On the eve of the 2016 campaign, St Kilda Coach Alan Richardson has identified three key areas his side has focused on over the summer months in order to improve on last season: ball movement, team defence and work around stoppages.

Ahead of his third season at the helm of the Saints, Richardson said his side must become better at defending turnovers this year, and that comes from adapting swiftly from a structural point of view once the ball is handed back to the opposition.

“We don’t defend opposition’s fast rebound well enough, we don’t hide from that and we need to get better there and there’s some structural adjustments that we’ve needed to make,” Richardson told the media on Friday.

“But there’s more of a real focus on making sure we get into a defensive position really quickly straight after we’ve turned the footy over.”

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Speed of ball movement is also high on Richardson’s priority list, with the Saints determined to become a far more difficult team to defend against on transition.

Expect to see the ball put in the hands of Shane Savage and Jimmy Webster a lot more this year, with the pair devastating by foot coming out of the back half, particularly when given time and space to make the most damaging decisions.

“We need to go a bit quicker from the back ourselves. We’ve been a little bit too pedestrian so therefore made it a little too easy for the opposition to defend our rebound,” Richardson said.

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Richardson was critical of St Kilda’s work around the ball during his time at the club, demanding a greater spread of contribution from those around the stoppages.

Despite the Saints possessing an inexperienced ruck division in Billy Longer (43 games), Tom Hickey (41 games) and Jason Holmes (3 games), he said that could no longer be used as an excuse for a substantial clearance discrepancy.

“Our contest work hasn’t been good enough - our stoppage work - so for the last couple of years we’ve been 17^th and 18^th (ranked in the AFL),” he said.

“We’ve got young ruckmen but those guys have got to step up now. [David] Armitage and Jack Steven really came to the fore last year and we probably relied on them too much so we need a few more to step up.”