St Kilda setting themselves for a humongous trade

Is it time to stop calling St Kilda a rebuilding team? The Saints are five years removed from the Ross Lyon era, and are in the midst of a second straight slam dunk trade period.

St Kilda are setting themselves up for something huge.(Click to Tweet)

St Kilda’s 12-win season should have been one of the stories of the AFL this season. No one with any semblance of profile or platform gave the Saints a chance to escape the lower rungs of the ladder, a place the team had called home from 2013 to 2016. Some writers saw a good season was in prospect, but they were in the minuscule minority.

Coach Alan Richardson is building a flexible, pressure oriented team with depth and tenacity to burn. In reaching a dozen wins, St Kilda beat every team that finished below them, and lost to every team that finished above them, except for four games. Wins against Geelong and the Western Bulldogs were offset by losses to Port Adelaide and Gold Coast.

That was the best case scenario for this team in this year: winning against the bad teams, and losing against the good ones. What Richmond or Collingwood would have given for a season like the Saints pulled off.

But, there are reasons to be wary. Progress is rarely linear – the Dogs of this year and Hawks of 2008 are exceptions to the rule. The Saints compiled 12 wins against the math; their Pythagorean expected win total for 2016 was 9.8, meaning St Kilda outperformed their abilities by 2.2 wins. This was the second most in the competition, behind the Tigers who outperformed by 2.5 wins.

This alone suggest the Saints are likely to slip a little in 2017. Seven of the ten teams to have outperformed their Pythagorean win total by two wins or more went backwards in the following year. It isn’t a hard rule, but the math is against them.

The other consideration is the Saints will receive a more punitive draw for next season, a reward for finishing in ninth place. St Kilda will double up against three of West Coast, North Melbourne, Port Adelaide, Melbourne and Collingwood – out go Carlton and Essendon, whom the Saints scored four of their triple digit scores against for a total percentage boost worth ten percentage points.

Naturally, offsetting this is that the Saints are good. We’ll get to the reasons why in the preseason.

They aren’t great yet, but the foundations set in their three Siberian years have set them on that journey. Their trade period to date has been stellar, and even if they sit out the next five days, as the more flashy clubs bicker among themselves, Ameet Bains and his team have already earned themselves a five star rating.

Last season, St Kilda paid a high price to fill the most gaping hole on their list: pick five for Essendon’s Jake Carlisle. It was a solid trade for the Saints; Carlisle, who had been misused for a year or two at Essendon, could be the best key defender in the game, and the Saints had negative key defenders on their list.

Now, he didn’t play a game, and he found himself embroiled in scandal a couple of hours after signing, but work with me here. Carlisle joins the team this year as a 25-year-old with six years of AFL experience, and set to hit his prime as the Saints make their charge.

The Saints also picked up wantaway Pie Nathan Freeman for this year’s second round pick. Freeman, like Carlisle, failed to play a game, with bad hamstrings holding him at bay. He will join St Kilda’s back line as a rebounding defender with pace to spare – even if he remains unproven as an AFL player, his underage talent is a tantalising prospect.

This year has seen the Saints join the 2014 GWS Draft Class Fire Sale in picking up fringe Giant Jack Steele for their 2017 second round pick, and execute a pick swap that saw them join the rest of the football world in rooting against the Hawks. They also picked up a key defender with the last name Brown; Collingwood’s Nathan, rather than West Coast’s Mitch whom they’d be chasing for half a decade.

Brown will likely squeeze Sam Fisher out of the St Kilda line up, and perhaps out of the organisation all together. He’s not a long term option, one assumes, but will be handy as a fill in for the rising Hugh Goddard, who will miss much of this season recuperating a ruptured Achilles tendon. Brown doesn’t add much in attack – he’s averaged 9.4 disposals over his career – but as a stopper, his credentials are sound.

Steele will slot into St Kilda’s energetic midfield, as an inside-oriented midfielder with a bit of zip when required. He is one of half a dozen Giants that spent plenty of time in the NEAFL due to the stacked nature of the senior team, and that the Giants were willing to accept the Saints’ 2017 second round pick suggests they knew he was going to struggle to break into the team on a regular basis. He isn’t the midfielder that’s going to propel the Saints into contender status, but he will be a plus.

The Saints traded pick 10 and pick 68 to the Hawks for two second round picks (23 and 36) and Hawthorn’s 2017 first round pick. There might be more uncertainty about the Hawks than any other team as we sit here today. Should the Hawks miss the finals – still a long-shot – that pick will be 10th or earlier.

In effect, the Saints traded out of this year’s first round for the privilege of two second round picks this season, and a pick likely to land in the low teens. It’s not quite highway robbery, because the Hawks needed pick 10 to get things moving with the Suns, but it is an excellent deal for the Saints.

This year might seem like the off season crescendo that signals the end of St Kilda’s rebuild symphony. In years past, the Saints have found diamonds in almost every rough they’ve cared to mine: Tim Membrey, Josh Bruce, Shane Savage, Dylan Roberton, Maverick Weller and many more have joined St Kilda without the Saints giving up much consideration – if any, in the case of Membrey, Roberton and Weller.

The list is now looking solid across every line, and the demographics are excellent. St Kilda have two core groups, the prime age and the emergents. The Saints have ten full list players aged 25 to 28, nine of whom are in their best 22 and who have played plenty of football together in the past three years – Carlisle effectively has been drafted into this group next season.

The team’s emergent list runs even deeper: 23 players aged 20 through 24, practically all of whom have seen game time at AFL level. Steele joins this group, as effectively does Freeman. This is the line that will decide whether the Saints are going to make that leap from good to great.

And here’s where the Hawthorn pick swap comes into play. St Kilda are a young team, who outperformed their abilities last season. With a tougher draw, and a few new pieces to integrate, treading water and earning 12 wins should be considered the best case scenario. A slip is far more likely, but shouldn’t be seen as a failure.

With the Saints holding onto their 2017 first round pick, adding the Hawks pick is likely to net them two picks inside the top 15 of what is looming as a crazy-good draft from those in the know. St Kilda already have their young talent sorted – there comes a time where picking high in the draft isn’t the best course of action. It sets the Saints up to execute on the final stage of their build; the long mooted blockbuster trade for a superstar player of some description.

Two first round picks is a tasty prospect for any team; it’s a conversation starter, if not a barbecue stopper. St Kilda will almost certainly look to start conversations with a few teams in an effort to poach a prime age star to complete their build.

Saints fans have been hyping up the prospect of prying Nat Fyfe from Fremantle. He’ll be a restricted free agent this time next year, and the prospect of him “doing a Dangerfield” looks enticing. However, there’s no Mogg’s Creek factor at play. Fyfe would be close to the most untradeable player in the league from his team’s perspective. Carlton’s Patrick Cripps and the Dogs’ Marcus Bontempelli might rank higher due to their relative youth.

Regardless, Fyfe isn’t the kind of player the Saints need. Instead, I’d look a little further north, to West Coast, and have a dig for Victorian Andrew Gaff. He’s the type of player – rangy outside midfielder with an elite boot – that the Saints are short on, and like Fyfe is set to hit the market as a restricted free agent. Isaac Smith would be another, albeit he’s at the top end of the age curve for St Kilda’s time line, and the incredulity of sending Hawthorn’s pick back to them would be a bridge too far. Rory Laird or Brodie Smith would also fit the bill.

No matter the player, the Saints are setting themselves up to go all-in next season. Builds take time, but skill and luck can shorten things significantly. St Kilda and their off field crew have demonstrated ample volume of the former in recent years, and the dividends will flow in 2017.