Where we are at

[Teflon]

So it is the list???


Last year it was the coach?

I laugh at this whole BS claim that this year is an "exploration" year.

Why is 1 year needed?

So does the magic happen at the end of the season? Do we start 2024 with a list that can contend after our "exploration" year?

Just makes me laugh when I hear fans roll out the "exploration" line like a clueless and desperate nutter.

A quality list + a quality coach = premiership.

It ain't rocket surgery

Why does a year to work out who will/won’t cut the mustard mean 2024 we start the year as flag favourites?
The only nutter here is the nuff nuff who can’t get the premise that the coach (like he did in 08) will use the year to learn plenty about the list
It really isn’t that hard….if you’re not trolling of course ..,
Otherwise…troll away!

[Teflon]

So it is the list???


Last year it was the coach?

It was largely due to Ratten.
We were predictable to a fault.
We appeared to be stumbling against every obstacle.

There was a growing dissent from the hell of AR winning 34% then Ratten being marginally better at 50% but backpaddling.

A great coach & coaching staff will have a culture that drives excellence. It CAN have players with poor skills or lower talent...but their ATTITUDE creates an atmosphere to succeed.

I do see this with RTB & coaches. Definitely a year of ups & downs as players come to grip with systems & demands as well as coaches figure out what players can implement & who has to go.

So yes, Ratten WAS a problem.
Like AR, a great man, very nice, good human. But cant create a culture of excellence that over time weeds out the dross.

This system RTB wants to deploy, it doesnt always work. You do need quality players who are able to be mentored, luck with injury, fixtures, where other teams are at, etc etc .

Ratten would need far more ends to meet to make a grand final than RTB.

Good post
Don’t feed the muppet’s
What we’ve already seen this year is far far less 1 , 2 quarter games - under Ratten we had a whole half season of them
Not this year
Apart from Crows we are in every game
Anyway good to see a poster look a little deeper than
“Is it the list or the coach”
And repeating it like some random homeless guy pushing a shopping trolley… odd

[BadRossco]

Unless we can inject some pace into our midfield we will probably only win two or three more games. Owens and Windy are a must in the midfield and Bytel is not quick but is good by hand. Billings is not that hard at it but his skill would be an asset we certainly have to change a few things or the mediocrity will become the norm

[Teflon]

Unless we can inject some pace into our midfield we will probably only win two or three more games. Owens and Windy are a must in the midfield and Bytel is not quick but is good by hand. Billings is not that hard at it but his skill would be an asset we certainly have to change a few things or the mediocrity will become the norm

Let’s face it the type of player we need in there doesn’t exist on our list right now
That fast breakaway bull mid like Horne Francis or even a Touk Miller ….who can win a ball but still spread and cover a spreading opposition midfield
We have crabs when it goes outside

[Toy Saint]

Where are we at?

We're 5th on the ladder at the bye with 7 wins and 4 losses. And unfortunately we dropped a game this afternoon we should have won against the Hawks, had we have won that we'd be in the top 4 and the 'experts' would have us 'odds on' to finish in the top 8.

If you asked me before the season, I would've been delighted with 5th with a 7 - 4 record.

Whilst today is a bit disappointing, the season thus far has been mostly positive. Personally I'm delighted with the development of the young players, especially Owens, Wanganeen, as well as Phillipou and Caminiti and pleasantly surprised with Stocker and Mason Wood.

Sinclair and Wilkie have been A grade and most likely in AA contention at this point.

Our early injuries were challenging, but we've worked our way through this very well.

Personally I feel our game style is appealing but requires a lot of running and pressure, and I'm not convinced this is sustainable.

Rowan Marshall has been good, but he probably needs help. Our midfielders have been generally solid and reliable, but probably need a couple extra with skill running through there.

It's great having King back, but our forward line, and especially the connection with the mids isn't working as well as I hoped. Jack Hayes impressed last year, and I reckon we could do with him, or a Paddy Ryder clone. I'm looking forward to see Isiac Keeler. Entering the season I was expecting Membery and Billings would have more impact, but alas they've been mostly absent.

Hopefully we can re-group after the break, tweak a few areas and continue to win more than we lose.

[Scollop]

Where are we at?

We're 5th on the ladder at the bye with 7 wins and 4 losses. And unfortunately we dropped a game this afternoon we should have won against the Hawks, had we have won that we'd be in the top 4 and the 'experts' would have us 'odds on' to finish in the top 8.

