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Opinion
With only one round of footy played so far this year, it would be foolhardy to place too much store on the ladder positions of the two teams that will be battling it out in the last game of Round 2 at the unusual time of 6:05 pm on Sunday night.
Both teams lost in Round 1 but St Kilda went down by a heartbreaking two points to North Melbourne in the closest game of the round and therefore sit in tenth position on the ladder while the Western Bulldogs were beaten by Collingwood by the second biggest margin of the round and currently sit in 17th position on the ladder.
Form from 2019, however, would suggest that the Western Bulldogs – who finished in the eight last year and won 12 games – are a much better side than St Kilda, who only won nine games and finished in 14th position on the ladder.
A look at the arrivals at both clubs suggests that the Western Bulldogs may have done slightly less out of the end-of-season trading, picking up Josh Bruce from the Saints and losing three champions that had not contributed much during 2019.
For St Kilda, the loss of Bruce, Blake Acres and Jack Newnes was compensated for by the arrivals of Dan Butler, Bradley Hill, Dougal Howard, Zak Jones and Patrick Ryder.
The last time these two teams met was Round 18, 2019. Brett Ratten was coaching the Saints for the first time, and St Kilda scored a comprehensive win by 27 points. It was the first of three wins the Saints scored in the last six matches of the year.
Ratten had previously coached at the club he played for (Carlton) for six years, and despite losing his first six games when he took over coaching at exactly the same time in 2007, he finished his career there with a 50/50 win loss ratio. His coaching career at Carlton had ended before Luke Beveridge’s at the Western Bulldogs had started.
With the players either delisted or traded last season, the Saints are now left with only two top 100 game-players on their list: captain Jarryn Geary and left-footer and two-time best and fairest Sebastian Ross.
Jarryn Geary. (AAP Image/Julian Smith)
In this game, Ross will pass Jamie Shanahan’s game tally and draw level with Vic Cumberland, Barry Lawrence and James Gwilt, all of whom are part of the legend of St Kilda.
Vic Cumberland’s real name was Harold Vivian Cumberland, and apart from being the oldest player to ever play league footy, he had a fascinating history in the game that stretched from the 1890s in Tasmania to Melbourne, to St Kilda, to New Zealand, to South Australia, back to St Kilda, to World War 1 (where he was injured three times) and then back to St Kilda, where in one game, 29 of the 36 players on the field had not been born when he started playing.
Barry Lawrence was a Tasmanian who played at both ends of the ground in the 1970s and James Gwilt was a 2000s defender who finished his career at Essendon.
On the other hand, the Western Bulldogs now boast seven top 100 game-players on their list and while Easton Wood is the only one inside the top 50, the other six will all move up the list.
Jack Macrae will equal Len McCankie and Kelvin Templeton, Mitch Wallis will equal AFL top 100 game-player Barry Round, Tom Liberatore will equal David Darcy, Lachie Hunter will equal Herb Henderson and Mark Hunter, Marcus Bontempelli will equal Don Ross, Darren Baxter and Shaun Higgins, while Jason Johannisen will equal Alan Stoneham and Mick Egan.
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