Luke Dunstan has put his side’s 2-0 start to Season 2019 down to a shift in attitude.
Speaking to the RSN Breakfast Club on Monday morning, the hard-nosed midfielder revealed the major pre-season focus for the Saints was simply to get to work.
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“Last year was a really, really disappointing year for us,” Dunstan said.
“I think JB (Jack Billings) and Steeley (Jack Steele) and those guys around my age, we’ve gotten to a point in our careers where we wanted to really do something about it.
We were sick of just talking about it, so we went away and obviously did something about it in the off-season and have come back and trained really hard."
“We’ve been doing some pretty brutal sessions that have given us a fair bit of confidence to know that we can take teams into the deep end with us and be really physical with them.”
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Like many of his teammates, Dunstan endured an incredibly frustrating Season 2018, marred by stints in the VFL and a slump in form.
But the inside bull has been at the forefront of a change in attitude this pre-season, and said he’d relished every session, no matter how hard.
“There’s been a real change in the standards, and what we’re asking of each other as a group,” he explained.
“I guess it’s been the really small things, doing as many extras as possible and recognising that as a group.
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“We were doing some pretty hard sessions with an MMA coach over the pre-season … in the past, you’d just want to tick it off and get through, whereas we were just attacking it.”
Listen to the full interview below:
From the outside in, the Saints have showcased a more team-oriented brand of football in 2019, and Dunstan said the shared responsibility has been no accident.
“I think the chemistry between the group – what we’ve been through last year and what we had to go through together – I think it’s made us a fair bit stronger and closer as a group,” he said.
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“We worked a fair bit on the ‘brotherhood’ side of things and becoming really close as group last year, but obviously the results on the field were pretty disappointing.
I think now that we’ve got the football side of things working as well, we’ve just become a really tight group and we’re playing for each other which is obviously what you want to do.”
Late last year, a 2-0 start for St Kilda would’ve been almost unthinkable.
But for Dunstan and his teammates, the time for talking is over. Fremantle awaits.
