Ross Lyon weighs up which Brisbane Lions gun to tag as the run-with role makes a comeback

For years the best AFL midfielders ran riot racking up possessions, but the lockdown is back on with one senior coach leading the charge.

St Kilda’s Marcus Windhager will get another lockdown job against Brisbane. Picture: Daniel Carson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

Just like “the mullet”, the tagger is back in fashion and St Kilda coach Ross Lyon’s only decision is which one of the Brisbane Lions he will try and lock down in Friday night’s Gabba clash.

As he dismissed criticism of his side’s defensive playing style after rival coach Damien Hardwick labelled their clash with the Suns last week a “terrible game”, Lyon said the Saints were doing enough right to score more but breaking down in a key area.

That area is scoring from clearances, but Lyon said he would “definitely run a tag” on one of Lachie Neale or possibly Hugh McCluggage this week, again deploying stopper Marcus Windhager, a defensive move that could also help his team gain more first possessions around stoppages.

“It’s like the mullet, everything comes back into fashion. It’s back in,” Lyon said of the tagging role being back in vogue across the competition, pointing to his longstanding use of it.

“There was the rhetoric that you can’t run a tag and play team defence. The 2009 Saints, then at the Dockers, we always ran a heavy tag. You can certainly play team defence and have a tag, that’s a moot point.

A genuine 1-on-1 battle in the middle 💪@kanecornes was impressed with Marcus Windhager's job on Touk Miller in the Saints' win.

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“(Lachie Neale) is a star but they have a lot, (Josh) Dunkley and (Hugh) McLuggage we rate highly. I’m trying to figure out, is Lachie Neale tag-able? He sort of handles it pretty well now.

“We went more to outside speed demon last week than inside bull. We’ll definitely run a tag, we just have to work out who it is.”

Lyon also launched a stats-based defence of his team’s lack of scoring prowess that has resulted in kicking less than 10 goals in four of the past five games.

In last week’s win three-point win over the Suns, the Saints kicked just seven goals, leading to Hardwick’s damning assessment and outside criticism of Lyons’ defensive style.

“Terrible game of footy. Horrific game of footy we were part of,” Hardwick said.

Lyon conceded that to “really challenge”, his team needed to score more but the picture was not as dire the data he saw every week presented.

“No one scores better out of D50 (defensive 50) and D-mid than us in the competition, that’s fact,” he said.

“Off the possession game we are really good except centre of the ground and in our forward 50. We are way off the mark inside (forward) 50 when we create possession gains, and we don’t take our opportunities, those ones when you get the ball back and take a snap; we have scored 3.18.

“I would accept the criticism more readily if they said ‘you didn’t score, yes, but because you didn’t execute and your forward patterns weren’t great’.

“We know it’s a challenge, the bottom line is we need to score more.”