AS TALK of resting players dominates the football landscape, St Kilda finds itself in an almost unique position against a hungry West Coast this week.

The Eagles are half a game clear of Hawthorn and Sydney and will be keen to consolidate second position on the ladder with a win on Saturday night.

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The Saints face a daunting task as they fly to Perth to take on an Eagles outfit keen to atone for last week’s loss to Adelaide, but coach Alan Richardson said he was pleased his team continued to take on challenges long after it fell out of the finals race.

“We can either limp to the line and wait until next year and have a strong pre-season and come out and be much more positive and continue to grow as a group because that’s the journey we’re on – or we can do something about it now,” Richardson said at Tullamarine airport on Friday morning.

“We can challenge individuals and challenge some of our own methodology. Our last seven weeks have been against teams in the finals with the exception of Geelong and that is what we focus on. If I can wipe last week, the guys have been pretty good.”

The Saints’ 97-point loss to the Sydney Swans last week was their heaviest for the year, which Richardson said would only fuel the motivation to close out the season on a high note.

“It’s a really good opportunity for us to do something about last week. We were really disappointing. We didn’t compete strong enough for long enough, our tackle numbers were really low and our pressure was the worst of any team for the round and that has been a real strong point of our season,” he said.

“We think there have been a lot of positives this year – if you look at our playing group we have seen some real improvements in the young blokes and as a team we have done some reasonable stuff.

“That took us by surprise, our performance last week. Full credit to Sydney, they were pretty impressive but we didn’t handle that and we have been reasonable at handling pressure from good teams.”

The Saints have made just two changes to last week’s team with Jack Lonie and Farren Ray coming in to replace the retired Adam Schneider and ruckman Tom Hickey.

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Hickey’s omission means a big job for American recruit Jason Holmes who will contest the hitouts against Nic Naitanui and Callum Sinclair in just his third AFL game.

Forward Josh Bruce is expected to provide occasional relief in the ruck, but Richardson said the match-up of Holmes v Naitanui would be a fascinating contest.

“It’s going to be exciting – they are probably the two best athletes with respect to vertical leap. It will be a bit of a jump-fest,” he said.

“They have been outstanding at clearance, West Coast and have been able to get good yardage from that part of the ground. We need to be strong there and Holmesy’s going to have first crack.”