Alan Richardson says he can sense St Kilda is ready to bounce back after disappointing 2018
Embarrassment, pride? St Kilda coach Alan Richardson doesn’t care what his players motivation is for pre-season but believes he can sense the Saints are ready to respond after a horror 2018.
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St Kilda Alan Richardson says he doesn’t care what his players motivation is this pre-season but believes the Saints are ready to respond after a horror 2018.
After starting the season as finals contenders, the Saints won just four games on the way to finishing third last ahead of only lowly Carlton and Gold Coast.
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As the club returned to pre-season training, Richardson said he’d addressed last season’s disappointment.
“There was a meeting that we had at the end of last season and then we had the individual meetings,” he told SEN.
“When we all got together Monday, that is all the players including Dean Kent, including Dan Hannebery, we did it again.
“I spoke about what our focus is going to be in terms of pre-season and why but I did need to touch again on last season.
“I felt the need, it was pretty brief, it was pretty frank and then it was, let’s move on and what does move on look like.
After seeing Hannebery arrive early for pre-season training and a determination from his players during early training sessions, Richardson believed the club was ready to bounce back.
“I’m sensing from the group in terms of their attitude and the way they’re going about their training, the way they’ve gone about their time away from the footy club, there is a strong motivation to do something about last year,” he said.
“I don’t know whether the motivation is embarrassment, is proud, I don’t really care. We know as a group we need to respond.
“We think things were heading the right way, winning more games than we lost the previous two years and last year was incredibly disappointing.”
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