If you asked me before the season, I would've been delighted with 5th with a 7 - 4 record.

Whilst today is a bit disappointing, the season thus far has been mostly positive. Personally I'm delighted with the development of the young players, especially Owens, Wanganeen, as well as Phillipou and Caminiti and pleasantly surprised with Stocker and Mason Wood.

Sinclair and Wilkie have been A grade and most likely in AA contention at this point.

Our early injuries were challenging, but we've worked our way through this very well.

Personally I feel our game style is appealing but requires a lot of running and pressure, and I'm not convinced this is sustainable.

Rowan Marshall has been good, but he probably needs help. Our midfielders have been generally solid and reliable, but probably need a couple extra with skill running through there.

It's great having King back, but our forward line, and especially the connection with the mids isn't working as well as I hoped. Jack Hayes impressed last year, and I reckon we could do with him, or a Paddy Ryder clone. I'm looking forward to see Isiac Keeler. Entering the season I was expecting Membery and Billings would have more impact, but alas they've been mostly absent.

Hopefully we can re-group after the break, tweak a few areas and continue to win more than we lose.

Glass half full stuff

Very positive post. I've highlighted the sentence that I totally agree with

This is one of the main reasons we needed to rest players as sub and get fresh legs into the midfield over the last 5 weeks

[samuraisaint]

I was there today, and I was as disappointed as anybody.
Results this round have been nothing if not extraordinary. Luckily the round has been kind to us - Carlton, Geelong, Melbourne, and the Bulldogs have all lost.
The season goes one extra game this season, so the team are just going to have to stick fat. We have the 7 wins and the coaches and players have time to regroup after their break.
I'm not ready to give up on the season. Windhager seems to be going great in the reserves.

Samurai
I know you are a stats nut
So tell me - us - is it common for anomalies just before the bye? Or are they omens of doom?

No, not really - actually a lot of teams struggle to get going after the bye.
I am hoping that because of yesterday we turn up rearing to go against Sydney and hopefully play like we did in the back half of 2021, where we put together a very decent run of form. What was it? Five wins out of ten or something like that? We do that and we should play finals.
What I saw yesterday was some of our players gasping, bent over and absolutely struggling for air in the last five minutes. Maybe they were gassed from the Giants game, I dunno.

[cwrcyn]

Our losses against Hawthorn, Adelaide, and Port Adelaide were down to one thing.

Getting smashed in the midfield

Lyon has already identified our midfield's 'lack of spread', as he calls it. He's mentioned it a few times this year.

Ours is the slowest midfield on the comp. Unless everyone in it is 'on', then we get exploited.

The problem is, who at Sandy (or out injured) can give us that spread?

Bytel? No. Spread is is weakness

Windhager? Might be a marginal improvement in that area, but has not displayed that in the games he's played so far.

Owens? Maybe. But I see him more as a Patrick Cripps type.

Jones? Yes, for the handful of games he plays each year.




So that's where it sits. We have a problem that we cannot fix in the short term. I think Lyon's exploration year has already found the elephant in the room. We'll just have to battle on and start throwing Windhager and Owens through that midfield to see if they can give us more spark and give the opposition something to worry about.

We just have to hope that Ollie Hotton turns out to be that hard running, quick midfielder we desperately need

[samuraisaint]

The problem with st kilda is the players and the coach .
We all know how Ross coaches . For him to be successful he needs 6+ champion players . Unfortunately at the moment we've only got a few .
Those in the football department would be happy where we are at the bye .
Ross has talked a few times about 14 / 7 . This gets you bottom half of the eight .
Can we get there , that is the problem.
I'd just like Ross to be honest and say he reckons we've got no chance this year , he's getting games into the kids who are our future whilst working out who can be traded or given the arse at the end of the year.
Then he's looking to go hard with free agents and trading to bring together a team that can play his game style.
My problem with that is I don't think his game style can win a flag .
It really requires everything to go prefect on the day .

We play 23 matches this season, not 21.
We still have 12 matches left.

We should win at least five more matches this season. The question is how we will win them? In my opinion we need to be switched on to not just win, but to try to win games by 12, 15, or 20 goals. Just going in to games against bottom teams with an attitude of; we need to focus on just winning the game first, is counterproductive. We let teams in and either just win or get done.

[Vortex]

So it is the list???


Last year it was the coach?

I laugh at this whole BS claim that this year is an "exploration" year.

Why is 1 year needed?

