St Kilda won’t be experimenting in two final round dead rubbers with plans to build an arsenal of draft picks

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has laid out his plans to get his team back to the finals in 2024 as he made it clear where he stands on final round experiments.

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon is going full throttle for the final two weeks of the season. Picture: James Elsby/AFL Photos via Getty Images

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon wants to build an arsenal of as many top-40 picks in the draft as possible and says his club needs to be disciplined with all the “levers” available to it in order to build a team that can get back to the finals next season.

Lyon ruled out “mucking around” with his team in the final two matches of the season, intent on pushing top-four hopefuls Geelong and then top-eight hopeful Carlton in the final two games of the regular season because “we are a professional sporting organisation”.

After a surprise visit to the finals in 2023, the Saints won just three of their opening 11 matches this season to blow any chance of backing that up.

A 6-4 win-loss record in the 10 games since has provided a glimmer of hope and Lyon said every club was working the “double narrative” of trying to be successful in the present while planning for the future as he laid out what the Saints plan is for climbing back up the ladder next season.

“Last two drafts we have gone to, we’ll go to the draft again, after a period of not drafting a lot of picks. Trying to get picks inside 40, because they are valuable, we’ve been doing that and we’ll continue that,” he said on Thursday.

“You’ve got to be creative, take a little bit of risk, pull all the levers.

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon is going full throttle for the final two weeks of the season. Picture: Graham Denholm/AFL Photos/via Getty Images

“There’s the Irish experiment, we’ve got Liam O’Connell here, there’s free agency that you’re trying to get, and trying to keep, like (Josh) Battle, there’s NGA (Academy players) and the rules are shifting and tightening. And you’ve got to manage your salary cap.

“How many clubs have linked contracts to the (salary cap) increase? Those that haven’t will have more to spend, those that haven’t been as disciplined have less to spend.

“There’s all those moving parts and we keep needing to have discipline in all those areas and fight for every inch in all those areas to bring success to the club.”

Lyon said he “haven’t even asked” Battle, who is being chased by Hawthorn, what his intentions were, hopeful his “if you’ll build it, they’ll come” attitude towards improving all aspects of the Saints makes the decision to stay an easy one.

He confirmed that rising star Mattaes Phillipou was still “pretty crook” after coming down with a virus and would miss Saturday’s Marvel Stadium showdown with the fourth-placed Cats who need to win to keep their place in the top four, which comes with a double chance in the finals.

Josh Battle is being chased by Hawthorn. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

Despite little being at stake for the Saints when it comes to ladder position in the remaining two rounds of the season, Lyon said while there could be an opportunity to try some things, there was no room for any sense of a carefree attitude when it came to selection.

“If we experiment and lost by 20 goals, and there was no media that would terrorise us, and we didn’t have 60,000 members we have a responsibility to, we could just probably throw it up in and the air and see where it lands,” he said.

“But we are a professional sporting organisation, with a lot of responsibility, a lot of scrutiny. We don’t tend to muck around too much.

“Within games, it’s more opportunity.

“But we have a responsibility to the player group to pick teams to win and not muck around and if you muck around against serious football teams, you get hurt pretty quickly. We are playing a serious football team.”