No panic stations at Moorabbin
St Kilda coach Grant Thomas is far from panicking about his team's sudden form slump describing it as "just a blimp."
The Saints were on the wrong end of the upset of the season on Saturday, losing to last year's wooden spooners the Bulldogs by 23 points at the MCG.
And after a club record 10 successive wins to start the season, the league leaders have now lost their past two matches and their lead at the top of the ladder will be cut to just one game by the end of the round.
However Thomas is far from worried, even though the Saints also lost Aaron Hamill to hamstring soreness on Saturday - which Thomas is hoping won't keep his inspirational former skipper out of next week's clash against bottom-placed Hawthorn.
"We've been beaten by two better sides (Sydney and the Bulldogs) who have worked harder than us and gone the extra yards for a win, which is something we used to do automatically," Thomas said.
"But we haven't done that the last two weeks and it's my job to find out why and rectify it."
"We didn't have any flow, we didn't have the quick ball movement, we weren't winning the ball at ground level and we weren't putting anywhere near the pressure on them that we put on other sides."
"But we have won 10 games and lost two so we will focus on the 10 wins.'
"This is a bit of a blimp and next week we have the chance to get back to where we've been."
Thomas dismissed the theory his team is only a dominant force at Telstra Dome, with the past two losses having come away from the Saints' home ground, but conceded his team was "flat" at present.
"We were really poor today and we need to bounce back," he said.
He also admitted star spearhead Fraser Gehrig, who kicked 50 goals in the first nine rounds but only one in the past fortnight, was "not 100 percent (fit) right now" as he again battles his on-going foot problems but he quickly added "there are a lot of players out there (from all clubs) that aren't 100 percent fit."
And he said the decision to start skipper Lenny Hayes on the bench - which backfired as the star midfielder subsequently managed only 15 touches for the game - was no different to the way he has also eased the likes of Robert Harvey, Stephen Powell, Luke Ball and Andrew Thompson into games this season.
[listening to: Watching the Detectives - Elvis Costello ]
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