So does the magic happen at the end of the season? Do we start 2024 with a list that can contend after our "exploration" year?

Just makes me laugh when I hear fans roll out the "exploration" line like a clueless and desperate nutter.

A quality list + a quality coach = premiership.

It ain't rocket surgery

Why does a year to work out who will/won’t cut the mustard mean 2024 we start the year as flag favourites?
The only nutter here is the nuff nuff who can’t get the premise that the coach (like he did in 08) will use the year to learn plenty about the list
It really isn’t that hard….if you’re not trolling of course ..,
Otherwise…troll away!

so we won't be contenders next year either? remind me again, when will this list be contending?

Another chicken that's coming home to roost is the legend that Lyon get's the best out of his player, now whilst this is a true statement for some players, for many others it is not, one only needs to look at Lyon's last failed attempt to rebuild the Freo list. Many a player just didn't come up to GF quality, some did but most didn't.

Same issue with this list I recon, if say the improvement Lyon can develop in a player is 5-10% but the player needs 10-15% to get up to GF quality then that is on the quality of the player which comes back to my firm belief, a belief that is well known in the AFL, and that is, a good coach is only as good as his list, the two go hand-in-hand.

This list needs a serious turn over and I believe this point was Lyon's sell to Bassett, and as such he will need every bit of his 4 year contract to rebuild the list if we are to become a GF quality list.

How we do that is going to be incredibly hard as it always is, especially for a poor bottom dwelling club like ours, hence my skepticism about Lyon and his magic trick that no other coach or club has yet to find.

Lyon is a fantastic coach, but he isn't a magician which if I think back to the hysteria from the fanboys over the pre season I could have sworn Lyon was best mates with David Copperfield.

and a footnote on how hard it is to build a list: Tasmania coming into the comp is going hurt us badly, as it did when GWS and GCSs entered the comp, arguably the new franchises have been a contributing factor to us remaining at t he bottom of the ladder since Lyon was last in charge.

[lewdogs]

So it is the list???


Last year it was the coach?

I laugh at this whole BS claim that this year is an "exploration" year.

Why is 1 year needed?

So does the magic happen at the end of the season? Do we start 2024 with a list that can contend after our "exploration" year?

Just makes me laugh when I hear fans roll out the "exploration" line like a clueless and desperate nutter.

A quality list + a quality coach = premiership.

It ain't rocket surgery

Why does a year to work out who will/won’t cut the mustard mean 2024 we start the year as flag favourites?
The only nutter here is the nuff nuff who can’t get the premise that the coach (like he did in 08) will use the year to learn plenty about the list
It really isn’t that hard….if you’re not trolling of course ..,
Otherwise…troll away!

so we won't be contenders next year either? remind me again, when will this list be contending?

Another chicken that's coming home to roost is the legend that Lyon get's the best out of his player, now whilst this is a true statement for some players, for many others it is not, one only needs to look at Lyon's last failed attempt to rebuild the Freo list. Many a player just didn't come up to GF quality, some did but most didn't.

Same issue with this list I recon, if say the improvement Lyon can develop in a player is 5-10% but the player needs 10-15% to get up to GF quality then that is on the quality of the player which comes back to my firm belief, a belief that is well known in the AFL, and that is, a good coach is only as good as his list, the two go hand-in-hand.

This list needs a serious turn over and I believe this point was Lyon's sell to Bassett, and as such he will need every bit of his 4 year contract to rebuild the list if we are to become a GF quality list.

How we do that is going to be incredibly hard as it always is, especially for a poor bottom dwelling club like ours, hence my skepticism about Lyon and his magic trick that no other coach or club has yet to find.

Lyon is a fantastic coach, but he isn't a magician which if I think back to the hysteria from the fanboys over the pre season I could have sworn Lyon was best mates with David Copperfield.

and a footnote on how hard it is to build a list: Tasmania coming into the comp is going hurt us badly, as it did when GWS and GCSs entered the comp, arguably the new franchises have been a contributing factor to us remaining at t he bottom of the ladder since Lyon was last in charge.

If you look at the past like five years there's almost always been a period where we fall away. Even in 2020 we limped to the finals.

So the immediate challenge for Lyon is to find a way to get the side playing good footy again and get into the finals. We can turn the list over all we want but if remain inconsistent we'll achieve nothing.

We went toe to toe with Collingwood and trounced some good sides this year. We are better than what we are dishing up, this current situation has been recurring and the immediate challenge for Lyon has to be to change this situation and get some confidence into the group.

