Admittedly it’s only the pre-season, but any objective analysis raises some serious question marks over St.Kilda this year. They haven’t played well in any NAB Cup game.
They scraped home by a point in two matches they could easily have lost (and would have been beaten by the Swans if not for Seaby’s brain fade) and they were comprehensively beaten on Saturday night when they broke even for two quarters and were out-played in the other two.
More specifically, St.Kilda’s bottom six players were noticeably inferior to the Bulldogs bottom six, and there were at least four players who wouldn’t have gotten a game with the Bulldogs.
Last season the Saints were the pace setters, with an innovative and discliplined game-plan somewhat akin to a “full court press” in basketball. The strategy stifled opposition forward entries and put the opposition under pressure every time they did go inside 50.
This masked the flaws of several individual players in the St.Kilda defence (notably Zac Dawson, Jason Blake and Sam Gilbert) and covered for the fact that several St.Kilda players can’t hit a target consistently by foot (Clint Jones, Sam Gilbert, Jason Gram for example).
However, all clubs have had a full summer and pre-season to work out counter-strategies (play on at all costs, run and carry, quick precise kicking), so St.Kilda’s game-plan won’t be dominant this year.
And whenever a club cracks the code, they can take advantage of Saints’ deficiencies. Never was this more apparent than on Saturday night when the Bulldogs were able to get the ball quickly to Barry Hall, exposing Zac Dawson’s deficiencies against a power forward.
The Saints have five or six superstars and are a disciplined unit so they will probably have a good year in 2010. But history tells us that only nine of the last 20 grand finalists played in the Grand Final the year before.
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