St Kilda won’t make the finals this year. Their 2016 season saw too many things go right to be replicated, or bested, and natural improvement can’t overcome this. But unlike some other teams on the bubble, a sixth-straight season outside the eight matters little.

Victoria’s smallest club is close to holding football’s most unwanted title: the longest gap between their last premiership and their next shot.

It has been half a century since the Saints saluted in the last game of the (VFL) season. The 18-team, 22-game league we now watch through the winter is far removed from the dozen-team, 18-game league in which the Saints were last premiers, in 1966.

St Kilda have also ‘won’ nine wooden spoons since then – the most of any team since 1966. It is two more than Melbourne, who last won the premiership in 1964. They hold the Footscray Memorial Cup, named in honour of the Western Bulldogs all-time record 62 years between flags.

Both teams enter 2017 full of optimism, hope and desire for a game in September. With at least one spot up for grabs – sorry, North fans – both St Kilda and Melbourne are primed to take it. Yes, Essendon, Fremantle, Port Adelaide, Gold Coast, Collingwood and Richmond also have ambitions, but the pre-season love is flowing the way of those two clubs with the most tortured fan-bases.

For as long as I’ve been writing about the AFL, I’ve been bullish about the future prospects of St Kilda. It started in 2015, when the Saints were showing all the signs of a building team on the verge of putting it all together. Then came their scintillating 2016 pre-season form, which had me picking them as a potential finals bolter on the back of a sound game plan and soft draw.

Our last look came during the trade period, as St Kilda’s off season crew took a desperate Hawthorn and fleeced them cold.

The common thread: a premiership tilt is coming.

The only question is the timing. It won’t be this year. A trip to the finals will have to wait, too. But that shouldn’t diminish the optimism of St Kilda fans and fans of St Kilda alike.

A one time only offer
St Kilda outperformed last year. That much we know. They were pencilled in as a bottom six side, owing to their 6.5-win season the year prior, and question marks over the quality of their young talent. There were clouds unfairly gathering over Alan Richardson, too, with his team’s inconsistency from week to week thought to be a sign of tactical flaws.

Not so. The young Saints of 2016 won 12 games, almost doubling their win total in a season where not much else changed in the mid-table. St Kilda punched above their weight in beating Geelong and (a weakened version of) the Western Bulldogs, two preliminary finalists that lost 14 games combined on the year.

But their performance over the full 22 games season was less convincing. As we showed earlier in the year, the Saints outperformed their actual output by 2.2 wins on the year, according to Pythagorean wins. Seven out of the ten teams over the past decade who have outperformed their Pythagorean wins by two or more have gone backwards in the following season.

Beating the maths is not impossible, but it’s hard.

Part of the outperformance was due to the team’s inconsistency – a line we’ve seen the Saints roll out a few times this pre-season. The Saints were blown out three times last year, against West Coast (103 points, away), Adelaide (88 points, away) and Sydney (70 points, home).

This season’s numbers game also showed St Kilda’s schedule difficult is set to ramp up. That’s to be expected; the AFL try their best to handicap the fixture based on a team’s finishing position from the year prior. Jumping from 14th to ninth put St Kilda into the middle bracket for fixturing purposes instead of the bottom bracket.

Upon closer inspection, the Saints’ fixture gets much tougher. They played their final eight games in Victoria, against four of the bottom six, North Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs at the height of their injury crisis (Round 18). They won six of those games, moving from 12th to ninth in the process.

Six of St Kilda’s 14 Etihad Stadium games came in that run. The Saints kicked 95 points per game (for an OER of +6.8, ranked seventh on the season if they recorded it over the full season) under the dome, with a Round 2 shellacking at the hands of the Dogs in their first encounter the difference between triple digits.

Away from shelter, it was a completely different story: 78 points per game and an OER of -12.2 – ranked 15th if it was their full year mark.

Some combination of their opponents, familiarity with the venue and Richardson’s strategy are conspiring to cause the disparity. The Saints have been averse to travel in recent years, too. The upside to 14 games at Etihad is great, but the downside is clear.

That matters, because St Kilda’s fixture gets difficult both home and away in 2017. The Saints travel to Perth twice, Adelaide twice, and Sydney and Tasmania once each to face the Swans and Hawks, respectively. Last year’s cushy finish to the season has been replaced with a back-to-back away trip to Sydney and Port Adelaide in Round 18 and 19, before a final four games that flip between Etihad and the MCG.

It isn’t terminally difficult, but the ramp up is significant enough to raise a red flag.

The Saints’ reality check doesn’t end there. According to Champion Data, the Saints had one of the best runs with injury and absence in the competition last year.

St Kilda lost just 80 games due to injury across their entire 2016 list, the fewest in the competition. 44 of those games were credited to Jake Carlisle’s WADA ban and Nathan Freeman’s tetchy hamstrings. Their list was pristine in a manner that is rare in today’s AFL; as a point of contrast, Gold Coast lost 225 games to injury, equal to ten full player seasons.

That kind of injury luck can’t last. St Kilda’s figures are probably structurally lower than league average due to their relative youth, but still, losing just 80 games across a 45 player list is extremely low.

In a similar vein, can St Kilda expect more stellar performances from their ageing champions Nick Riewoldt and Leigh Montagna, and to a lesser extent (in both respects) Sean Dempster and Sam Gilbert? The quartet, in effect the last vestiges of St Kilda’s late 2000s barn-burner, missed just three games between them, playing critical roles through the middle and in defence.

