Seasoned St Kilda defender Sean Dempster is confident the cancellation of Sunday’s NAB Challenge clash against Brisbane won’t impact the Saints’ preparation for the premiership season, despite the missed practice match opportunity.

Given Alan Richardson’s list played an intra-club before their first clash of the pre-season against North Melbourne, as well as several structured match simulation sessions prior to that, and given the almost full clean bill of health at Linen House Centre, the club is well placed to not be affected by Sunday’s abandonment.

“I don’t think so, I think for the majority of the players we will have now had the intra-club and then the Wangaratta match against the Kangaroos and we’ve got another match,” Dempster told saints.com.au.

“For the majority of the boys we will have had three really good hit outs. I don’t think it will matter too much.

“We had a reasonable training session yesterday and we’ll have a big hit out tomorrow. So I don’t think it will matter too much.”

Torrential rain, pre-season football and St Kilda

Dempster revealed that the playing group wasn’t spared a physical blowout in Mackay, with the high performance team swiftly locating an appropriate venue to get some conditioning in following the AFL’s decision to pull the pin on the game.

“Unfortunately they managed to find an oval we could run on,” Dempster said with a grin. “A rugby oval about a kilometre away, so we whipped on our boots, jogged over there, and trudged through the mud and the water.”

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“It was pretty solid; the majority of the boys would have preferred to play. It would have been a bit more fun – we didn’t get to touch the footys.”

St Kilda will rubber stamp its pre-season campaign when they face Melbourne at Etihad Stadium on Sunday afternoon, with a near full strength side expected to face the Demons in the Saints final hit out.

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