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St Kilda storm out of the blocks with a barnstorming start to a season, throwing their names into premiership contention with a series of impressive wins and high-quality football.
Then, slowly but surely, opposition teams analyse their strengths, find their weaknesses, and begin to pull them back to the pack. Losses mount, belief dries up, and a Saints team that had its sights on the top four is suddenly struggling to even squeeze into the eight.
We should know that, because that’s now been their lot for three of the past four seasons. In both 2022 and 2023, they’ve started a season 5-1, only to be on the exact same mediocre win tally after Round 15 – Friday night’s 28-point loss to Brisbane leaves them with an identical 8-6 record.
Even in 2020, their breakthrough finals win, they were 7-3 after ten rounds and sitting pretty in second, only to lose four of their last seven home-and-away games; while they’d win a final that year, to bow out at the semi-final stage was a disappointment for a team that was dreaming big just a few months prior.
There’s an elephant in the room that’s important to address out the gate: the Western Bulldogs and Essendon in Rounds 2 and 3 are the only current top-eight teams the Saints have beaten this year. Four of their six losses, meanwhile, have come teams around them or higher, including three of the top four – the other two have come to a Richmond outfit last week playing finals-quality football and gunning for the eight, and the other to a Hawthorn team who trailed all day despite dominating a lot of the play in one of the year’s weirdest games.
It has been quite clear for a while that the Saints are a mid-table litmus test – if you can beat them, you’re probably pretty good. There’s no doubt the Lions’ strengths have to be taken into account when analysing this game.
But the Saints’ defence has become leaky – conceding 84 points is significantly higher than their early-season ways, when they were averaging fewer than 60 points against per game.
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Liam Stocker is penalised for a dangerous tackle on Eric Hipwood. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The Lions are such a tremendous scoring team, with so many stars up front, that giving up 12 goals – one right at the end – seems like a reasonable result.
But the Saints, after six rounds when they were 5-1, were +159 for points from turnovers – that’s, on average, 26 points per game more than their opposition, far and away the competition’s best. That was coming off the back of being the best team in the league by a country mile for conceding points from turnovers – in fact, they ranked mid-table at scoring from them.
So for the Lions to score a remarkable 65 points from forward half launches, 52 of them turnovers, is eye-opening. Nine goals in a game from the front half, and 29 points more from turnovers for the Lions than the Saints for the evening, is just about the antithesis to what Ross Lyon’s St Kilda used to be two months ago.
Given the territory dominance of the Lions – they had 11 more inside 50s than the Saints and won themselves ten more intercepts in the forward half, both key stats for the Lions when they’re going well, it was always going to be tough for even a miserly defence like the Saints to contain.
Assistant coach Robert Harvey described the Lions before the game as ‘front-half bullies’, and the only way for the Saints to possibly curtail them was to deny them clearances. But that has also been an issue for a while – the Saints have been smashed for clearances in four of their last five games, losing Friday night’s count 30-40 in addition to 38-47 against Richmond, 36-46 against Sydney (in a win) and 30-42 against GWS.
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Scoring is also a significant concern now at St Kilda – 56 points was never going to be close to enough against Brisbane. It’s also well down from the 85 a game they were averaging when they were 5-1 and flying, despite having their number one forward in Max King at their disposal.
So what is causing all this? Let’s start with defence. In the last two weeks especially, teams have been giving the Saints a taste of their own medicine – pressing up high against them, even deep into their own attacking 50, to prevent them from the incremental but risk-free gains in possession.
If you look at the first frame, before the Liam Baker smother, you’ll notice how there’s not a single Saint free, anywhere on the ground, for an easy kick.
Callum Wilkie’s desire to find an uncontested target eventually leads to him biting off a risky kick, which Baker reads – because there was literally nowhere else for him to kick aside from high, long and to a contest – forces the turnover, and goals.
The Tigers have also set up knowing the Saints like to, wherever possible, go around the boundary – in fact, they use the corridor among the least of any other teams in the league. Just four per cent of their defensive 50 exits in the first half against Brisbane attacked the middle of the ground, perhaps leading to just 20 per cent of them bringing about an inside 50.
There weren’t any obvious bloopers like the Baker-Wilkie moment against the Lions, but the same result was achieved. The proof? Harris Andrews’ nine intercept marks.
