George
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Reimagine Moorabbin
- Aug 17, 2015
- 45,306
- 127,288
- AFL Club
- St Kilda
- Other Teams
- Phi Eagles & Phillies, Liverpool, PAO FC
Previous Meetings:
Round 6, 2017 - Hawthorn (8.7.55) lost to St.Kilda (19.16.130)
Round 4, 2016 - Hawthorn (13.9.87) defeated St.Kilda (13.6.84)
Round 10, 2015 - St.Kilda (10.9.69) lost to Hawthorn (20.12.132)
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Round 6 Preview thanks to lewdogs
Last weekend:
St Kilda come into this match following a pulsating draw against GWS, a game that most fans (myself included) didn’t give us a chance in. We were able to re-discover our tackling and pressure game, which caused the GWS players to make mistakes at times due to real and implied pressure.
Jack Steven and Seb Ross both played very well along with a midfield support cast of Dunstan, Acres, Steele and Sinclair. Brandon White played his best game for the club, nullifying Toby Greene. Tom Hickey was outstanding in the ruck and around the ground, allowing the Saints to spread the ball more easily than in previous weeks. Nick Coffield looks a mesmerising young prospect, his running and controlled kicking reminiscent of a young Nick Dal Santo.
Most impressive for the Saints was our ability to come back late in the last quarter through big goals to Ben Long and Paddy McCartin, both of whom played their best game for the club.
Hawthorn are coming off a loss to North Melbourne. After trailing by 57 points at half time they mounted a comeback in the third, before eventually going down by about 5 goals. Sicily, Breust and Smith were their best players, while Tom Mitchell was held by a tag for the second week in a row and may face a one-week ban for a hit on Goldstein.
Changes:
Jack Newnes is the main injury concern as he was knocked out in the first quarter against GWS. The most likely change will be Jimmy Webster in for Newnes, as Jimmy was flagged as being almost ready to return last week. Rowan Marshall should be ready to come back in after a week off with concussion, although he may be unlucky and have to go through the reserves again, as Allan Richardson will be reluctant to make too many changes to the side.
Hawthorn may lose Mitchell and Burton to suspensions. My instinct is that Burton will go but Mitchell may get a fine. They should also welcome back Shaun Burgoyne from a hamstring injury. Liam Shiels hurt his back but should be ok.
Key match ups:
Hickey v McEvoy – Tom Hickey has made the most of his opportunity to come back into the side this year and is playing like a man looking to prove he belongs at the level. His 11 contested possessions last week was a game high. An interesting comment that popped up from him this week after the Giants game - “I just had a really big focus on my follow-up and I try to use my run against those bigger ruckmen.” This suggests that he has been really trying hard to improve the areas of his game that saw him get monstered last year by the big guys like Max Gawn. This week will be his biggest test, against ex-Saint Ben McEvoy. McEvoy has become one of the better rucks in the competition. He likes to spread the play and take marks around the ground and loves a goal, so Tom will have his work cut out for him, but will be hoping for another strong performance to further cement himself as St Kilda’s number one.
Long v Sicily – Not really sure who our how we’ll negate Sicily but there’s little doubt that the Hawks will try to get a man out to play the intercept mark role in the same manner that Stewart tore us up in Geelong two weeks ago. Sicily has been having an excellent season so far, although he does have a tendency to go nuts at times so perhaps putting Long on him may disturb his play. Long has been getting better each week and looking more and more at home in the AFL. He is an unusual player who often tries things such as taps and clever punches when others would take possession. He has very nice hands and good skills with his kicking – after last week I’m sure some fans may switch on this game just to see what Ben can produce. If he can go some way to nullifying or even infuriating Sicily then it will be a win for us.
Steele v Mitchell – If Mitchell plays this week then Steele may be the man for him. He’s played the negating role to good effect in the past and appears to be getting his mojo back after a very slow start to the season. He looked good in the guts against the Giants and it was good to see him getting his tackling numbers up again. Mitchell has had a quiet couple of weeks after exploding out of the blocks in 2018. The Hawks will need him to play well to get on top of our midfield here and Steele would be a good option to try and limit his influence.
One to watch:
Paddy McCartin – McCartin has been building more and more each week without quite hitting his straps. Last week may have been his best for the club – he kicked 3 goals (a career best) while playing on the dangerous Phil Davis. He missed an easy set-shot early on, but came back with a classy banana goal, then outbodied Davis for another nice goal in the second quarter. From that point it felt that if things might fall his way, Paddy could really take the game by the scruff of its neck, however he couldn’t quite get going again until the final minutes of the match when he kicked a monstrous set-shot goal.
