Today St.Kilda tomorrow Sydney

B: Coffield, Howard, Cordy

HB: Sinclair, Battle, Webster

C: Hill, Crouch, Hunter

HF: Gresham, Membery, Higgins

F: Butler, King, Wood

FOLL: Marshall, Ross, Steele

IC: Jones, Wanganeen-Milera, Wilkie, Paton

Reserves

B: Highmore, Adams, Connelly

HB: Byrnes, Heath, Van Es

C: Windhager, Bytel, Hotton

HF: Owens, Hayes, Billings

F: Keeler, Allison, Sharman

FOLL: Campbell, Phillipou, McKenzie

IC: McLennan, Peris, N\A, N\A

 

St.Kilda have 2 spots open for train on players.

 

The 'Messiah' is back but will it help?

Back line is solid, I do like Wilkie as a competitor. Actually a big fan of Jack Sinclair as a 'play starter'. When they were doing well earlier this year quite a few of their goals came about from a Sinclair possession off half back.

King's injury is a blow and as usual midfield is a question mark. You know what you get with Steele and Crouch, can they get the most out of Hill? 

Big year for Rowan Marshall, can he take the mantle of permanent ruck? If not, Hayes and Keeler will be providing good competition. 

I think that Ross Lyon will have his work cut out to get the Saints back on track will they be tempted to play the new kids early??

Defence is still poor.  Midfield and fwd line decent to good but they need King there

Need quality backs and more high end talent all over the ground

could sneak into finals if all goes well

1 minute ago, DubDee said:

Defence is still poor.  Midfield and fwd line decent to good but they need King there

Need quality backs and more high end talent all over the ground

could sneak into finals if all goes well

Nope. Bottom 4.

2 minutes ago, dl4e said:

Nope. Bottom 4.

they won 8 of their first 11 last year in fairness.

But I would bottom out if i was Ross.  trade a few players and hit the draft

I remember leading into our round 8 game against them, there was talk that St Kilda was going to be our biggest scalp of the year thus far, such was their impressive first 7 weeks.

I don't expect them to make finals but I wouldn't sleep on them either. 

FB: Wilkie Howard Coffield
HB: Sinclair Battle Clark
C: Hill Steele W-Milera
HF: Owens Membrey Billings
FF: Butler King Higgins
Foll: Marshall Crouch Gresham
Int: Paton, Ross, Hayes, Windhager 

E: Jones, McKenzie, Webster, Sharman

The emergence of the likes of Wanganeen, Windhager and Owens should allow them to move past Jones and eventually Ross too. It’s underrated just how good that draft was for the Saints last year. Windhager in particular is an absolute beauty of a player.

If they can get Clark and Coffield out on the field for a prolonged period they can ditch the likes of Webster and stop moving Hill around. He either performs on the wing or is dropped this year. 

They’d be hoping Sharman or maybe Battle swung forward can cover for King and provide a second tall forward long term. Asking Membrey to play tall and relying on Billings and Higgins as marking options isn’t sustainable.

A lot of their list is a bit like ours pre 2021 and just needs some good coaching and a kick up the backside. They don’t have an Oliver and a Petracca, but Steele isn’t far off and Phillipou could be that second guy.

Its far from a disaster of a list, but it probably requires Phillipou to be special or another one out of the blue to really be ready for the Ross Lyon treatment. He might drag this list to a top 4 spot as soon as 2024 but it’s not the talent of his other grand final teams. 

 

Let's call a spade a spade with the Saints, they’re not a contender even with Ross Lyon returning and make no mistake the Saints list for 2023 is nothing like their list from 2007 or Freo’s list in 2012 when he had pretty much all the pieces he needed to contend for a flag.  From 2017-2019 the Saints sold the basis of their future success for football’s equivalent of magic beans.  Hannebery, Carlisle, Kent, Butler, Hill, Jones, Ryder (Crouch was a RFA)- you could mount an argument why each of them might have helped them at the point in time they were at, but collectively the end result has left a train wreck.  You can salvage the names of Jack Steele and Dougal Howard as being successes from that period (no I’m not buying into the argument that Hill might be eventually), but it’s relative – what it’s cost them in the end was far more than what they thought they were paying… but enough of history.

The back six looks solid with Coffield back up and running, Howard, Sinclair, Wilkie and WM are all very capable and Battle, Webster and Highmore provide good support.  The issue will be that the ball will be coming in there far too often for them to stem the tide. They have no ruck depth and very little in the way of midfield depth either.  The starting midfield of Steele, Crouch and Ross looks pretty pedestrian to me.  The Saints fans are big raps for Jade Gresham, but he’s still got a bit of ground to make up if he wants to be compared to the likes of Martin, Petracca and Bontempelli in his ability to influence games (he’s only ever had four games where he’s got 30 touches or more).  

The problems for the start of the year is that King leaves a massive hole in their ability to score, and considering Lyon’s ‘defence first’ coaching philosophy they will struggle to kick winning scores.  They’ll take comfort from the performances of guys like Windhager, Owens,  and Phillipou, but it won’t be enough to win games consistently and ‘Ross the Boss’ will need to conjure a rabbit out of a hat to keep them out of the bottom four.  For me it was hard to split them and West Coast, but I’ve pencilled them in for 13^th. 

Edited March 2, 20232 yr by grazman

In my opinion Ross is a square peg in a round hole here. Everyone loves a good messiah returning story though. 

All sorts of talk that he'll be more attacking but philosophies don't change overnight with things like this. All this suggests to me is that he'll be willing to run and break a line an extra 5% per game. Going completely the other way is against his DNA.

If he is indeed the guy to mould this list for the next 2 - 3 years then I see this year as almost a write off with plenty of growing pains. Much like 2014 for us under Roos, these guys will be taught the 'defence first' mentality and this will take time. His training methods are also some of the most demanding in the business so I see a lot of players on this list sinking or swimming and plenty of list turnover at season's end. 

Obviously Max King's injury really shakes things up. He needs that focal point up forward and the others either aren't good enough or not going to impact. Bottom 4 for sure.

On 12/14/2022 at 12:40 AM, WERRIDEE said:

Today St.Kilda tomorrow Sydney

B: Wilkie, Howard, Cordy

HB: Sinclair, Battle, Wanganeen-Milera

C: Hill, Crouch, Byrnes

HF: Gresham, Membery, Higgins

F: Butler, King, Wood

FOLL: Marshall, Clark, Steele

IC: Jones, Webster, Caminiti, Paton

Reserves

B: Highmore, Adams, Coffield

HB: Stocker, Heath, Van Es

C: Windhager, Ross, Hotton

HF: Owens, Hayes, Billings

F: Keeler, Allison, Sharman

FOLL: Campbell, Phillipou, McKenzie

IC: McLennan, Peris, Connelly, Bytel

 

Revised best 44 for St.Kilda