St Kilda’s drop off in pressure after the opening quarter of Saturday night’s 30-point loss to Melbourne was what disappointed Saints Coach Alan Richardson most in defeat.
St Kilda burst out of the blocks against the Demons, racing to a four-goal lead at the first break on the back of a phenomenal pressure factor (pressure points per pressure opportunity) of 2.15.
It fell to a respectable 1.83 in the second quarter, but then plummeted to 1.55 in the third quarter and finished at a very poor 1.41 in the last stanza.
Speaking on Fox Footy’s AFL 360 on Monday night, Richardson said the Saints had thoroughly dissected what went wrong in Round 1 on Monday and it started with their inability to apply pressure on the opposition.
Monday Wash-Up: Round 1 v Melbourne
“We were disappointed with our pressure. We’ve certainly gone through it as a group today,” Richardson told AFL 360 on Monday night.
“Monday’s are about achieving real clarity about what happened and what are we going to do about it.
“We had opportunities to play our way in terms of putting pressure, they certainly handballed often enough to give us opportunity. Our pressure at stoppage really fell away; we got smashed."
'I was just numb when it happened'
Despite conceding 7.0 to 1.6 in the second quarter, Richardson said the term was still full of positives for St Kilda with poor conversion exposing his side.
But after the main break, the fourth-year coach said the Saints had no answers for Melbourne’s dominance around the ball, led by All-Australian ruckman Max Gawn who amassed 49 hitouts - 21 to advantage (43 per cent).
“The second quarter was still pretty positive if you forget about the scoreboard, which is hard to do; we had seven shots, they had seven shots,” Richardson said.
“Our quality of opportunity to score was probably a bit better than theirs. our ability to score was positive without actually kicking goals
“After half-time we just didn’t get after them, we got a little bit spooked I reckon with some of the centre bounce stuff, certainly Max got on top and they became really aggressive in terms with the way they played. They taught us a bit of a lesson in the midfield to be honest.”
