How Important Is It To Beat WCE?

[Con Gorozidis]

This is a must win.
We cant keep being easy beats and making pathetic excuses.

We bang on how we cant travel - then we go and get pumped by Melbourne on our own dung heap.
I am tired of hearing we are 'young' or we cant travel or we are tired or some other bs excuse.

We have to win this.

[saintsRrising]

This is a must win.
We cant keep being easy beats and making pathetic excuses.

We bang on how we cant travel - then we go and get pumped by Melbourne on our own dung heap.
I am tired of hearing we are 'young' or we cant travel or we are tired or some other bs excuse.

We have to win this.

Well the Dees game was an underperfom.

Let us hope that this game is an outperform. A week can be a long time in football

[WellardSaint]

Was looking at the betting houses, the line bets are very low, WCE -39.5

Surprising, perhaps it's way too early in the season to gauge a team.
Given they belted us by 105 & 93 at Subi and 53 at Jihad...
But we are over $5.00 for the win

[magnifisaint]

Anything under a 20 point win to the Eagles is a win for the Saints. Paddy needs to kick 6.

[Bluthy]

http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/s ... vapos.html

Round one was disappointing for the Saints.
Round one was disappointing for the Saints. Photo: Getty Images
St Kilda went into their first game of the new football year with virtually a full complement of players, against an opponent in Melbourne they'd beaten 14 times in a row in a run stretching back 10 years, and boasting very impressive pre-season form.

Those indicators were all holding true by early in the second quarter, too, as the Saints led by four goals. Before it all went pear-shaped. The Saints would concede the next 10 goals straight to lose by 30 points, a tide they seemed incapable of turning.

A week on, St Kilda faces all sorts of obstacles that had previously seemed distant concerns.

There's significant injury, Nick Riewoldt out with a knee that if not career-ending, does take him out of the equation for a game in which his presence was crucial. Another key midfielder, David Armitage is out with a groin injury.

There's the continuation of a disturbing pattern in St Kilda's losses of recent times, an inability to stem the bleeding, prevalent even in the promise the Saints showed last season, an average losing margin of 47 points, including six losses by 40 points or more.

And there's a major hoodoo also lurking in the background, the Saints' woeful record on the road, just two victories and 18 losses interstate since Richardson became coach in 2014.

It's hardly "game over" if the Saints go down again this week against West Coast at Domain Stadium, but all of a sudden, the convergence of circumstances has made a strong showing perhaps even more important than it might have been. And the coach knows it.

"We're a bloody disappointed footy club and group and we need to bounce back," was Richardson's pithy summation only minutes after the Melbourne loss.

"We need to learn from that, have a really strong week on the track and bounce back if we really care and if we're made of the right stuff as a footy club and a playing group. That's the only response we'll want from our group and demand from our group."

The coach spoke pre-season about his team needing to reduce the gap between their best and worst. And already the need to do so has become urgent.

Of all the heavy defeats the Saints have endured in recent years, few have stung as much as the 103-point demolition at the hands of West Coast at the same venue in round eight last season. Given that they missed the finals only on percentage, it was arguably the costliest loss of the lot. In 2015, it was a 95-point shellacking at the hands of the Eagles.

The Saints were smashed by 88 points by Adelaide away last season and lost by 40 to Gold Coast when the Suns had lost their previous 10 games straight. Their two wins out of 20 on the road under Richardson is the worst percentage of any side in the competition.

This time, St Kilda have changed things a little. They still flew out for Perth at 1pm on Friday afternoon, but, says football manager Jamie Cox, having already done the bulk of their strategic talking.

"We've just tried to make their day as similar to what it would be like if they were at home," he says. "Just taking some meetings out of the end of the day after we arrive. Getting all the footy-speak out of their minds and letting them relax when they get to Perth."

The big focuses on the track this week for St Kilda have been about adapting better to an opponent which changes course, and about arresting that opponent's momentum before too much damage is done, both areas in which Melbourne had it all over the Saints last week.

The Demons identified by quarter-time that they couldn't afford to get caught in a quick game of "ping-pong". Come the first break, they'd had equal amounts of short and long kicks.

Thereafter, the ratio was three short kicks for every one long, as Melbourne played keepings off with the football, frustrating the Saints, who simply couldn't get their hands on the ball as their opponent slammed on 10 straight goals. By the final siren, the Demons had racked up 117 more possessions as they controlled the game.

