goal scorers, 12 goals from general play. It was great to watch – I don’t know if I’ve said that genuinely for at least five years. On top of this, to glance across the BEST section and see the likes of Ray, Milera, Steven and co. present, was very refreshing; the same names are there so often.

We have become accustomed to seeing the likes of Carlton and Essendon relentlessly try to outrun and gun the Saints in recent years. The West Coast team changes hint at John Worsfold trying similar tactics. As aforementioned the Eagles seriously got slapped around in the midfield last week, and with the makeshift forwards of John Lycett and Mitch Brown being omitted for the likes of Swift, Stevens and Selwood, the Eagles are out to rectify their midfield woes. With this in mind, it would not surprise me to see Beau Wilkes make way from the Saints extended bench. The Western Australian had little impact against the Blues, so the coaching staff may be tempted to entrust most of the goal scoring tasks to the small forwards given their hot form. That said, on a long ground like Patersons Stadium, losing structure is a common pitfall. My final prediction is for Cripps to be included at Arryn Siposs’ expense. Cripps may not have found himself as an AFL player yet, but he does have speed and has been performing well at VFL level. I’m a big Siposs fan, but his transition into pushing up the ground is still in need of development; currently he does not win enough ball over four quarters to justify his spot.

Priddis versus Hayes, Simpkin on Darling, Dean Cox against Rhys Stanley, Butler on Milne – there are myriad match ups that make this contest a tantalising one.

Last week’s upset win over Carlton confirmed that this group still packs enough of a punch to land some big blows against some of the competitions fiercest competitors. Can they do so on a weekly basis? The words Ross the ex-Boss still echo – the season is a marathon.

So far this year we’ve had one eye fixed on the horizon, but the Blues win brought us back into the present and made us believe that perhaps the future is here in front of us.

Round 7, 2012
St Kilda 5.3,  11.5,  16.6,  19.8 (122)
Carlton 5.1,  8.6,  12.10,  14.14 (98)
Crowd: 38,823 at Etihad Stadium, Monday, May 14th at 7.40pm

I’m expecting a delicious slice of humble pie for dinner tonight (perhaps with my hat as an entrée) after I totally counted out the Saints for last night.

I certainly wasn’t the only one, and this was an upset victory. But I’d written this off as an emphatic seven goal-plus loss with the cushion of “it’s about the kids” to soften the blow.

Nevertheless I dragged myself to the Concrete Dome on a cold Monday night to see what would happen anyway, though part of me was genuinely looking forward to see how the inexperienced guys in Stanley, Milera, Simpkin, Siposs and Saad would hold up against a premiership contender.

The fact the game was being played on Monday night exacerbated my pessimism towards the match an as experience. It was St Kilda’s fourth consecutive appearance in the now-annual Monday night timeslot and the third against the Blues. The first was against Collingwood in 2009 and so featuring at least one of the biggest teams would guarantee the AFL a decent crowd and viewership. As for including the Saints, their supporters have been strung along for nearly every one of the club’s 139 years of existence, so they’ll turn up for anything I guess (as long as there’s a roof over it).

You could be forgiven for thinking the players were coming off a pretty big weekend on the town with the number of comedic skill errors early on. Gilbert was erratic twice early but that’s perhaps par for his course, so it wasn’t until Armo (pre-mummification, so he didn’t have an excuse just yet) handballed straight out of bounds and Jack Steven burnt some grass (after burning Clint Jones) that something seemed up.

I felt worse about the Saints’ prospects when My Favourite Hair in the AFL missed a close-range shot at goal and really demonstrated some displeasure at the state of affairs before Carlton went coast-to-coast at top speed and Simpson finished handsomely. This was the kind of thing I was expecting: the Blues to use their pace and really cut St Kilda open on the rebound (and if not out of the middle).

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One football year ago the Blues stamped out a spirited Saints outfit looking to resurrect their already flatlining season.

That night marked the debut of Arryn Siposs, whose 60-metre bomb late in the game that in the grand scheme of things is one of the more exciting moments of a difficult season.

His debut was part of an ultimately temporary attempt to inject some youth and energy into a side that looked fatigued after the heartbreaking Grand Finals of 2009 and 2010. The first half of the season saw a few games given to each of a raft of youngsters either new or not a part of the established side, including Siposs, Cripps, Ledger, Winmar, Simpkin, Johnson, Archer, Smith, Lynch and Stanley. It didn’t last when the coaches made a late season charge towards finals the priority.

The Blues then were looking to really make an impact come finals after successive Elimination Final exits and were an umpiring decision away from a Preliminary Final. Gibbs, Murphy, Walker and Garlett were coming into their prime and really starting to put together good football consistently, and the forward line was looking very dynamic with Walker, Betts and Garlett creating all sorts of problems. Of course, this was on top of more established players in Judd, Scotland, Carrazzo and Thornton providing quality every week.