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The Saints, time and again, were forced to kick long to contests, a weakness of theirs – they have won the contested mark count just four times this season – and with Max King usually stationed deeper into attack and the smaller Anthony Caminiti, Cooper Sharman and Mitch Owens the ones flying against hem, Andrews cleaned up.
The Saints love nothing more than to play this way: force the opposition to kick long to contests, gather at ground level and then punish them on the counter. They did this a lot to Gold Coast in particular.
Again, though, this is where a grain of salt has to be taken with all this. You can play this way when you’re contesting Mac Andrew in the air, and not with Harris AndrewS. That extra ‘s’ makes a lot of difference when it comes with one of the AFL’s best intercept marks attached.
The Lions had a plan for this, which is why Darcy Fort, a ruck/forward, was once again named as their sub. They knew, if the game was played on their terms, there would be a lot of high balls. This enabled not only Andrews to dominate defensively on the younger, smaller and less imposing Caminiti, with Jack Payne manning and beating King on the night, but preventing Wilkie from doing likewise at the other end, forced to always be aware of one of Daniher, Hipwood and later Fort.
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Contests are another area where the Saints are falling down. The Lions are primed to attack from their stoppages, which is why they’re vulnerable when in defensive 50.
St Kilda got two goals from forward 50 ball-ups, and this one here, with Ryan Lester leaving to become a transition option via a Lachie Neale handball and getting burned by direct opponent Jade Gresham, is a great example of that risk/reward gauntlet the Lions run.
The problem is, that brings with it opportunities when the same ball-ups occur in attack. Look at Mason Wood, St Kilda’s leading winger, and where he positions himself at this stoppage compared to the Lions’ wing Jarrod Berry.
Wood is defensive side, expecting to need to run back from the contest and support his tall defenders under a high ball from a hacked kick; alternately, he’s there as an outlet option for a quick handball out of traffic.
The problem is Rowan Marshall is stripped of his attempted clear, and the ball ends up with Neale, who at first makes a beeline for the goals and then, at the perfect moment, handballs back inboard to Berry, with Wood having vacated his position directly in the way of the goals to try and stop the Brownlow Medallist.
It typifies how aggressive the Lions are from stoppages, happy to let Berry maintain his space on the outside and sit himself in dangerous positions, which Wood just hasn’t anticipated quickly enough.
Offensively, eight goals for the game are a clear problem, but it’s a symptom and not the disease. The Saints, despite plenty of possessions, could only go inside 50 43 times – 29 by three-quarter time.
St Kilda were never efficient at going inside 50 and scoring – in the first six weeks, they were 17th for scores per inside 50, their reasonable points per game buffeted by some quite un-St Kilda-like accuracy. In short, they were taking their chances, mostly because they took high-percentage shots from near goal by capable kickers.
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What’s the issue? Again, it’s how teams are defending the Saints. They’re no longer allowed to retain possession, getting their way upfield one chip at a time. But more importantly, good teams like the Lions, when they win the ball back, aren’t doing that either.
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The Lions’ method was to prevent the Saints from even getting close to attack before cutting them off: this is different to most teams, particularly developing teams, who through largely poorer team defensive organisation, let through enough holes for St Kilda to punish on turnover that good teams just don’t offer. This example from their win over North nicely sums that up.
There’s a great comparison to be made between the Saints against Essendon in Round 3, still their best win of the year, compared to how they’ve been for the last month.
It’s not like Lyon hasn’t tried things. Jack Sinclair has mostly been used in bursts on the ball this year, having attended 29 per cent of centre bounces for 2023 and notably none against Richmond with Marcus Windhager added to the on-ball mix – a crucial misstep that robbed the Saints of any explosiveness while doing nothing to stop them getting hammered by Trent Cotchin and Tim Taranto.
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On Friday night, he had 15 of 22, bringing with it six clearances – three from the centre – four inside 50s and four score involvements. In the long run, getting your classiest ball-user around the footy is a good thing.
None of this should be an indictment on the Saints: they had a great run earlier in the year before teams had had enough time to analyse them, went 5-1 mostly on teams that you’d still have below them if they played again today, and in their first season under Lyon, not being able to beat Adelaide in Adelaide, or Brisbane, or even Richmond in the wet, is no shame.
But for those like me who thought their style after the first few rounds was good enough to challenge for a flag even now, it’s definitely time for a rethink. The Saints punish teams who aren’t any good – but against teams that are, they’re still a cut below. And with so many teams fighting for spots in the eight this year, that might just end up costing them dearly.
