St Kilda Coach Alan Richardson praised the performances of defenders Jarryn Geary and Sam Fisher following their efforts on Fremantle stars Hayden Ballantyne and Matthew Pavlich on Saturday night.
Geary held Ballantyne goalless, restricting the 2014 All Australian small forward to just six possessions and next to no impact. While Fisher nullified six-time Doig medallist Pavlich, taking a handful of strong intercept marks and holding the Fremantle champion to only eight disposals and one mark.
After performing impressive jobs on Collingwood’s Alex Fasolo, Melbourne’s Jeff Garlett and North Melbourne’s Brent Harvey earlier in the season, Richardson lauded the performance by Geary, who often goes under the radar despite his reliability on the opposition’s best goal sneak.
“He’s been in pretty good form ‘Gears’. His ability to be able to shut down the opposition’s best small-medium forwards - his track record for a long time, but certainly this year - has been really positive,” Richardson said following St Kilda’s 34-point win over Fremantle on Saturday night.
“He’s one of our leaders. He gives us a little bit of drive out of the back half too, but if you can tuck away the opposition’s best, and Ballantyne’s been in fair form, that all goes well for the team. He’s been in pretty good nick.”
Richardson said Fisher’s consistent performances on the powerhouse forwards of the competition was ensuring second-year key defender Hugh Goddard and transformed backman Tom Lee are forced to bide their time in the twos.
“He’s positive ‘Fish’. We all know that Pavlich is a good player; I think he probably had the better of that match-up for the night. He’s also pretty composed with the ball. He’s been going well. He’s pretty quick to bring in his speed on his GPS just to remind me that he’s going okay and he’s got a bit of footy left,” Richardson quipped with a grin.
“There’s been a lot of talk and rightly so about Goddard and Tommy Lee, who are playing really positive footy and they’re keen for their spot and are building nicely, but Fish at this stage is holding them at bay and that’s good, that’s healthy.”
With one eye on the future and one firmly focused on the present, Richardson indicated that both Goddard and Lee will receive more exposure to senior football when the time is right this season. Although he is buoyed by the pairs progress in 2016.
“It will really be when we think it’s the right time for them and for the right time for the team,” Richardson said.
“Tommy had a couple of opportunities – he was pretty positive against the Hawks. He did some reasonable stuff against GWS; it wasn’t great for all of us. Often if you’re last in and the performance isn’t great you can be first out and that was the case.
“We really like what Hughie’s doing. He had a pretty slow start from a form perspective at VFL level, but his last month’s been much more positive. We won’t rush that. When we think he’s ready he’ll come into the team. We’re really confident that he’s going to be a really good player going forward.”