Personally, I think that could have been the game where Paddy realised he belongs at AFL level. He will no doubt be on another decent defender this week in James Frawley, but it will be another opportunity for him to take some grabs and kick some goals. If 3 goals plus starts to become the norm for Paddy then suddenly he’s looking like a worthy pick one. He still has a lot of work to do, but I’m excited to see how he backs up last week’s performance.
How we’ll win:
One key to this week will be how we back up our performance from last week. The Giants game was about 200% better than any other performance this year, and fans will be expecting that that is the new norm for our performance. The talk coming out of the Saints this week was that there was a player or coach led review in which the players expressed a desire to change up the game plan and go one-on-one. Will this be the catalyst for an ongoing improvement in our performance? We can only hope, but one thing is for sure we were a lot better on the weekend.
The other key will be conversion and score creation. It was still a huge problem against the Giants and continues to be the bane of our existence at the moment. We had 20 more inside 50s against the Giants which is an enormous number, but we struggled to create enough goal-scoring opportunities and missed many gettable shots (to be fair, this was one week in which the opposition seemed to be suffering from the same curse). If we can start to tidy up our shots for goal then we will give ourselves an excellent chance of winning the Hawthorn match. Scoring more goals than points would be a good start. A return to form by Tim Membrey would go a long way to remedying these issues as he is our tidiest forward.
I think our midfield matches up quite well against the Hawks. If the likes of Dunstan, Steele, Ross, Steven and Acres can continue their good form then I think we will win enough of the ball to really trouble Hawthorn. Our ball movement out of defence and linking up between the different areas of the ground have been pretty terrible so far this year, so hopefully we can continue to sort out that area of our game this week.
The likes of Webster, White, Savage and Geary will have their hands full with the mid-sized Hawthorn forward line. The backline has been pretty decent so far this year, especially in a defensive sense (as I said we’ve struggled at times with our movement out of defence). I’ll back these guys in to have another strong week and restrict the Hawks forwards.
How we’ll lose:
The Hawks are renowned for their excellent kicking and handballing skills. We will need to restrict their ability to easily move the ball around the ground by hand and foot. In games this year against the Cats and Crows we enabled the opposition to move throughout the ground with ease – they picked apart our structures and scored easily. I have no doubt that the Hawks will look to play a similar style and transition the ball smoothly and easily from defence to attack. As stated earlier, pressure will be a key, but this week will also be a great challenge for Allan Richardson to set up a winning formula against one of the best coaches of all time.
The Hawks have dangerous players all over the park. The likes of Gunston, Smith, Burgoyne, Shiels and Breust are incredibly talented players who are still probably underrated despite winning a small treasure trove of premiership medallions between them. If we allow these players to control the football then they will cut us to pieces, so our ability to win clearances and also to create pressure and restrict their ball movement will be crucial.
Hey mate, I wrote this up originally for the preview but then thought it was Gilbo's 199th... but can you add this to the preview:
A toast to:
Sam Gilbert – He shot onto the scene in 2009 with his wonderful marking and ability to make loping runs out of the backline. He looked and played like a rugby league player, and all these years later he still kicks it like one. Due mostly to his kicking and propensity to make the odd howler, he has been much maligned and frustrated many of our supporters over the years. I must admit that I’ve always been a big fan – despite his misgivings, Gilbert could always be relied upon to give 100% and would take on any role, forward, back, midfield or even ruck!
This week Sam plays his 200th game for the club. It is a fantastic achievement and he remains the only player left at the club from our grand finals of 09-10. He started the year in the reserves but has come back in through injuries to others. He may or may not keep his place for the rest of the year, but it is certain that a coach must love looking at the reserves team following a week of injuries and seeing someone with his experience there, ready to come up and play a role for the side. He didn’t have his best game against the Giants but was able to display a cool head in the dying minutes when the ball was in their forward line. As a result I’m certain he’ll retain his place in the side this week.
Congratulations Sam and thank you for your service to this football club.
Prediction:
I’m going to take the glass half full approach and look at last week’s performance as our new barometer. With that in mind, I think we match up well against the Hawks. Our young midfield seems to be finding its feet again after a poor start to the year. On top of that, the Hawthorn forward line has been severely weakened through injuries to Puopolo and Rioli. St Kilda should be chomping at the bit for this match as it provides a great opportunity to really start to get 2018 back on track.
Saints by 34 points.
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