Jason Blake and Colm Begley of St KIlda collide with Grant Birchall of Hawthorn during the AFL Round 19 match between the Hawthorn Hawks and the St Kilda Saints at Aurora Stadium. Slattery Images
I’ve had a look into my crystal ball and it’s come back red, black and white. Simply put, the Saints are the team to beat and I expect them to be marching all the way to the Premiership Cup.
The numbers do not lie.
After 19 rounds, the Saints have only lost 22 of 76 quarters (29%). They have kicked triple figures 10 times, kept their opponents goalless in a quarter on 13 occasions – of which five on these occasions they kept their opponent scoreless.
No one in 2009 has kicked 100 points against them. The most to date is Carlton’s 95 in Round 12.
At one stage, their average winning score was as much as 58 points, but has since dropped to 39. That means on average, it is a six goal better side than the opposition.
With its defence as stingy as it is, this means it doesn’t need to get that many more goals to have a winning score.
All over the park they have players who contribute and make the team click.
With Nick Riewoldt, Jason Blake and Same Fisher, they have three of the top five mark-getters in the AFL. In Riewoldt, Stephen Milne, Justin Koschitzke and Adam Schneider, they has four goalkickers who have each kicked more than 20 goals.
They ust don’t have any tangible weaknesses, but then again, neither does Geelong, who are clearly the second best team in the competition.
The two are destined to meet in the Grand Final.
Geelong has faded in recent weeks, but are still playing high-quality football. In 2009, they haven’t lost a match when up at quarter-time and have an average winning score of 34.
And as they learned last year, nothing that happens during the home and away season matters when it comes to the last Saturday in September. Then its sudden-death, best of one, winner take all.
So they will be comfortable with St Kilda now dominating all the spotlight and media attention.
Interestingly enough, in more than 100 years, Geelong and St Kilda have only played each other three times at the MCG.
One was in last year’s finals, then in 1995 and before that, during the 1968 finals.
Their only other meeting in the finals was in 1991, which was at Waverley. The two do not have much head-to-head tradition in terms of the MCG or the finals.
Under Grant Thomas, St Kilda missed out on playing in the 2004 and 2005 Grand Finals.
Both times it required the eventual champion to eliminate them. That isn’t going to be happening in 2009, unless they eliminate themselves.
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