St Kilda may have faded late in Western Australia and returned home without their first win for 2017, but Saints Coach Alan Richardson was pleased with his side’s effort for most of the encounter with West Coast.
A behind from Paddy McCartin 30 seconds into the game opened the scoring and from there the Saints led all the way until the 21-minute mark of the final quarter, before the Eagles swooped late.
Richardson said St Kilda will learn from their poor finish, with the Saints locking up late in the piece while the Eagles kicked the final five goals of the game to run away with a 19-point win at Domain Stadium.
“By and large I thought the effort to respond to last week was reasonably positive,” Richardson said in his post-match press conference on Saturday night.
“I said to the boys afterwards: including the JLT series, we’ve played some good footy, we’re just having moments in games where the opposition is getting too much momentum and we need to arrest that.
“We knew we needed to keep scoring and being aggressive (in the last quarter); the message was to continue to play our way.
“When West Coast started to come we probably became a little bit more defensive in our attitude to the play; that’s not a want but that’s what happened. So we were on the back foot a little bit, but we’ll learn from that.”
Richardson: Saints left to rue wasted opportunities
While social media and talkback forums were awash with negative feedback regarding the lopsided free kick count, Richardson didn’t buy into the commentary suggesting St Kilda were untidy on Saturday night, contributing to the 23-9 count in favour of West Coast.
St Kilda received the least amount of free kicks across Round 2, although they conceded the most high tackle (8) and illegal shepherd (3) infringements.
“It did look like perhaps a little bit unlucky bit with respect to our team giving away free kicks I thought we were a bit sloppy at times; we got them high a bit too much,” Richardson said.
“I thought the 23 (free kicks) against were a bit sloppy. Our want is to be aggressive and get after the opposition.”