Can Riewoldt dominate the right wing as a 34-year-old with 314 games in his legs? Well, probably, yes because he’s not human, but history says it will be a challenge. Can Leigh Montagna play another above average season as a half back? Will Dempster and Gilbert’s old school defender stylings hold up in a meta-game that is pushing defenders to become more attacking by the year? Can both play in the same back six?

On the bright side
These veterans remain important cogs in coach Richardson’s scheme. Riewoldt’s unique role is particularly critical, given it allows the Saints to play with an extra tall forward that can stay anchored to the 50-metre arc. That’s because Riewoldt’s ability to run the wing, coupled with his marking prowess, eliminates the need for a forward to play higher up the ground to link up with the defence.

We saw St Kilda roll with a line up which included Riewoldt, Tim Membrey, Josh Bruce and Paddy McCartin seven times last year – a line up which conventional wisdom says would be too tall.

This tall line up – with or without McCartin, who missed 11 full games and a bunch of time in a few others due to repeat concussions – was critical for St Kilda’s 2016 rise. In their 12 wins, the Saints took 17.5 marks inside 50 per game, which would have been a clear first in the league if over a full year; in losses that dropped to 10.6, ranked in the bottom six.

In many ways, St Kilda’s is the accidental forward line, built on the back of Riewoldt’s evergreen-ness, the timing of their number one pick, and two recycled players discarded by sides who didn’t find their full potential (Membrey and Bruce).

They say luck favours the prepared, and the brave, and St Kilda have had measures of both during their build.

The collection of young talent the Saints have acquired over the past five years is impressive, and deep. We’ve been through this before but it bears repeating here. St Kilda have three distinct clusters of talent in their playing group: the shrinking old stager class, the prime age class, and the booming baby class. The prime age group makes up close to half of St Kilda’s best 22.

Their 28 players aged 24 or under at Round 1 is second behind Brisbane – and equal with Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs – for most in the league. St Kilda are a young side that plays like it; an intensity synonymous with a 19-year-oldmaking his way in the AFL system.

The Saints can therefore expect natural improvement to lean against the more macro level concerns about their 2017 season. Their best 22, based on revealed preferences in 2016 – a fancy way of saying Richardson and co will pick the guys that played the most games last year – now has a solid base of experience baked in.

In addition, St Kilda will have the services of Jake Carlisle, Nathan Freeman and the newly traded Jack Steele available to them. Carlisle takes the spot of the retired Sam Fisher down back, Freeman – a half back in his junior days – has the skills to play as a burst runner through the middle of the ground, and Jack Steele joins the inside midfield group bursting at the seams with competition.

The Saints also added Nathan Brown and Koby Stevens, who at worst add to the squad’s depth at a demographic (aged 28 and 25, respectively) that makes sense given the youthfulness of much of their list.

The bolt-on acquisitions of St Kilda are as impressive as any team right now, more so for the quantity of useful players rather than the quality (GWS win the quality title). Most of it was acquired on the cheap, too. I count 11 players on St Kilda’s list who began AFL life with another club, with up to nine of them being in St Kilda’s best 22. The club’s collective eye for disused talent is the sharpest in the game.

The journey continues
Alan Richardson goes alright, too. The long-time AFL apprentice employs a system with a simple idea at its core: if you work hard with and without the ball, you are good enough to hang with the best teams. St Kilda work to create congestion with extra numbers around the ball, and then look to spread into open space when they win it.

The team loves running in straight lines and linking up with short kicks – a weakness in this, of course, is when the short kicks miss targets, the ball has a habit of quickly travelling the other way.

In their wins, St Kilda averaged a clanger every 8.4 possessions. In losses, the figure falls to 6.8. Data in the AFL Live app suggests St Kilda were one of the most careful sides with the ball in hand, averaging just over 65 turnovers per game in 2016, ranked third in the competition (a win/loss split is no longer available).

It’s a game style that keeps them in touch with their opponents regardless of pedigree – it was part of the reason I was so bullish on them in 2016. Their playing stocks, chock full of mid-sized midfielders with pace to burn, make it work. If anything, the list could use an extra dimension or two to help them go to the next level tactically: a half back or two with a rangey kicking boots.

As we discussed in November, they have the assets to land a big fish or two in the coming off season, to cap off a build which is rapidly reaching completion. After yesterday’s events, I’m even less convinced than I was before that Nat Fyfe is the man the Saints are looking for.

When everything is laid out on the table, it’s plain to see the Saints are on a path to something great. Reaching 12 wins in the middle stages of a harsh rebuild is a feat to be proud of.

As Alan Richardson told News Limited yesterday, the talent is there for everyone to see:

“What you want as a coach of a footy club is to make sure you have enough talent and we have definitely got that now. I have no doubt that this group is going to be a really, really strong footy team, and of course we are working towards that in 2017.”

Working towards the end objective – the follow up to the club’s 1966 premiership – will certainly continue this season. But the dream run of 2016 that led to a winning season ahead of time is unlikely to return. Too much went right. That will mean St Kilda spend another year outside of September, looking in.

For most other clubs on the bubble – think Collingwood, Richmond, Port Adelaide in particular – that would up the pressure on all concerned. Not so at St Kilda. Another year of development will have this side primed for an assault in 2018.