[nostalgicsaint]

Some really great discussion in this thread.

On selection.

I don't think anything is gained by dropping mature bodies too quickly and personally reject the calls to have rested these blokes over the past few weeks.

Having those experienced heads around the likes of Pou, Windy, Owens, Wang and Hammer is super valuable for them to learn.

People thinking RL is just sticking with names and experienced players only need to look to Membrey and Billings to see that isn't the case.

That said- on Seb Ross. I agree he should make way this week after a sustained run of average form and a young player knocking down the door in Windy.

I'd still wouldn't be making bulk changes.

Owens and Windy in
Ross and Clark out

Billings/Sharman for sub

Ross to get the same treatment as Membrey- must beat down the door to get back in.

I'm really looking forward to next year. This year is about development and learning to play a game style.

[SaintPav]

I hope Ross gave them a dressing down and flogs them on the track this week.

They don’t deserve a break. Back to training on Monday for a flogging.

[Otiman]

Any mature age mids from the SANFL in the MSD?

[Otiman]

Having those experienced heads around the likes of Pou, Windy, Owens, Wang and Hammer is super valuable for them to learn.

Don't know how much they're learning when it's the experienced heads dropping the game.

[realdeal]

Knowing our luck we'll be bottom 4 just as Tasmania start getting their draft concessions

[Bruce G McAbee]

Another possible reason of where we are at could be that early in the season we were a lot fitter than other sides.
But all the teams are match fit now and have had time to work us out.
Wood hasn't been nowhere as dominant as he was earlier in the season because other sides are putting more work into him.
The bye has probably come at a good time.

[saynta]

The problem with st kilda is the players and the coach .
We all know how Ross coaches . For him to be successful he needs 6+ champion players . Unfortunately at the moment we've only got a few .
Those in the football department would be happy where we are at the bye .
Ross has talked a few times about 14 / 7 . This gets you bottom half of the eight .
Can we get there , that is the problem.
I'd just like Ross to be honest and say he reckons we've got no chance this year , he's getting games into the kids who are our future whilst working out who can be traded or given the arse at the end of the year.
Then he's looking to go hard with free agents and trading to bring together a team that can play his game style.
My problem with that is I don't think his game style can win a flag .
It really requires everything to go prefect on the day .

He isn't going to come out and say we are no chance. Ross doesn't give much away at all to the media, Wilkie just said in the post game interview that Ross said to the players their effort wasn't good enough but he won't go saying that in the media. His media stuff is mostly hyperbole and I don't mind that, we need a coach that can get the most out of the players and if he thinks that's the way then fine. Publicly tarring them each week like our recent coaches hasn't worked.

https://www.saints.com.au/video/1342547 ... 5172623001

[samuraisaint]

So it is the list???


Last year it was the coach?

I laugh at this whole BS claim that this year is an "exploration" year.

Why is 1 year needed?

So does the magic happen at the end of the season? Do we start 2024 with a list that can contend after our "exploration" year?

Just makes me laugh when I hear fans roll out the "exploration" line like a clueless and desperate nutter.

A quality list + a quality coach = premiership.

It ain't rocket surgery

Why does a year to work out who will/won’t cut the mustard mean 2024 we start the year as flag favourites?
The only nutter here is the nuff nuff who can’t get the premise that the coach (like he did in 08) will use the year to learn plenty about the list
It really isn’t that hard….if you’re not trolling of course ..,
Otherwise…troll away!

so we won't be contenders next year either? remind me again, when will this list be contending?

Another chicken that's coming home to roost is the legend that Lyon get's the best out of his player, now whilst this is a true statement for some players, for many others it is not, one only needs to look at Lyon's last failed attempt to rebuild the Freo list. Many a player just didn't come up to GF quality, some did but most didn't.

Same issue with this list I recon, if say the improvement Lyon can develop in a player is 5-10% but the player needs 10-15% to get up to GF quality then that is on the quality of the player which comes back to my firm belief, a belief that is well known in the AFL, and that is, a good coach is only as good as his list, the two go hand-in-hand.

This list needs a serious turn over and I believe this point was Lyon's sell to Bassett, and as such he will need every bit of his 4 year contract to rebuild the list if we are to become a GF quality list.

How we do that is going to be incredibly hard as it always is, especially for a poor bottom dwelling club like ours, hence my skepticism about Lyon and his magic trick that no other coach or club has yet to find.

