St Kilda has the talent on its list to play in September but hasn’t discovered the required level of consistency to play finals football in 2017, says Saints Coach Alan Richardson.

Sunday’s disappointing 24-point loss to Melbourne at the MCG all but ends St Kilda’s bid to return to the most important month of the season for the first time since 2011.

Richardson said the biggest challenge facing St Kilda right now is consistency of performance and the improvement will come from within the playing list, especially from the players who have played between 50 and 100 games.

St Kilda had eight players in this bracket on Sunday – Tim Membrey (48 games), Billy Longer (58 games), Jack Billings (62 games), Jimmy Webster (67 games), Luke Dunstan (67 games), Seb Ross (79 games), Josh Bruce (86 games) and Koby Stevens (87 games).

“I know we’ve got the personnel, so we’ve got high expectations of our players,” Richardson said in his post-match press conference at the MCG on Sunday.

“We’ve got a lot of blokes moving into that 50, 60, 70-game bracket where consistency of performance should be there and we’re clearly not quite there.

“That’s been our challenge and our want as a footy club and a team to make sure we’re more consistent and to drive everything we do; on the training track; the way we communicate with each other; the way we challenge each other to be more consistent. We haven’t been able to get that consistency yet.

“I think our best footy has improved; I think what we’ve been able to do on the road has improved, even if we haven’t won interstate we’ve given ourselves opportunity to win.

“We’ve still got some work to do in terms of consistency of performance. Today is a good example of that.

“(We’ve played) some good footy; some average footy. We’re not going to be the team we want to be if we continue to be that way. The improvement will come from within.”