Mick Malthouse: Why fitness and recent recruitment are two key factors behind St Kilda’s free fall
St Kilda’s recruiting is under the microscope after a poor start to the season — coaching great Mick Malthouse has turned the heat on the club’s big-money flops.
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I have a real soft spot for the Saints. It is the club that gave me my chance to play VFL football in 1972.
In my first years I boarded with a couple of St Kilda-mad families who taught me a lot about the club. But mostly, that excitement has been short lived.
St Kilda had a very good team in 1971 and played in that year’s Grand Final against Hawthorn. It meant I was fortunate enough to play finals in my first year of football. I was injured for the 1973 finals campaign.
When the Saints fell off the pace, they really fell off — 18 years without another finals appearance.
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That unfortunate trend has continued. It takes St Kilda a long time to recover from a poor season. There is no quick rebound.
The Saints played off in the 2009 and 2010 Grand Finals. They finished seventh in 2011.
And it took them until last year to get back into the final eight.
St Kilda president Andrew Bassat has already written off finals this year.
Through all of this, it’s the supporters who suffer.
With the names that are at this football club, there should be far more tough victories and honourable losses. Not the capitulation that we have seen alarmingly too often at the Saints this year.
I have watched St Kilda closely and there are two big reasons for its inconsistent form — recruiting and fitness.
The Saints have 15 players from other clubs on their list, but not all of them have performed anywhere near expectations. Those responsible for that have sadly let the club down.
I have a feeling St Kilda wants to be part of the big league by getting big-name players through the door, without looking hard enough at why you would recruit them.
Throughout history, the Saints’ best players have been their own, and they’ve had some rippers.
Perhaps the greatest full-forward ever, Tony Lockett. Two-time Brownlow medallist, Robert Harvey.
One of the greatest ever key forwards, Nick Riewoldt. Nathan Burke. Danny Frawley. Lenny Hayes. The list goes on.
The most recent recruits, in isolation, don’t stack up well.
Dan Hannebery, 30, has been a disaster. He arrived injured from Sydney and apart from last season’s eight games, he has remained injured.
It’s beyond me why St Kilda’s medical and football admin staff would think that they could do better with Hannebery than the Swans’ medicos?
Brad Crouch is a slow midfielder recruited to “bolster” the Saints’ midfield which already has Seb Ross, who lacks speed, and Jack Steele who is a hard worker but not overly quick. That move has just compounded St Kilda’s midfield problems.
Brad Hill came as an outside runner with exceptional delivery skills, but sadly there is no evidence that Hill is anything but an ordinary deliverer of the football, and he struggles to win a one-on-one contest.
He fell on the Saints’ doorstep because he wanted to move to Victoria. But the fact that Hawthorn and Fremantle don’t miss him makes it even more embarrassing that St Kilda can’t find a position for him that justifies his wage.
Both Dan Butler and Jack Higgins are in the same class. They are products of the fantastic Richmond juggernaut. But as with any powerhouse, individuals are exposed when they are removed from the brilliance of the teammates around them.
Butler’s 19 games for 29 goals last year was fine, but he and Higgins haven’t been able to sustain those top level efforts, a lack of consistency dogging them at Tigerland and now at the Saints.
The pair has played every game this year and combined for just 25 goals.
And why did they need to recruit three small forwards (including Dean Kent from Melbourne)?
Zak Jones has given St Kilda something it didn’t have — great pace. And there is no question about his endeavour. But he had soft tissues injuries at Sydney which have persisted at St Kilda.
James Frawley’s body is no longer capable of pushing it the way he did at Melbourne and Hawthorn.
Neither, former North Melbourne forward Mason Wood who struggled to get a game with the bottom club.
On the plus side, in late 2014 Tim Membrey came from Sydney and has been a highly reliable pick. Jack Steele was recruited from Greater Western Sydney in 2016 and has been outstanding.
Dougal Howard from Port Adelaide is one player the Saints desperately needed and he has delivered.
And Paddy Ryder, also from the Power, has been a fantastic back-up for Rowan Marshall, filling the key role while Marshall has been injured.
So the Saints have become overloaded with injured types and players who can’t win one-on-one football, at a huge financial cost to the club. It’s almost like: “Hey, we’ve got room, let’s get a name”, as opposed to: “Let’s look at what we really need.”
Recent recruitment has set St Kilda back years.
Fitness, concentration, consistency are the other issues.
The Saints’ highest score this season is 19.14 (128) in its Round 7 win over Hawthorn. It has also posted paltry scores of 48, 39, 47 and 33 points, three of those under the Marvel Stadium roof. On the flip side it has allowed scores against of 144 (Western Bulldogs), 143 (Essendon) and 134 (Richmond). The result is it had the second-worst percentage in the league after Round 10 — 72.6 per cent.
Most teams suffer at least one belting a season. But St Kilda has endured four defeats of nine goals or more already.
Remarkably, the Saints twice rebounded from a flogging with a win. It says a lot about their mindset and, more importantly, about their fitness.
Time and time again in those big losses the opposition’s midfield and wingers were between 10 and 35m in front of the lagging, hands-on-knees Saints’ midfielders, with the exception of Steele.
There’s only two reasons that stop players running — attitude and fitness. Having gone over last week’s game I am convinced that what I saw in the previous nine rounds is a complete lack of AFL baseline conditioning. St Kilda players cannot give a second or third effort. They are being outrun, out-defended and outscored.
The worry for the Saints is that young players like Max King, Josh Battle, Hunter Clark, Nick Coffield and Ben Paton deserve far better. They are not receiving the right preparation for league football.
Coach Brett Ratten did a wonderful job last year and you can tell that he is totally engrossed in trying to lift the Saints’ form.
My only criticism of Ratten is his habit of coaching from the sidelines. That only gives you a 30 to 40m square view of the ground.
You cannot possibly see the trends and idiosyncrasies, or full ball movement, unless you are sitting high in the coaches’ box.
It is very hard to coach a full game from the bench.
The coach will always get it in the neck, but the way I’m seeing the situation is it’s not his fault that they are 14th with a 4-6 record.
Poor recruitment and poor fitness can hide behind the senior coach in times of turmoil. And then become the reason for victory when they are winning.
These people need to stand up and admit they’ve got things wrong and take responsibility for the Saints to have any chance of moving forward.
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