interesting age article on the game....

[stinger]

Two teams face their destiny, but will one take a tumble?

Emma Quayle | March 23, 2008

IF THE summer months intimated anything about St Kilda and Sydney, it was that they had more in common than former coaches, ex-players, former fitness advisors and a couple of jumper colours.

Both teams have started the new season seemingly on the brink of something new — for the Saints, the success their now mature, now healthy and always talented team was surely bound to find; for the Swans, the demise, however low and long, success brings with it.

Plenty of old Swans played last night, and they were good old Swans, who did the same things they always have. The side is getting older, but it still has its stars.

The question is what comes next. Barry Hall, Brett Kirk, Michael O'Loughlin, Adam Goodes, Tadhg Kennelly and Ryan O'Keefe, to get started, will always be what they are, but Sydney has reached the point where the gap between its first and last picked players yawns wide. It needs other players to do big things if a couple of the bigger names don't (Goodes and Hall, last night.) And it means the season will tell interesting tales for two groups of players.

The first is those who perched on the edge of the grand final teams, or just outside it. The players who looked very good in a premiership line-up, but have to nudge themselves up a level for the Swans to stay where they were. Can Paul Bevan improve, or Jarrad McVeigh? He led the Swans' possession count at half-time, when they were safely in the match.

Can Luke Ablett go up a grade? Can Amon Buchanan run for longer in the midfield? The efforts of those players, plus the likes of Ted Richards and Martin Mattner, will have a big say in which path the Swans take.

The other group is the new (or newish) boys. The Swans are also at that point where having lowly draft picks (and in Sydney's case, trading off the high ones you do get) hastens the drag-down. Heath Grundy, a one-time rookie who's had a few years in the system, is big and strong, and kicked a nice first-quarter goal from the boundary line.

Kieren Jack is a much tinier former rookie, but lacks no energy, Within a three-minute stretch in the second quarter he threaded a running pass from deep in the forward pocket to Hall, then knocked Xavier Clarke over on the wing, hard enough to shake Clarke's stronger body off the ball.

Jarred Moore, playing his 10th game in his fourth year, coughed the ball up in a couple of hot first-half moments before nearly snapping the clinching goal much later, and while Craig Bird had only a small taste on his debut, that the Swans have handed him the No. 14 says they expect him to be around a while.

At the other end of the see-saw were the Saints, who have real, sturdy players now, in every part of the ground. It means their young players can slot in without standing out, and just do their thing. Jarryn Geary can find his way with Luke Ball, Nick Dal Santo, Lenny Hayes, Leigh Montagna on the front line of the midfield, as can Clint Jones.

Like Jack, Jones made a two-moment impression. Early in the third term, he ran bouncing across half-back, passed, then ran twice as hard to get in front of the player he passed to and get the ball back. Later, he had enough courage to sit under a high ball half-forward, eyes up as he was crunched, and enough wits to fire a handpass the instant he got up again.

But it is the middle-range Saints that are intriguing this year. The St Kilda season may well be about whether Steven King and Michael Gardiner can stay up, and stay running, the big plus being that Justin Koschitzke can stay forward. The Saints still don't kick the goals they should.

It might be about what Xavier Clarke can add (and if he can steer clear of injury and add it on a full-time basis). Then there is his more tormented brother: ask anyone in Darwin about Raph Clarke and they rave about the talent he could and should be. He needs games, and to not let himself get run down late in the tight last quarters of games.

Last night said, as the NAB Cup final two weeks ago said, that the Saints take a while to break away from teams they look like they should be much better than. But that they can break away is all that really matters. No matter who plays for the Swans, they know how to play how the Swans play, and how to suck other teams in.

St Kilda's characters stayed strong, and despite shedding cast members Sydney stuck to its own well-rehearsed (if slightly overdone) script as stubbornly as the American Pie producers. The next six months will tell who has the more compelling product.