RUSTED OFF by George On The Outer

Posted July 9, 20232 yr

With a return to the winners circle, Melbourne produced a much needed victory against the Saints, in a fourth v fifth on the ladder match. The win also created a small buffer to those below, whereas a loss would have put the team’s whole finals objective on the edge.

After losses in the wet, it could be said that the team had accumulated a fair bit of rust, and even in this game it wasn’t a pretty sight for their supporters. There were plenty of unforced errors, miskicks, dumb decision-making and certainly not the free flowing style of game we know the side is capable of, and more importantly, that’s needed to feature in finals action.

The game was turned into a dour contest by the opposition coach, who honestly will never produce a premiership side while the main focus is on defence and defence alone. It might prevent the Saints from being thrashed, but it doesn’t teach them how to kick winning scores. This tactic might have been the norm more than five to ten years ago, unsurprisingly when the Saints and Fremantle featured in finals, but it will usually end in failure in the long term.

While the Demons were busy trying to find their best on the field, the Saints were badly affected by injury.

Pre-match they were without Hill, Membrey, Battle, Higgins and Coffield and less than a third of the way into game they had lost King, Cordy and Ross.

This made the Saints even more defensive, and while some supporters criticised players in the backline for not moving the ball quickly, there was nothing open further up the field due to the extreme flooding tactics being employed against them.

So the game simply became a waiting and watching scenario, back and forth, back and forth. Melbourne would intercept on the half-back line and try to thread their way through the St.Kilda lines, but not doing such a good job too often.

When things didn’t work the Saints would try to switch immediately (another old tactic, that isn’t employed by leading coaches), only to discover the Demons had already covered their move by the time it got to the wing, and another intercept would occur. Start all over again!

And intercept Melbourne did. There were 23 team intercept marks, with Steven May leading the way with eight from his 13 intercepts alone. Of course he was ably backed up by Petty with seven intercepts, Lever, McVee, Salem and Rivers chipping in with six each. The absence of any St.Kilda tall forwards certainly helped the situation, but without a change to game plan, the Saints were simply never going to be successful.

Their goals almost exclusively came from spillages or dropped marks by the Melbourne players, a sure sign of how rusty some were, especially in the perfect conditions under the roof of Marvel stadium.

Let’s hope the rustiness exhibited in the ruck division has finally been ground away, since Gawn and Grundy were given a lesson in not only ruckwork but around the ground play by Rohan Marshall on his own. Thirty disposals, seven intercepts, seven i50’s and ten marks at 86% disposal efficiency equalled or exceeded the totals for both Gawn and Grundy combined.

Once again the Gawndy experiment of resting up forward was a miserable failure with zero score from both. They clogged up the forward line, unable to run defensively against smaller fitter defenders who stream away from them bringing the concept beyond the rusty stage to just plain embarrassing. We only need one on the ground at any time, and give the other a rest on the bench.

Troubling is that Grundy was only on the ground for 67% of the time, so perhaps more than rust is involved.

The much vaunted woes of the forward line had some of the rust scraped away. At least the side was kicking straight from set shots this week. Thanks mainly to Christian Petracca who, with brute strength was able to beat his opponent one-on-one to record four goals for the match. His kicking from set shots was more assured, indicating some considerable work had gone on during the week.

The sad indictment is that our best forward is our best mid at the moment. We got away with it in this match, but will that be possible against Brisbane next week who have top rate midfielders to match against. If the ball doesn’t get into attack, it won’t matter how good Trac is up forward.

Melksham kicked 2 goals, but rather than get excited about the number, both came from his usual tactic of out the back. Once again zero tackles despite being on the ground for over 90% of the game is more than being rusty. Those type of scoring opportunities won’t be repeated against the Brisbane defence.

As they say, a win is a win. Maybe, but if the opponent is swaying on their feet in the first quarter, and only two interchange available for the majority of the game, a three goal victory in perfect conditions is a sub-par outcome. It was the time to grind off the rust and re-discover the shiny, polished metal beneath.

By game’s end, only part of the job had been done, with just glimpses being shown. The engine is barely turning over smoothly and the drive train is a bit wonky. Time to get out the WD-40 and apply a hefty measure of hard work.

MELBOURNE 5.0.30 7.2.44 9.5.59 12.7.79

ST KILDA 3.5.23 4.7.31 6.8.44 8.10.58

GOALS

MELBOURNE Petracca 4 Melksham Sparrow 2 Brown Hunter Langdon Neal-Bullen

ST KILDA Gresham Owens 2 Billings Sharman Steele Wood

BEST

MELBOURNE Langdon Neal-Bullen May Sparrow Viney Petracca

ST KILDA Steele Sinclair Marshall Wanganeen-Milera

INJURIES

MELBOURNE Petty (back)

ST KILDA Ross (hamstring) King (shoulder) Cordy (concussion)

REPORTS