You had to see it to believe it.
A nine-goal second quarter. An 82-point lead at half-time.
It was a performance St Kilda Coach Alan Richardson described as the best his side has played ‘for a long time’.
The Saints stunning second quarter stunned everyone and put the game to bed by the main break, before converting the first half into a 67-point win by the final siren and a fourth consecutive win for the first time since 2011.
“I’m really pleased, (we played) great footy. The first half was as good as we’ve played for a long time – that was really pleasing,” Richardson told reporters after St Kilda’s win on Saturday night.
“It’s fair to say they weren’t at their best but I’d like to think that we contributed to that with the pressure and the way they went after our own footy with or without the footy.
“What we do know is it’s a bloody tough competition: it’s one game and we need to make sure we stay hungry and really aggressively attack our best footy again.”
After a disappointing patch around the mid-season bye, St Kilda has built its game across the last month.
The turnaround started against North Melbourne in Round 13, continued against Gold Coast a week later and picked up
“We felt the Kangaroos game was a pretty positive performance – we took a bit out of that game," Richardson said.
“Freo over in Perth; we hadn’t won there for a while I reckon we got a lot of belief out of that as a coaching group and as a leadership group.
“There was certainly a sense the way that we were training and the way that we were coming together as a group that our best footy wasn’t far away.”
In a week where the club and the game celebrated Maddie Riewoldt’s legacy with the second edition of Maddie’s Match, her older brother Nick shone brightly on a special night for the Riewoldt family.
With three-time reigning All-Australian Alex Rance going to him at the opening bounce, Riewoldt was never going to be in for an easy night. But like he has done countless times before, the champion forward got going early and never looked back.
With a mountain of work done off-field, Riewoldt got the job done on-field, finishing with 12 marks (five inside 50) and three goals from 15 disposals against the premier
“We were pretty keen for someone with ‘
“Rance is an outstanding player; we couldn’t have that person be in a dead position at all, so we thought ‘Rooey’ was the best person to play in that part of the ground given that’s where Rance plays.
“We were really pleased with the way ‘Rooey’ not only played his role but in the