Lyon is a fantastic coach, but he isn't a magician which if I think back to the hysteria from the fanboys over the pre season I could have sworn Lyon was best mates with David Copperfield.

and a footnote on how hard it is to build a list: Tasmania coming into the comp is going hurt us badly, as it did when GWS and GCSs entered the comp, arguably the new franchises have been a contributing factor to us remaining at t he bottom of the ladder since Lyon was last in charge.

If you look at the past like five years there's almost always been a period where we fall away. Even in 2020 we limped to the finals.

So the immediate challenge for Lyon is to find a way to get the side playing good footy again and get into the finals. We can turn the list over all we want but if remain inconsistent we'll achieve nothing.

We went toe to toe with Collingwood and trounced some good sides this year. We are better than what we are dishing up, this current situation has been recurring and the immediate challenge for Lyon has to be to change this situation and get some confidence into the group.

Excellent post and spot on.
Go back to 2019 when we won 4 games out of the first 5, then lost to a very poor Crows side, at home no less, and fell away very badly winning only five more games for the rest of the season.
However, good sides respond, and I believe the way we are playing, the coaching staff we have, and the young players brought into the club are better than they have been the past four years.
Moreover, good sides respond, so it is now over to the players. They screwed up by losing the unlosable game at home to Hawthorn, so now they need to respond in the best way possible; to beat a team they have beaten only twice in a decade at a ground we haven't won at for over a decade. We will see what the team is made of then.
I would prefer to give the team and the club the benefit of the doubt first and wait to see their response against the Sydney Swans after the bye. They do deserve a chance to respond.

[samoht]

What stood out is, we need to bolster and improve our midfield, especially.
We'll probably need to recruit and trade our way out of this (but, I'm quietly optimistic of Owens and maybe Windhager developing as A grade midfielders, eventually).

But, the other elephant in the room and the achilles' heel might be that the defensive zones that RL's game plan employs could be allowing opposition defenders too much space and time ...allowing the opposition defence to rebound and combine with each other and with their midfield, too easily?

I remember Geelong, Collingwood and the Bulldogs rebounding at will - and their defenders getting record numbers, even in finals, against us (under RL).
Harbrow, for instance, got huge numbers in finals against us. So did Thomas, Shaw, Enright, etc... just too many easy possessions, which allowed a lot of free run and linking up with their respective midfield.

I mean Sicily getting 43 possessions against us - that's ridiculous.

If you allow a skillful team easy rebound, it just sets up their play and tempo, and you could be handing them the game?

[nostalgicsaint]

Perhaps the much maligned role Cordy was playing is more valuable than many on here realised too?

[samoht]

Perhaps the much maligned role Cordy was playing is more valuable than many on here realised too?

Might come back in, who knows - but, it depends if he was Cordynary in the reserves, yesterday, or extraCordynary?

[lewdogs]

So it is the list???


Last year it was the coach?

I laugh at this whole BS claim that this year is an "exploration" year.

Why is 1 year needed?

So does the magic happen at the end of the season? Do we start 2024 with a list that can contend after our "exploration" year?

Just makes me laugh when I hear fans roll out the "exploration" line like a clueless and desperate nutter.

A quality list + a quality coach = premiership.

It ain't rocket surgery

Why does a year to work out who will/won’t cut the mustard mean 2024 we start the year as flag favourites?
The only nutter here is the nuff nuff who can’t get the premise that the coach (like he did in 08) will use the year to learn plenty about the list
It really isn’t that hard….if you’re not trolling of course ..,
Otherwise…troll away!

so we won't be contenders next year either? remind me again, when will this list be contending?

Another chicken that's coming home to roost is the legend that Lyon get's the best out of his player, now whilst this is a true statement for some players, for many others it is not, one only needs to look at Lyon's last failed attempt to rebuild the Freo list. Many a player just didn't come up to GF quality, some did but most didn't.

Same issue with this list I recon, if say the improvement Lyon can develop in a player is 5-10% but the player needs 10-15% to get up to GF quality then that is on the quality of the player which comes back to my firm belief, a belief that is well known in the AFL, and that is, a good coach is only as good as his list, the two go hand-in-hand.

This list needs a serious turn over and I believe this point was Lyon's sell to Bassett, and as such he will need every bit of his 4 year contract to rebuild the list if we are to become a GF quality list.

How we do that is going to be incredibly hard as it always is, especially for a poor bottom dwelling club like ours, hence my skepticism about Lyon and his magic trick that no other coach or club has yet to find.

