Saints Fit To Burst

The Age

Monday May 12, 2008

Rohan Connolly on Monday

St Kilda did it again, getting everyone to believe that this might be its year, but as it prepares to meet Collingwood on Friday night, Ross Lyon's team faces a game it cannot afford to lose.

IT WAS the mid-season break last year that helped St Kilda turn around a season rapidly heading nowhere.

The Saints had won just four games of 11 and lost their past four straight when they took their mid-year sabbatical. They returned a different team, losing only three more for the season and missing out on the finals by just half-a-game.

This year, a week off has come a month earlier, and at 4-3, the situation superficially doesn't seem quite as grim. But St Kilda will be praying that a free weekend has again proved a precursor to a dramatic change in form and good fortune.

Because only one-third of the way through the season, Friday night's Telstra Dome clash with Collingwood already presents a grand final of sorts. One which, should it lose, might just about finish St Kilda off as a credible premiership contender, not only this year, but for who knows how long?

Certainly, the symbolism would be writ large. Defeat against a team hardly overflowing with confidence itself, Collingwood leapfrogging the Saints on the ladder as a result, along, potentially, with four other rivals. A truckload of injuries, other key players struggling badly for form. And the prospect of the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba, the barnstorming Western Bulldogs and Sydney at the SCG to follow.

St Kilda won what turned out to be a pretty gutsy victory over Richmond in round seven, having lost an army of players to injury during the game. But the Saints nevertheless did so on the back of a seven-goal haul from Stephen Milne, and with key players down.

They'll need to be gutsier again to survive the next month with their optimism and flag prospects intact, given the list of opponents to confront, and the steadily dwindling numbers of personnel available to do so.

Key men, too. Nick Riewoldt? Enough said. He might not be back for a month. Two key defenders in Max Hudghton and Matt Maguire, the latter gone for the year, and a potential replacement in Sam Gilbert already out.

That's hardly timely when the opposition this week has outscored everyone bar the top three teams on the ladder, includes two big key forwards in Travis Cloke and Anthony Rocca, a dangerous mid-sized goalkicker in Paul Medhurst, and wildcards like Leon Davis and Dale Thomas.

There's a missing No. 1 ruckman in Steven King. Defensive run from Xavier Clarke, and perhaps a lock-down type in Steven Baker. There's holes every where you look in the St Kilda line-up at the moment.

Do the Saints have the necessary armory to fill them? Or those struggling for touch enough time to turn things around before the situation has slipped too far?

King's absence places pressure on Michael Gardiner, for whom the Richmond game was his first senior hitout for five weeks, and appropriately rusty. Now there will have been another fortnight between games.

Justin Koschitzke can help out there, but that just robs Peter to pay Paul when it comes to forward-line potency, particularly with Fraser Gehrig struggling as much as any Saint at the moment.

The G-train has just eight goals from his four games, and only four in his past three. He hasn't had much else to offer, either, yet to register even a single effective tackle this season.

Much was made during the NAB Cup of the newer and lesser lights who were emerging to help the St Kilda cause. David Armitage has shown some promise. But Clinton Jones and Jarryn Geary, who looked so good in February and March, have played just three games each in the premiership season.

It's still coming down to the familiar St Kilda faces. And, sadly, another familiar St Kilda story, injuries, is being told yet again.

An appropriate change on that front was the premise on which so many of us placed faith in the Saints' ability to challenge the likes of Geelong this season. So much faith that of eight tipsters in The Age's Footy 2008 guide, six had St Kilda either winning the flag or, at worst, reaching the grand final.

But again the gods aren't smiling on Moorabbin. Yes, there's still time to re-write the script unfolding before us. But it has to start now. This week, against a team whose questioning of itself at the moment must be just as great.

It's a huge clash, perhaps even bigger now the momentary pause in the season's proceedings has given time for reflection and regrouping.

That seemed to do the trick last year for the Saints. It had better do again. While it's only round eight and mid-May, Friday night's is a game St Kilda simply can't afford to lose.

Passionless crowd vote with wave

IT MIGHT be standard fare in cricket season, but you don't often see the Mexican wave doing the rounds of an arena during an AFL match. Let alone with five or so minutes to go and only a kick or two the difference.

Yet that was the surreal scene at the end of Saturday night's Hall of Fame match. And it said plenty about the place state football occupies in the hearts and minds of the public. Or rather, doesn't.

There's no doubt a crowd of 70,000-odd was a great turnout. No doubt there was some great individual talent on display and some fine football played. But it's emotional investment that helps make our game what it is, and Saturday night was devoid of it.

And that's not just because the Big V was up against an opponent representing no particular place, or without any fan base of which to speak.

Sure, there were a couple of token "Kick A Vic" signs at the MCG from the odd South or West Australian expat, but even the once boiling-hot juices of Victorian hatred seemed to have cooled decidedly over the decade or so since the state-of-origin concept lapsed.

The football folk in Adelaide and Perth have their showdowns and derbies over which to froth with rage about now, more proof that a couple of decades down the post-nationalisation track, it's the pitched battles within a football state rather than the long-distance warfare across the borders upon which AFL fanaticism is founded.

Where once it was the players themselves who seemed least enthusiastic about playing state football, it's these days they, as noted by AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, who drive the motivational bus.

Yet for all that genuine interest, there was still a decided lack of physicality about Saturday night's game.

There was the odd bump here and there. A little jostling between the two teams just after half-time. Yet nothing remotely inclined to stir a big crowd to deliver a passionate spray at or launch a defence of any individual or either team.

The crowd seemed to sense it, too, hence the extended periods of near-silence even just after the game had just started.

At the start of the game, you would have looked around the 70,000 at the MCG and thought the people had voted with their feet.

By the end, as you watched the wave sweep around the stands a fourth, fifth and six time as a high-standard game came to a climax, you knew the people had instead voted by jumping out of their seats and sticking their arms in the air.

Pies sweat on Fraser

MOST club supporters have a favourite whipping boy, and for a surprisingly large number of Collingwood fans, that target appears to be Josh Fraser.

No, he's not overly physical. Yes, he can have the odd shocker. But if the scans on Fraser's injured knee today deliver news a fair bit worse than the extremely optimistic prognosis being served up by the club yesterday, the knockers may get to find out in painful fashion why their barbs would be best directed elsewhere.

Estimates on his absence have differed wildly, but even if Fraser misses only two to three games, Collingwood fans, ironically, are going to have driven home to them just what he offers.

There's the 14 average disposals per week, one goal and couple of tackles he continues to produce. But it's as much the capacity to offer a ruck contest and at least give his on-ball teammates a chance at winning a disposal in the hottest part of the ground that will be missed most. Particularly against a spread of opponents over the next three weeks including St Kilda, Geelong and West Coast, and particularly when Fraser's replacement as No. 1 ruck for the Pies will be the the talented but very raw Cameron Wood.

When it comes to the ruck, even without the injured Steven King, the Saints have an old hand in Michael Gardiner, a big task indeed for Wood, still with just 23 AFL games to his name, and having played about one-third of them this season.

If Wood doesn't learn enough there, he'll doubtless pick up some handy hints playing the following week against Geelong, Mark Blake and a Brad Ottens returning from injury.

The week after that it's West Coast, and Dean Cox. Enough said.

It's a fair array of ruck talent, and given the struggles of Collingwood's engine room lately, talent which could prove decisive.

© 2008 The Age

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