Having been forced to bide his time at Sandringham and wait for an opportunity to arise, St Kilda key defender Luke Delaney has made an important contribution across the last fortnight.
The 27-year-old followed up his strong effort against Carlton beast Levi Casboult before the bye, with another eye-catching performance, this time against two-time premiership star Tom Hawkins.
After waiting nearly 12 months between senior games, Delaney admits his confidence is building by the week as he has helped to fill the void left by injured key defenders Sam Fisher and Sean Dempster.
“It’s growing each week I suppose. I spent a bit of time in the twos, so I’m just trying to improve every week and play my role for the team and support the other backmen. That’s all I can do every week,” Delaney told saints.com.au.
While Geelong spearhead Hawkins managed to put a few goals on the scoreboard, Delaney won or halved more than his fair share of contests to play an important role in restricting one of the competitions highest scoring sides.
“He’s a big boy Tommy so I just knew that I had to keep the body pressure on him. He got a few but the boys supported me pretty well back there so we did alright,” Delaney said.
“That’s what we pride ourselves on just supporting each other and the boys did that. They’re a quality outfit so we were pretty happy with the win.”
With St Kilda’s first win against a top-eight side now secured, Delaney says the Saints have set their sights on adding more scalps in the second half of the season.
“Going into the back half of the season we’ve only got four sides in the top-eight that we can really take another scalp and the rest are in the bottom eight,” Delaney said.
“We just really want to finish the year off well and make sure we’re improving every week.”
St Kilda travels to Metricon Stadium on Saturday to face an improved Gold Coast Suns outfit that troubled Hawthorn in Launceston on Sunday. The Saints then run into the Western Bulldogs, North Melbourne and Sydney across the final nine rounds.
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