St Kilda midfielder Luke Dunstan says the Saints were sick of walking away from games without premiership points, attributing Saturday’s win, which snapped an eight-game losing streak, to a collective desire to get the job done.

In a performance that prompted Alan Richardson to label it the best in his time as senior coach, St Kilda overcame injury adversity to grind out a convincing 29-point win, despite being limited to just one on the bench in the last quarter, restricting the Saints to just 72 rotations for the game.

After being in front in the last quarter against Port Adelaide in Round 1, as well as on a handful of occasions late in games last season, the Saints ability to stay in the lead from late in the final term until the final siren emphasised a coming of age performance.

Monday Wash Up: Round 3 v Collingwood

“As a group I think we’re just gelling really well together. You could tell that there was a feeling that everyone’s sick of losing and really wanted to do something about it,” Dunstan told saints.com.au post-game.

“We’re getting in these positions in games where we can go on and win and kick away, finally we’ve done that.

“No one was happy with our performance last week. We were really outplayed and beaten in the contest last week, so we were keen to bounce back and play well.”

Dunstan was part of a young midfield contingency that made a sizeable contribution to the win over Collingwood.

The South Australian collected a season-high 25 possessions, seven tackles and five clearances to along with Jack Newnes, Seb Ross and Jack Billings, lessen the reliance on Jack Steven and David Armitage.

The 21-year-old explained the Saints have focused on improving the level of output from the clubs collection of youngsters to help climb back up the ladder.

“We spoke about that before the start of the year. The improvement’s not going to come from the older guys, it’s going to be the second, third, fourth and fifth year players that are starting to get 30 to 80 games under their belt now,” Dunstan said.

“We’ve obviously got to go to the next level as a group. I felt we took a step in the right direction today.”

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