AFL 2021: St Kilda and Richmond news ahead of Round 5 blockbuster
Josh Battle lives at home with his mum and once bowled an Australian Test batsman. But how did St Kilda get its first look at West Coast before its famous come-from-behind victory?
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Josh Battle is perfectly named. He is a hard nut, a fierce competitor and he has the battle scars to prove it.
“My head’s pretty stuffed at the moment,” Battle told the Herald Sun.
“I’ve got stitches all over the shop. I might have to start taping my head before the game like Ben McEvoy.”
After 44 games Battle has made his mark as St Kilda’s everywhere man, and he has plenty of marks to show for it.
The 22-year-old has a thick, red line tracing the cheekbone below his left eye. That remains a prominent reminder of teammate Paddy Ryder’s crunching hit during a game last July, which knocked Battle out cold.
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This year’s wounds are located above Battle’s right eye.
One red splotch was caused by Carlton’s Sam Docherty in the pre-season, while another was an imprint left by 101kg Greater Western Sydney ruckman Matthew Flynn in Round 1.
In 2018, when Battle was a teenager, he suffered two concussions from six games. Those head blows earned him the nickname “Pretzel”.
“When I got knocked out (Jack Newnes) thought I was pretty ‘Pretzel’d’,” Battle said.
“I broke my eye socket against Melbourne and missed three weeks, and then a couple of weeks later got knocked out against Dale Morris.
“That was pretty tough. I couldn’t play the back-end of the year and missed six or seven games all up with concussion.
“I had a few symptoms for a couple of weeks. Light, noise (sensitivity) and some weird irritations that I’ve never really had before.
“That was a bit strange.”
The Ryder KO was Battle’s third concussion in 29 games and, in 2019, he was lucky to walk away unscathed from a head clash which knocked out Fremantle’s Nat Fyfe.
But for a battling St Kilda side accused of playing bruise-free football in Rounds 2 and 3, Battle’s bravery shows he is made of the right stuff.
“The effort we were dishing out wasn’t good enough or up to the standard, and a few of us got hit up,” Battle said.
“It was around how we attacked the contest and the rhetorical question of, ‘Are we going in hard enough?’”
Those frank conversations followed a squirmy Saturday night.
Captain Jack Steele played his 100th game in the 75-point loss to Essendon and a post-game party had been planned back at Moorabbin.
“It was a pretty tame night,” Battle said.
“A couple of beers to celebrate Steele’s 100th … obviously it wasn’t as enjoyable as it could’ve been.
“We came back and the footy was on — Eagles and Port Adelaide — and we were playing them (West Coast) next week.
“That was probably the last thing we wanted to see, and then we were seeing highlights from our game as well. I guess we didn’t really enjoy it a heap.”
Nic Naitanui’s dominance was a sobering reminder of what lay ahead. But what did Battle do to avoid reliving clips from the horror show against Essendon?
“Find someone a talk to — one of the parents or something,” he said.
“Ro (Marshall) was in the room as well, and he was trying to say he was good to go.”
Battle trained with the forwards and wings all pre-season, but against the Bombers he found his feet when he was shifted back.
Last week coach Brett Ratten told him he would remain in defence against West Coast.
“On Thursday he called me, Dougal Howard and (Callum) Wilkie in and said, ‘We’re going to play Battle down back this week. What do you want from him? He hasn’t played down back in a year’.”
Battle stood Jack Darling at the opening bounce, although he could be lining up almost anywhere in “Maddie’s Match” against Richmond on Thursday night.
Battle’s career has been split like this: 51 per cent in defence, 31 per cent forward, 16 per cent wing and 2 per cent in the ruck.
Ratten and his “Mr Fix It” chat weekly about where Battle will play, with Ratten sometimes pulling him out of locker room cricket to run through his next opponent.
That might be a spell his teammates enjoy. Battle scored a scholarship at Haileybury … for his cricket credentials.
“My claim to fame is I got Will Pucovski out,” Battle said.
“Because I’m a taller guy he must’ve thought I’d come in and bowl smoke, and fair to say it was a bit slow for him.
“I was pretty stoked. In the changerooms everyone was saying, ‘We probably won’t get him out’.
“I’ll wait until he starts whacking them for Australia and I’ll be able to say, ‘I got him out’.”
Battle bowled Australia’s newest Test opener, who was batting for Brighton Grammar in a practice match.
But Battle was drafted by the Saints in Year 11 as the summer sport was given the boot.
In 2017 he made his AFL debut as a schoolboy, lining up on Essendon defenders Michael Hurley and Cale Hooker.
It was a Friday night in school holidays, which Battle hoped would never end.
“I just wanted to play footy, I didn’t really want to be in school,” he said.
“I just wanted to be training here with the boys and I only got to train on the Thursday with them.
“I was coming in after hours. Each Tuesday (assistant coach) Benny McGlynn would hang around and wait for after school, and I’d train one-on-one.”