Lyon is a fantastic coach, but he isn't a magician which if I think back to the hysteria from the fanboys over the pre season I could have sworn Lyon was best mates with David Copperfield.

and a footnote on how hard it is to build a list: Tasmania coming into the comp is going hurt us badly, as it did when GWS and GCSs entered the comp, arguably the new franchises have been a contributing factor to us remaining at t he bottom of the ladder since Lyon was last in charge.

If you look at the past like five years there's almost always been a period where we fall away. Even in 2020 we limped to the finals.

So the immediate challenge for Lyon is to find a way to get the side playing good footy again and get into the finals. We can turn the list over all we want but if remain inconsistent we'll achieve nothing.

We went toe to toe with Collingwood and trounced some good sides this year. We are better than what we are dishing up, this current situation has been recurring and the immediate challenge for Lyon has to be to change this situation and get some confidence into the group.

Excellent post and spot on.
Go back to 2019 when we won 4 games out of the first 5, then lost to a very poor Crows side, at home no less, and fell away very badly winning only five more games for the rest of the season.
However, good sides respond, and I believe the way we are playing, the coaching staff we have, and the young players brought into the club are better than they have been the past four years.
Moreover, good sides respond, so it is now over to the players. They screwed up by losing the unlosable game at home to Hawthorn, so now they need to respond in the best way possible; to beat a team they have beaten only twice in a decade at a ground we haven't won at for over a decade. We will see what the team is made of then.
I would prefer to give the team and the club the benefit of the doubt first and wait to see their response against the Sydney Swans after the bye. They do deserve a chance to respond.

I think there's a sense that because we've seen this movie before, everything will pan out the same. A loss to Sydney is incoming, we will capitulate and miss finals.

This is as good a chance as we'll get to change the narrative. Sydney are very ordinary this year and have lots of injuries. If we play at our best we will win, but can we get back to that? That's the challenge the coaches and players face, I'd like to think we can do it.

[Banger9798]

On the positive side...
Yesterday's game allowed me to confidently book my holiday at the end of September, with no fear of missing out .

[meher baba]

As BM observed on another thread, we are once again beginning to see Lyon's shortcomings in terms of managing players who don't fit into his mould.

As one of the players (I think it was Mason Wood) recently reported, Lyon has a pre-existing template for the 22 roles in his team, and each player must learn how to fill one of those roles or else they'll be replaced by someone who can.

The template is very well designed but we do know that some good players have struggled to fit into it: we all remember Ball, Armitage and Steven, and there were also some in the same situation at Freo. And now it would appear that Windhager and Billings to have fallen into that category. Lyon tends to be dark on players who lack aerobic capacity and/or want to make too many of their own decisions on the field in areas where he wants athletic types who will continually run up and down the field maintaining structure.

That's fine if he can find enough athletes who have reasonable skills. But, when confronted with a choice between an athlete with relatively poor skills and a skilled player who is not the greatest athlete and who might be a bit too inclined to think for themselves, he will too often go with the athlete. And this is ok until we come up against an opponent who can disrupt our defensive structure. We've lost to two of these recently (Adelaide and Hawthorn) and almost lost to a third (GWS). When your team defence is struggling, your skilled and experienced players come to the fore. If Billings had played yesterday instead of Byrnes, he would have covered far less ground, but would have been far more useful falling back in defence, as he would have been like to hit targets coming out of the defensive 50: something that Byrnes has pretty much no ability to do.

A related problem is that Lyon tends to go for lineups that are a bit light on in the engine room. I really do think that we could do with one fewer midfielder who presses forward (or even one fewer forward) and one more in-and-under guy. Steele, Ross, Crouch and Clark are fine when they are all on song but that's not always going to happen: yesterday Steele was off his game for whatever reason, and Clark got injured. IMO, Windhager should come in against the Swans as an extra midfielder, not as a replacement for Ross or Steele. And on a small ground on which aerobic capacity is less important, Billings would be a hell of a lot more useful than Byrnes.

At best, we might get Windhager. I sense that Lyon has no interest whatsoever in Billings, and his comments to the media are increasingly sounding like excuses (as indeed have been those about Windhager).

Lyon is an A-grade coach, but he is undoubtedly a little stubborn and inflexible and these tendencies have perhaps contributed to his failure to win a flag to date. In the early part of the season, I thought he was demonstrating a slight more pragmatic approach but, as things have become more difficult, I fear that he is clutching onto his system more tightly.