We’re coming now to the end of this insanity-filled home and away season, but unfortunately, none of that chaos made its way into this fizzer of a clash. It was the perennially underperforming Saints against a rampaging Brisbane outfit, and there were no surprises or illusions. The Lions dismantled the Saints with surgical precision and outstanding flair, while their opponents sort of stood around and watched. Let’s jump into the key points of the game, presuming I can find some.
The class gap
No, this isn’t referring to the hollowing-out of the middle class, although I could write a few passionate words on that topic, too. This is about the simple fact that the Lions are quite a bit better than the Saints at football-related activities. It was a game of contrasts, and St Kilda weren’t on the good side in any of those dynamics.
Lachie Neale never ceases to amaze me with his supernatural ability to extract the ball out of impossible situations and outrageously good handball placement. In case you thought those traits alone would be sufficient to make an elite midfielder, his agility also remains top-shelf despite his lack of actual speed, and he danced out of congestion today as he saw fit. He looked like the best player out there to me, and better still, he looked like he knew it. I do think it’s a mild travesty that he has two Brownlows whilst Marcus Bontempelli is yet to win one, but Neale is a hell of a player, and borderline impossible to stop.
I tossed up giving Cam Rayner his own subsection within the article, but I really want to amplify the weapons that the Lions have that the Saints don’t, and I think that’s best done under one heading. Rayner has finally shown a bit of consistent brilliance over the last six weeks, and this was another step towards consistency for him. His second quarter was really nice, with seven possessions, two goals and a couple of bullocking moves that left the opposition defence helpless. Add to that a brilliant snap after breaking through two tackles in the third quarter and he had himself a very handy outing. Maybe, just maybe, he’s found his mojo as the mid-fwd hybrid star everyone always knew he could be. He’s got the strength and the power. I suspect it’s mainly psychological for him, and this was the sort of performance that can put such hang-ups to rest. Best of luck to Rayner’s direct match-ups in September. For the Saints… maybe you guys should be looking for a player of his type with your imminent top five pick.
A word too, on the stark contrast in pace between the two teams. The Saints looked so damn slow, and the Lions… well, didn’t. It was as if the Saints had been treated to cement in their pre-game pasta. They could barely get any possession chains going before the game went out of their reach and they struggled mightily to cover the rampaging Lions players in transition. Even Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera, one of my favourite opposition players, known for his fleet-footedness, looked lethargic and off-colour in his movements.
To emphasise the gulf in pace and general skill, I’d like to draw attention to Josh Battle’s Benny Hill moment in the final minute of the game, whereby he coughed up a handball in defensive 50, and was then forced to lumber helplessly after the delighted turnover recipient, Jaspa Fletcher, who duly evaded the tackle and snapped the final goal to put the margin back beyond 80 points. Battle couldn’t have provided a better summary of his team’s day.
Pressure
For any Ross Lyon-coached team, pressure is an absolute non-negotiable, but it didn’t appear that way in this game. Rather, it was the Lions who seemed to have the extra man on the field. On the defensive side of things, they were harrying, corralling, laying crunching tackles, and their hunger for the contest was insatiable. A couple of periods, particularly in the first half, brought me back to the 2013 preliminary final between Fremantle and Sydney, still the most claustrophobic game of AFL I’ve ever watched. The Lions just ran and ran and ran at the Saints, and even when you thought St Kilda had an outlet, with a free man over the top for an obvious handball, he would be closed down with speed. The statline reads 66 tackles to 43, St Kilda’s way, but it’s misleading. A lot of those 66 were made at stoppage situations, as the Saints couldn’t get their hands on the ball following the ruck contest, and so were forced to tackle again and again. Pressure-wise, Brisbane won this hands down.
(Semi-) bright sparks
It wasn’t a totally useless outing for the Saints though, even if the ratio of doom-and-gloom to non-doom-and-gloom was about a 97/3 split.
