Can We Handle The Truth?

[Huzzad]

Pretty scathing attack on the performance on Sat. I think he was fairly accurate in parts, not so in others. But reasonably spot on I thought, as sad as it is to admit it.

Halo men or hollow men?

Rohan Connolly | August 11, 2008
http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/h ... 65500.html


PERHAPS the most revealing comment of the football weekend came from a deflated St Kilda coach Ross Lyon half an hour or so after his team's bitterly disappointing loss to Collingwood on Saturday night.

"We need to excite ourselves into action," he said.

Excuse me? So the opportunity to go two games clear in the eight and have a serious crack at the top four wasn't excitement enough? Nor the announcement of the imminent retirement of Robert Harvey, one of its greatest sons? Well, going on the lethargic, listless performance the Saints turned in on the biggest of stages, apparently not. What's it going to take, a cattle prod?

That St Kilda would need to find some sort of extra motivation given the opportunity that beckoned against the Magpies at the MCG is an indictment on a playing group big on names and expectation, but preciously short of the sort of character that's going to be required by any aspirant to this year's finals series.

All the momentum built during four wins in a row culminating in a season-high defeat of Hawthorn in round 16 has now been reduced to nought these past three weeks.

A loss to a West Coast team that, when the Saints played them, would have had trouble beating itself.

A scrubby, narrow win over a Port Adelaide that had long since waved the white flag on the season. Now a crushing loss to a Collingwood coming off a week of turmoil and having exiled two of its most important players.

You sensed within five minutes of the start on Saturday night that the Saints were in big trouble. Second to the ball. No energy. And what spasmodic delivery there was into their forward line at best haphazard, at worst just plain lazy.

They still might have got out of jail. But just a modicum of resilience from the Magpies was enough to thwart St Kilda's last-quarter flurry as quickly as it began. Not good enough. And nor, simply, is the Saints' structure or manpower.

Max Hudghton seemed just as important an inclusion against the Pies as was Luke Ball an omission. But in the end, St Kilda was as good as two down. In defence, Hudghton looked proppy, still conscious of the injury from which he had returned.

Ball's absence was underscored as much by the work of Magpie midfielders Scott Burns and Dane Swan as the failure of teammates such as Nick Dal Santo and Leigh Montagna to pick up the slack.

The Collingwood pair generated close to half the Pies' clearances. Ball wouldn't have let them win the hard balls nearly so easily. But how can any would-be contender afford to rely so heavily on one engineroom player?

Simply, it can't. Nor carry too many non-contributors at the bottom end of its 22, big names or otherwise.

James Gwilt tries, but was found out horribly early on Saturday evening. Andrew McQualter simply isn't good enough. Ditto Aaron Fiora. Jarryn Geary and Robert Eddy aren't yet capable of making significant contributions. Stephen Milne and Justin Koschitzke are, but don't often enough, Milne too often relying on cameo bursts, "Kosi's" lack of pure football smarts is a real concern.

St Kilda has Fremantle in Perth, Adelaide and Essendon to overcome if it is to hang on in the eight. That should be excitement enough. Or, if they go into any of them with the same sort of half-hearted attitude they had at the 'G on Saturday night, a death warrant.

[saintdooley]

they went of the ground before i knew it!
seriously, the siren went and they congratulated the pies and then bailed!