A year on and the Blues are dreaming of bigger things. Kreuzer is doing something like what he was promising before hurting his knee in 2010, Robinson, Hampson and Armfield have improved and a strong start to the season suggests they should take out Monday night’s game in good style. Waite will come back in and add another dynamic to the forward line, which will help Betts and Garlett particularly and make life tough for a Fisher-less St Kilda defence.

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Round 6, 2012
St Kilda 3.2,  7.3,  12.7,  13.10 (88)
Hawthorn 3.6,  8.9,  13.11, 18.15 (123)
Crowd: 42,289 at the MCG, Saturday, May 5th at 7.40pm

There was something slightly symbolic about Dean Polo’s helpless effort at touching a dribbling Paul Puopolo shot on goal in the last quarter of last night’s game. It seemed to happen in slow-mo; the ball was well within reach but it never really felt like Polo was up to it. This was virtually a microcosm of the game itself.

The Polo incident occurred with just under nine minutes remaining and put the Hawks up by five goals to effectively snuff-out the Saints flickering chances once and for all. Incidentally, it was answered swiftly by Stephen Milne’s only goal for the night, and one of his few meaningful contributions. Mr 500 had another quiet one on the big stage.

All things considered, I actually really enjoyed the Saints’ valiant effort. I would have laughed at anyone mentioning honorable loss in the last few seasons, but I took a lot out of this one. Sure, there were a lot of scars that the side was still wearing on their sleeve, but in the face of the loss of Ben McEvoy during the week as well as Sam Fisher mid-match (hamstring), the side really took it up to the Hawks. For three quarters they really didn’t take a backwards step. Not in effort anyway.

But that my friends is the rub. Against the teams that matter, in the games that matter, the devil is in the detail. The execution. And over four quarters, good patches of Saints play is still littered with too much trash; too many turnovers. As Brian Taylor described it in the call – fiddles, fombles, fumbles. Not sure what BT’s brain was trying to communicate, but what came out of his gob I took to sum up the Saints’ lousy skills and sloppy ball handling. Watters described it after the Dockers match as “finish”; obviously it is still a glaring deficiency that needs addressing and is preventing the side from moving forward and winning more games.

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All year Saints fans have been umming and ahhing about exactly where this team is at, or where it should be at, or where it will be at come years end. Tonight, against an angry Hawks outfit we may get more of a clear picture.

To this point in the season St Kilda has only really come up against one legitimate team (Fremantle), which is quite worrying when they stand at 3-2. In that Dockers game we saw the team play well only to shoot themselves in the foot via their foot skills and their ball use in general – stop me if you’ve heard that one before! The game, as we touched on at the time, was both terribly frustrating as well as heartening.

With all due respect to Ross Lyon’s men, the Hawks are in a different class. On top of this, they’ve been in the media’s crosshairs after capitulating against the Swans last year, so they are sure to be full of gusto come the first whistle tonight.

Looking past Buddy and Cyril, can the Saints perform against elite opposition without a genuine ruckman? Ben McEvoy is out for four to six weeks. Without exaggerating, this is the most devastating loss to the team possible as the sides ruck stocks were already wafer thin. Luckily, the Hawks don’t possess a Cox, a Natanui or the like, but it’s a big blow nonetheless.

This is the first of a string of very difficult games for the Saints to navigate, but like all the games this year, no matter who the opposition is, it’s another chance to see which of the new (and the old) can stand up and which of them shouldn’t be given a chance to stand up in the future.

Round 5, 2012
Melbourne 4.1, 8.3, 10.6, 10.6 (66)
St Kilda 5.4, 8.5, 10.9, 12.12 (84)
Crowd: 24,798 at the MCG, Saturday, 28th April at 7.40pm

A cold, wet Saturday night at the MCG was never really going to offer us much more than the not-quite-hell the Saints and the Demons put us through.

The home side was a winless outfit that has been playing with all the interest of a VAFA Club XVIII side without the urge to start a fight; the visitors were used to the comforts of the sanitised concrete dome that would more than likely struggle at the first sign of dew on the grass. On top of that, they didn’t seem to be that good this year.

For St Kilda, finishing ahead at game’s end certainly didn’t offer much redemption for the multitude of missed chances that very nearly blew the game for the side. It wasn’t a win eeked out on obviously superior skill, nor paradoxically superior intent; the Demons actually looked like they wanted to be out there. They just happened to do enough and shut the Demons out of the game when it counted.

It was two weeks in a row then that opportunities to create genuine scoreboard pressure went begging for the Saints. The shots missed by Milne, Riewoldt and Nicky Dal in the first half were ghastly, with Big Beau Wilkes and Big Rhys Stanley having to mop up the mess. If it was any half-decent side as the opposition then the Saints would have put been really made to pay. They were eight days previous.

My Dad and I plonked ourselves on the wing in the MCC Members’ section with the other 30 people that decided to turn up. Regardless of the poor weather, it was probably what should have been expected. Melbourne’s fans have every excuse to not bother for a while (would they anyway?) and St Kilda’s won’t turn up if there isn’t a roof. True to form, we watched the second quarter in the Bullring once the rain really started. Either way, this game was going to take at least a drink or two to get through.

