Kevin 'Cowboy' Neale remembers St Kilda's premiership in 1966

I AM starting to get a bit excited. It's a special time of year.

I AM starting to get a bit excited. It's a special time of year.

The season starts again because things are so different, there's so much pressure.

You go down to the ground and it smells different when the grass is cut.

I don't know, I think it's just September.

Because we're so led by our football here in Victoria, the game becomes more and more important.

It has been a long, long time since we last won a premiership, but I'm sure that won't be in the players' minds.

It's just another challenge, another game of footy.

It's pretty well known from all of us from the 66 team, we're all so proud to be the first members of a premiership side for St Kilda.

But we're just really p----- off that we're the only one.

We had a reunion about a month ago and we sat around and talked about that and we all said it had been going too long. We should have had a couple more premierships since then -- three or four.

So we're hoping like hell we can win it this year.

And we're more than happy to accept another team into it.

As the years gone by have shown, it doesn't come easy. But I'm confident we will give a good account of ourselves.

Everyone's talking about the Grand Final - it makes you think about 66. You start to get a bit toey.

You build a much closer relationship with all your teammates and a lot of people when you play in finals.

People have asked me all season, what's the difference about the team this year?

I don't think there's been a huge difference in personnel.

I think we now have a really good team and we're playing like a team. We've gelled together as a team and that's made a huge difference.