Opinion
The Saints have a lot to overcome to feel like 2022 was a successful season.
In keeping the door ajar on finals, St Kilda produced their most memorable, backs-against-the-wall type of performance against the Blues.
It’s a game that many fans are proud of and rightly so, as the three weeks preceding Round 16’s victory were genuinely awful.
And there are certainly some that will suggest the Saints are lucky to have won – the Blues scored just 10 goals from 28 scoring shots and exceeded St Kilda’s shot tally by five.
So too, we must acknowledge the fact that St Kilda could’ve been and, more pertinently, should’ve been five goals up at quarter time. The game would have been over by that stage.
Yet we simply have to take a step back and ponder how much weight we can place on the sole performance.
The Blues are a good team and the Saints controlled the game with uncontested ball. They won the clearance battle and broke even in the tackles, while restricting Carlton to 23 disposals less than usual, while having 30 more disposals than their own season average.
We know Carlton has been undermanned defensively for a while, but that’s not how the Saints won inside 50. On the flipside, the Blues were dominant in aerial battles once Dougal Howard was removed from the equation.
And therein lies part of the overall issue.
We discussed St Kilda earlier in the season (Cool the flag talk, the Saints aren’t even guaranteed finalists just yet), much to the chagrin of many a supporter, but fears that the style of play was unsustainable and one-dimensional haven’t been that far off the mark.
The fact they just beat Carlton without relying on marks inside 50 was almost an accidental coincidence, rather than any sort of drawn up plan.
(Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The Saints have an extremely difficult run home and the way they play hasn’t held up particularly well against the best teams.
They’re still averaging 7.47 disposals per inside 50, which is the highest number in the league outside the two historically bad teams dwindling towards the bottom of the ladder.
They’re averaging the fourth-fewest inside 50s, they still haven’t recaptured last year’s strength of tackles inside 50 and quite frankly, they rely on the hope that Jack Sinclair, Brad Hill and Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera can take the game on untouched.
What really held the Saints up in their 5-1 start to the season was the form of Max King and Jack Higgins in front of goal, which has clearly dropped off. King has been labelled as one-dimensional by legends of the game which is stiff on a 22-year-old that holds the hopes of a team, particularly when they just want him to take contested marks.
Overall, it means that Geelong win that seemed to be a statement victory, has been more of an outlier. They had 12 tackles inside 50 and dragged down 12 contested marks that game against a defence that doesn’t allow for that.
Maybe they found that fabled extra gear or, more likely, they stumbled into some positive situations they set up for themselves in key moments.
Again though, the Saints just knocked off the Blues and it has to mean something.
It means there’s a bit of grit to this team, who ended the game with a fraction of its available bench fit and able to contribute.
They withstood an onslaught from Carlton, regardless of the ifs and buts surrounding it.
One thing the Saints have been holding their hat on though has been the defence and how its held up, but even that hasn’t been as good as raw numbers may indicate.
They’ve conceded the fifth-fewest points in the league which has really been great for supporters and turned some attention onto Callum Wilkie in particular.
In the end, games are won and lost on the scores on the board, not the numbers behind the scenes.
Yet to ignore those would be irresponsible – the club you support doesn’t do it and neither should we as a footballing community.
Teams are by far and away the most inaccurate against St Kilda. Now that can be a result of good defending and forcing harder shots, but that’s rarely the attributable cause for all shots. Watch the second half of Carlton’s game, for example, to see the shots they were missing.
If we’re just talking about shots on goal that score, ignoring out on the full, or failed distance shots, the numbers uncover a little more of an issue.
The opposition scores 43.66% of the time the breach St Kilda’s defensive 50 arc.
As a comparison, Adelaide concedes a score 43.41% of the time and Hawthorn is at 43.59%.
The Dockers at 37.37%, the Demons are at 38.59% and Geelong sits at 40.22%.
Perhaps the most surprising mark is Richmond conceding a score in 44.76% of their inside 50s although, as the second-highest scoring team in the league, they’re current content at winning in shootouts while having defensive structures to fall back onto.
Zak Jones of the Saints celebrates a goal. (Image/Getty)
That figure puts the Saints at a rather mediocre place defensively that feels a lot worse when you consider that, since the bye, they have conceded around 28 scoring shots per game, while averaging 17 themselves.
Even though Dougal Howard has had a rather poor season himself, losing 34.3% of one-on-ones and ranking below average for intercept marks, taking him out of the team will only further affect was is an already undersized defence.
Once more, the win against Carlton was a great one for us all to celebrate, as it meant the Saints showed spirit and were able to stop the significant slide, but the continued poor signs were still prevalent.
All of this means that if St Kilda and its fans still see finals as the main metric for success, they have so much to overcome internally, before even considering their run home.
They play Fremantle, the Bulldogs, West Coast, Hawthorn, Geelong, Brisbane and Sydney.
That’s four really good teams, a team that is dangerous offensively and two worse teams that tend to find something in the backend of seasons.
Replacing Howard is almost impossible, regardless of form. He takes the main key forward and given his 199-centimetre stature, there is no one with size that can take that role, save for the inexperienced Darragh Joyce who is five centimetres shorter.
Tom Highmore deserves opportunities as an interceptor and Wilkie has valiantly played above his weight for the whole season at just 191 centimetres, while Josh Battle has been pretty good as a floating defender.
Lots of rotational, help defence is a massive shift from how the Saints have played so far this season but realistically, if they’re going to go down, it may as well be swinging.
They could always throw Max King into defence for the next month.
Missing Jack Steele for a chunk in the middle of the season seemingly coincided with the results getting worse, but the form of the midfielders has stayed relatively consistent all the way through – it’s just that there isn’t enough variety in there.
But shoutout to Brad Crouch, Jade Gresham and Seb Ross, who have had decent seasons in a team on the fringes of the eight.
And while it may be disappointing, that might just have to be enough for St Kilda and Saints fans.
Celebrating the good wins is important and the one against Carlton certain qualifies as such.
But the Saints haven’t been great in 2022 and that’s okay, it just means fans have to wait that much longer for September joys.
To overcome the general tactical malaise the statistics happen to back up, as well as fixturing difficulties and injuries, is a bridge too far for it to be a celebratory year for the red, white and black.
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