St Kilda Coach Alan Richardson is confident his side will respond after Saturday night’s disappointing 30-point loss to Melbourne at Etihad Stadium.

After a bright start in the season opener, St Kilda was comprehensively outplayed across the middle two terms, with Melbourne booting 13 goals to three to set up their 30-point win during that period.

Richardson said his side must learn from their first-up performance and put their heads down this week ahead of the trip to Perth to face West Coast.

“We spoke after the game: we’re either learners or losers,” Richardson told reporters in his post-match press conference on Saturday night.

“We lost tonight but we need to learn from that, have a really strong week on the track and bounce back and do something about it if we really care, if we’re made of the right stuff as a footy club and a playing group.

“What we will do is we will pick ourselves up, we’ll work hard. That’s the only response that we’ll want from our group and demand from our group.

“We’re a bloody disappointed footy club and group, we need to bounce back and that’s certainly all we’re going to focus on as a coaching group and the leaders have said as much after the game.”

A disappointed Richardson said the Saints were ‘smashed’ around the ball, where Max Gawn gave his midfield first use of it all day, while Jordan Lewis, Nathan Jones, Clayton Oliver and Jack Viney were all architects in the Demons drought-breaking win.

St Kilda was routinely beaten in just about every key indicator, badly losing the disposal count (-117), inside 50s (-12), uncontested possessions (-107), clearances (-13) and hitouts (-35).

“We were just smashed in the midfield. (It’s) as poor as I reckon we’ve been in there,” Richardson said.

“They were just too good for us and that’s really disappointing. We won’t accept that the opposition are too good for us; we need to learn from that.

“I’ve seen much better performances from those guys, certainly last year and the pre-season. We didn’t cope with their pressure at all and that was disappointing.”

Following a summer full of optimism, Richardson said the Saints were handed a lesson by Melbourne but won’t lose sight of the direction they are heading this season.

“It’s a bloody hard lesson. We’ve had a really positive pre-season, we’ve been a really fit group all the way through, we think we’ve had a really strong pre-season campaign,” he said.

“We got an absolute lesson today, (but) it’s Round 1, we need to have a bit of perspective on this.”