St Kilda might be a mathematical chance of featuring in September this year, but they won’t fantasise about a return to the finals, preferring to focus on becoming a more consistent side across the final six weeks, says Coach Alan Richardson.

Following Sunday afternoons 36-point win over Melbourne at Etihad Stadium, the Saints balance the win-loss ledger, sitting two games outside the eight at 8-8 after 17 rounds.

Despite moving within striking distance of finals qualification, Richardson said the focus wouldn’t change at the pointy end of the season, with consistency of performance continuing to be an area of concern for St Kilda.

“We want to focus on being much more consistent with our performance. We’ve won eight, we’ve lost eight. Some of those games we haven’t played the way we wanted to play,” Richardson told reporters in his post-match press conference on Sunday.

“We only have to look back to last week and full credit to the Bombers; we weren’t great last week so we’re still learning to be consistent with our footy.

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“We’re impatient we want it to happen sooner rather than later and hopefully today was a turning of the form.

“Clearly our last two weeks have been disappointing, but our focus will be just turning up and making sure we’re really strong for massive parts of the game and we’re a hard footy team to play against.

“If at the end of the day we qualify then that would be brilliant – it’s certainly what we want to do.”

St Kilda’s ability to respond when challenged in games and make amends in the heat of battle is indicative of the Saints growth this season, according to the third-year mentor.

In previous years, the Saints would have had to wait until Mondays review meeting, without the comfort of four premiership points, to learn from their mistakes.

“I touched on that with the guys afterwards. That’s five out of the last seven that we’ve won,” Richardson said.

“Of the last month of footy, there’s been three games of footy (where we’ve fought back after being challenged); the Geelong game, the Essendon game and this game.

“This game wasn’t to the same extent, but relatively late in the game the opposition have been able to regain control and ascendancy. The guys were able to respond and that’s pleasing, that shows that we’ve grown.

“We certainly think that our better footy is at another level, we’ve just got to bridge the gap (between our best and worst).”

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