Having spent a couple of weeks in Cambodia and Thailand my Dad had finally made it to his first live match for the season. He’s seen enough in his time that the excitement of “the first game of the season” has surely worn off; the hopes of new seasons, let alone the hopes of new eras, have only held so much for this club. This was a microcosm of years of false dawns and empty promises.

Saturday night really echoed the Port Adelaide farce in Round One, when true to tradition the Saints allowed a mediocre team to look serviceable and “earn” the adulation of the home fans. Melbourne’s were brought into the game like they hadn’t this season, and only St Kilda could allow goals like those kicked by Jones, Davey and Bartram to happen, and for Morton to play his best game in relevant memory.

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This match preview is as much as anything about looking forward to the post-match. A game like last week, against strong opposition, of, brings the reality of where this team is at back into sharp focus for Saints fans. The team, whatever coach is pulling the reigns, is not what it once was. The cream rises to the top in the close games, and that meant a win for Fremantle. So now, coming up against the (seemingly) cursed, inept and winless Demons, I’m looking forward to hopefully getting some chicken soup for my football soul; a reminder for a day or two at least that whilst this team is staving off a downslide, that it is still far from the depths of the AFL’s cellar.

You may say that I’m taking my eye off the ball by being so presumptuous about returning to the winner’s circle, and you’re probably right. If Scott Watters caught a whiff of this within the confines of Seaford then I’m sure he would be cracking skulls. But with the Saints on the precipice of not very much this season, staring down the barrel of a mid-table finish, every probable win is immediately very desirable. And the style in which the four points is grasped is not as important. When you’re side is entrenched in a flag tilt, the nuts and bolts of wins andlosses alike are almost more important than the results themselves – the team’s resulting ladder finish is more assured. Nothing for the Saints this season is assured; you need only recall round 1 for a clear reminder.

It’s true that last week’s loss was not exactly the kick in the face that it felt like. Freo are a strong side that will challenge anyone that they face this year, home or away. The Saints only had themselves to blame (again), after having the better of the contest yet failing in the game’s most critical element: scoring. What areas they failed in are certainly in their control, yet I’m skeptical about their ability to rectify those deficiencies with the personnel at hand.

More and more each year, a side is defined more by its weakest links than it’s greatest champions. St Kilda’s display last week was the best example. By and large, the Saints dominated around the contests and played the game in their half. But this was all overshadowed by a Kosi brain-fade, missed passes from Milne (not to mention CJ), terrible disposal from Geary, general slowness from Blake, etc. From the pre-season Watters declared a need for a squad of 30-35 players that can represent the team at any time; we’ve echoed those sentiments. Stanley, Cripps, Ledger and Simpkin have raised their hands in this area at different times and to different degrees but so far it hasn’t been enough to lift the team to the start it needed if it was actually serious about finals this season.

At 2-2 after four rounds, suddenly the team’s fixture after the horror patch (Hawthorn, West Coast, Carlton and Sydney from rounds six to nine) even seems daunting – how quickly you can come back to the pack.

My favourite part of the round 4 loss (if there was one) was the continued promising play of Tom Simpkin. Through the four quarters Head came up against John Anthony, Matthew Pavlich and Zach Clarke. He may be physically a little undersized (like all our key defenders; Za* D@ws0n would come in handy here), but he is playing tall, competing fiercely and his use of the ball under pressure is pretty composed. A few teammates could take a leaf out of his book. Jarryn Geary, disposal aside, too continued to display career best form with strong rebound off half-back.

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Scott Watters summed it up well, when he said “tactically there were no surprises at all” in the match versus the Dockers on Friday Night. Freo’s display and structure had all the hallmarks of a Ross Lyon led team; St Kilda spending the lion’s share of the game camped in the Dockers half.

There has been a much publicized change of coach and attitude at the Saints, and from the limited sample size of games so far there have been some positives both in game style and in the faith put in some of the younger players to this point, but ultimately last night we saw a ghost of the Lyon era come back to haunt the side. I’m talking about ball use, and more specifically converting opportunities.

The scoreboard will tell you that the Saints, having trailed by 14 points at three quarter-time, only managed three goals three for the term but this doesn’t illustrate the team spent in their 50 and the several missed opportunities that were squandered without a score registered.

A gilt-edged missed chance by fresh substitute Jamie Cripps only a couple of minutes into the final term felt fatal, despite the amount of time on the Saints’ side. Justin Koschitzke, also blew an opportunity to shoot at goal when the side was grabbing back the momentum of the game. Unfortunately, another Kosi brain-fade transpired and a looping handball to Milne wasted another chance to score.

It seems like it is almost a recurring nightmare for this group, and one that Ex-Boss would be all too familiar with. Yes, the Saints won their share of tight game over the last 2-3 years, but in the big contests in particular there has been a glaring lack of skill and execution at the pivotal moments. And again last night this was there for all to witness.

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