Ratten said Battle had only “scratched the surface” last year and the endurance beast often clocks 15km playing as a forward.
When Ratten arrived in 2018 he moved Battle back for the first time in his life.
Fast forward to 2021 and life away from football is still largely the same.
“I’m still living at home just with mum (Sue),” Battle said.
“You’ll play a stinker and come home and she’ll try and tell you, ‘Good game’. She’s really good like that.
“I like going home, but I’ll probably have to grow up soon. Mum still does my washing.”
Dimma defends Rioli, shock return on cards
Richmond coach Damien Hardwick has leapt to the defence of small forward Daniel Rioli, declaring he should be judged on his “specific role” rather than “SuperCoach points”.
Rioli is poised to earn a recall for Thursday night’s crunch clash with St Kilda, after being dropped to the VFL last week following an up-and-down start to the season.
The three-time premiership player had 17 disposals, five clearances and six tackles for the reserves in a scratch match against Werribee, Hardwick saying he played “very well”.
Rioli, who turns 24 on Friday, had kicked two goals from only nine touches against Sydney in Round 3, before being dropped for the third time since the start of last season.
He averaged just 49 KFC SuperCoach ranking points from his first three games this year, down on an average of 66 points from 18 matches last season.
“He’s a little bit hard to judge because we play a system,” Hardwick said of Rioli.
“Daniel plays a really specific role that doesn’t require him to get 15 kicks, three goals.
“It’s very mentally draining for him to play that role week in, week out. Sometimes he needs to go back and freshen up and find the footy a little bit for his own peace of mind.
“(The public) judge this kid off SuperCoach points but what we judge Daniel off is win-loss and he’s got three premiership medals.
“Jake Aarts, a similar type of player, gets seven or eight touches a week. But they play a really specific role in the way we want to go about it.”
Rioli looks set to join Kamdyn McIntosh on the Tigers’ list of ins this week in what would be an injection of speed for the clash with the Saints under the roof at Marvel Stadium.
McIntosh has been declared fit after missing last week’s loss to Port Adelaide with concussion.
Hardwick also flagged forward Callum Coleman-Jones as a possible inclusion, after some impressive VFL form including two goals last weekend.
Coleman-Jones and Sydney Stack are both available for AFL selection from this week after serving club-imposed suspensions, but Stack will play limited minutes in his first VFL game of the year on Friday as he searches for some fitness.
Stack has returned to Victoria and is living with a host family which first offered to help him when he was booted out of Queensland after he and Coleman-Jones fought outside a Gold Coast strip club.
He has undertaken a fortnight of intensive training and is expected to play some VFL minutes against Sandringham this Friday in the season opener.
The Tigers are aware he might need a chunk of VFL football to get back to elite AFL fitness after admitting he was only 25 per cent match-fit when he received a $6000 fine for a WA COVID breach.
The Tigers are looking to avoid what would be their first three-game losing streak since rounds 11-13 in 2019, but Hardwick said a slow start to the season was not cause for concern.
“The game looks different from what it looks like now to what it looks like at the end of the year,” he said.
“We’re not playing at our absolute best. We’d like to be banking some four points, there’s no doubt about it.
“But the fact of the matter is premierships aren’t won in April.”
Will Ryder, Marshall play?
St Kilda is considered less likely to take a risk on Paddy Ryder after his return from personal leave given his lack of training.
Rowan Marshall snapped his plantar fascia in the win over West Coast so will be assessed closer to the contest to judge whether he can play despite soreness and bruising.
Marshall left the field in the Saints’ stunning victory over West Coast with foot soreness but returned to help the club get its season back on track in a comeback from 33 points down.
The Herald Sun understands that injury was actually him snapping the tissue which runs along the bottom of the foot and connects the heel bone to the toes.
In the long run, Marshall might be helped by the resolution of an injury that meant he was sore for much of the summer.
But St Kilda has only five days to recover from that victory, so Marshall will be sore for several days.
The Saints are aware he might not yet be ready to take on a 2-2 Richmond side that bounced back to form but could not quite overcome Port Adelaide.
St Kilda champion Robert Harvey famously jumped off his kitchen table to “release” his plantar fascia but a full rupture does cause bruising and soreness immediately afterwards.
Jack Sinclair told Nine on Sunday the Saints had ramped up their physicality after a tough week on the track.
Coach Brett Ratten was thrilled the Saints had been composed enough to pull out a superb fighting win.
“It was really pleasing to think what we dished up last week, to then play like that and stick to the task,” Ratten said.
“We could have given up, but the players knew what they did last week; win, lose or draw, we have to bring that.
“That was a bit of a blueprint. We‘re going to lose games of footy, every team does, it’s just how you go about it.
“We weren’t pleased last week and to see the response was really pleasing … (especially) the pressure and the hunt around the footy.”
With Jon Ralph and Chris Cavanagh
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