"We didn't respond well to that, and that's where our guys have been challenged this week," says Cox. "We've just been blown out of the water at times and that's the real challenge, that when you feel the tide starting to surge, you stop it in its tracks. That's the challenge that's been thrown out to the group.

"You can have the belief knocked out of you by an opponent's method and find it hard to respond. I think probably our group has suffered a bit from that. We've done a bit of work to give them some tools to cope with that.

"If you have momentum, you've got to keep it, and if you lose it, you've got to get it back. It's tough, but that's what good sports people do."

It's called resilience. And it's a quality the best display both as the landscape changes for the worse during a contest, and in the subsequent response when that contest is eventually lost.

St Kilda failed the first of those tests against Melbourne. How they fare in the latter against West Coast will be keenly watched as a measure of just how much Richardson's team has improved.

The odds are certainly stacked against them. But that's an opportunity of sorts. And lessons learned from defeat, an unexpected victory and the breaking of a significant hoodoo as a consequence would for St Kilda make a week seem even longer ago than usual
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Agree big time with Ro-co about being able to stem the bleeding. Along with our average individual ball use, its the our top issue. You have to implement water-tight system to make it to the top. You can't let the oppo dictate.

[SemperFidelis]

Morning Loris, Wellard and co. How's our day looking? Anything less than 75% humidity on offer?

[Joe Bloggs]

Pretty obvious to saints fans but spot on andgood stuff. Re Age article

[Linton Lodger]

That's a good article.

[loris]

Temperature still predicted up to 30 degrees today.

The sea breeze is in early today, so it's lovely and cool at 10.30am. Listening to the fellow from the weather bureau on radio before, he says the breeze will drop off by lunch time and temp will steadily rise. So sadly no cool breeze predicted for this evening.

That's the luck of the draw for the Saints, even the weather Gods don't treat us too kindly. All week long that bl@@dy breeze has come in late afternoon/evening, now today, when we want it to turn up in the evening, it decides to blow all morning ........Grrrrr

[loris]

Morning Loris, Wellard and co. How's our day looking? Anything less than 75% humidity on offer?

Sorry Semp didn't see your query before I did my previous post.

Temp should drop to about 28 degrees by time game is starting, which is good. Humidity only to be about 39% today - again that's manageable, so ground should escape any greasiness when sun goes down.

Saints should be used to the humidity, I was in Melbourne 8 - 22 March and I've never come across humidity like it was in Melbourne for those 2 weeks. For once in my life I couldn't wait to get back to Perth for non tropical weather!

Think sunset is about 6.15pm - tho possibly the stand side of the ground will be in shade not long after 5.00pm. Saints will have to learn to kick along that sheltered stand side. Silly buggers usually get stuck on the outer side of the ground. Eagles always mount their surges from the stand side, with the frenzied crowd baying behind them. We need to really hit the ground running to shut the crowd up early, then the umpires mightn't be so influenced to give 'crowd frees'.

I'm so annoyed the cooling breeze has decided to come in this morning and not tonight.

[loris]

A positive note ........ from my recollections Gilbo usually plays the Subiaco ground quite well. Sure his kicking is still heart in mouth stuff. Still I can recall games where is hasn't been our worst player, taking many a saving mark, running off his opponents on the long ground, he doesn't seem to get boxed in as much and forced to kick on his wrong foot or panic kick on his left.
So crossed fingers Gilbo can bring his best form.

[loris]

Just before I leave for the game it's now said the temp will climb to 31 degrees....... yuk!

[Bluthy]

A positive note ........ from my recollections Gilbo usually plays the Subiaco ground quite well. Sure his kicking is still heart in mouth stuff. Still I can recall games where is hasn't been our worst player, taking many a saving mark, running off his opponents on the long ground, he doesn't seem to get boxed in as much and forced to kick on his wrong foot or panic kick on his left.
So crossed fingers Gilbo can bring his best form.

Gilbo is good metres-gained player as he can run it then kick long and we need that on the long Subi ground. Savage too needs to play a big role to move it up the field as he's a good runner then long-kicker. Paddy needs to work this big ass off to come up the ground to link up from the back as it takes several kicks to work it up forward.

[SemperFidelis]

Just before I leave for the game it's now said the temp will climb to 31 degrees....... yuk!

Take a fan and barrack hard for us Loris!

[Joe Bloggs]

Streak loris ..Inspire our boys.