Angus McLennan came in as a late change to make his debut and looked right at home as a medium defender. His judgement of the ball in the air and neat technique impressed me. If they can make a two-way defender out of him, they’ll be laughing. Such a player type is much rarer than it would seem.
Darcy Wilson also acquitted himself fairly well, driving forward with the ball when he saw the chance. 14 disposals for 300 metres gained, at a whopping 21m per disposal, was a titanic example of forward movement in a team that looked far more interested in chipping it sideways.
A word too, for Mattaes Phillipou, who despite whispers of discontent and a lack of physical attributes, cracked in extremely hard for his team. His statline was tidy, but it was more his effort that impressed me. Young blokes can have a tendency to give up a bit when things aren’t going their team’s way, but he kept right on until the end, hunting the ball and the man in the midfield and up forward.
Con jobs
To my eyes, the prevalence of the Selwood shoulder-lift, rather than being outlawed, is now being rewarded more than ever, and canny players other than those called Jack Ginnivan are picking up on it. In this one, Ashcroft, Neale, Berry and Shadeau Brain (yes, he gets his full name mentioned) all tried the move on with success, which led to much head-shaking and teeth-gritting from this quarter. Call me a football purist, but I detest the move and wish umpires would think more thoroughly before blowing the whistle in that situation. It’s manipulation of a tackle and leaves the tackler, whose attempt to stop the guy with the ball starts out as perfectly legal, with no chance at all. Just so that I appear logically consistent, I’d like to point out that Zurhaar does it for my mob and every time he gets rewarded for it I pray that he stuffs up the kick.
Jack Sinclair also pulled off a grimace-inducing move, leaning his head into the contest as a Lions player contested with him, and getting rewarded for it. Similarly to the above, wilfully risking a concussion for the sake of a free kick leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Players who try it should not be awarded the free and should be taken off for a mandatory check, at least until NIA helmets become compulsory in this league (a development which I think is three years away at most).
Right, that’s the obligatory man-yells-at-cloud section done.
Implications
Obviously there’s only so much analysis you can do on an 85-point game, so let’s look forward to where this result places the respective teams.
The Lions are on a nine-game streak and seem to have remembered that they are in fact a Grand Final calibre team. Their confidence and trust in each other is sky-high at the moment and I hope that that continues throughout September, because quite frankly, I think only a flag is a pass mark for this list. With an awesome senior core complemented by a brigade of quality youngsters (Logan Morris didn’t get a paragraph to himself in this piece but man, he looks like an awesome pick-up with his intelligence around the goals and marking strength), they really have no excuse not to stumble. Nevertheless, I suspect they’ll be wishing finals to arrive three weeks earlier, because they look primed right now. And with how quickly the momentum of finals contenders has shifted this season, they might be worrying that they’ve peaked a tad too early, and that whatever demonic incubus has recently infected Sydney may come knocking at their door soon. Fascinating times ahead.
As for St Kilda, a story unfolded that their fans are all too used to. It looked like the shackles on their game style had been released in recent weeks, with plenty of free flowing attacking football, but said shackles were firmly back in place today, with a little help from Brisbane. It’s difficult to know what the tonic is for their situation. I think most of the football world were a little taken aback when the Saints went back to the man whose stubborn ways left the club looking rather poorly circa 2012, and to me, it looks like the sport will completely leave him behind unless he fights his instinct to be negative and defensive and embraces a more expansive game plan.
A strong and mobile midfielder should also be at the top of their agenda in bolded, underlined and italicised letters. Jack Steele isn’t the player he once was, Brad Crouch is the definition of (ageing) meat-and-potatoes, and Jack Sinclair is more effective as a rebounding defender. In a draft containing a midfield-heavy top end, there’s no excuse for them not to address it.
And that’ll just about do it for me. Final score 19.10.124-5.9.39. A match that rather than teaching us anything new, sort of hammered home the notions many were already surmising regarding these two teams. And I’d like to commend myself for only dozing off for a few minutes in the last quarter, rather than the whole period.
Till next time.
