Round 7 Ponderings from AFL.COM.AU
Man, the folks at AFL.COM.AU like to bag the saints. Look at their recent ponderings from Round 7
2. Worrying times for Saints
For the past couple of years it has almost been assumed that it was only a matter of time before the Saints made a grand final and won a premiership given the talent at its disposal after years of shrewd drafting.
But in light of another disappointing loss on Friday night, at the hands of Geelong, the question that has to be asked is “Is the Saints’ window of opportunity to win a premiership beginning to slip away?”
After two years of bowing out in the preliminary final, the Saints have actually lost more games than they have won after seven rounds of the season and are not even in the top eight with nearly a third of the season gone – yet alone in the top four where they surely need to finish if they are to win a premiership.
The Saints clearly have their problems and chief amongst them is their lack of quality ruckmen – a problem which has been exposed even more by the continued injury problems that have beset star big man Justin Koschitzke.
While the commitment of Cain Ackland and Jason Blake cannot be questioned, they lack the height, strength and class to match it with the league’s best ruckmen – as was brutally exposed by Geelong pair Steven King and Brad Ottens on Friday night.
The loss of Aaron Hamill for up to six weeks with a knee injury, coming on top of the loss already of Koschitzke for a similar amount of time with a fractured skull, will put even more pressure on Nick Riewoldt in attack and it’s a burden he may not be able to handle because of his poor kicking for goal (see below).
That in turn puts even more pressure on Fraser Gehrig to kick goals but Gehrig is in the latter stages of his career and remains one of the AFL’s more unpredictable players.
Similarly in midfield the Saints appear to lack pace and the injury problems afflicting new skipper Luke Ball have hardly helped and it was a worrying sight seeing the gallant young midfielder barely able to get to his feet in the rooms after the game on Friday night due to the extent of his groin problems.
With Ball struggling, it has robbed the Saints of much of their hardness in midfield and again puts too much pressure on a veteran player in 34-year-old Robert Harvey, whose days of carrying the Saints’ midfield should be over.
It all adds up to worrying times for long-suffering Saints’ fans and if the club cannot recover and get its premiership ambitions back on track this season, it may be that the club’s best chance of a first premiership since 1966 will have come to an end – particularly with the irreplaceable Harvey expected to retire at season’s end.
But Wait, There's More
Villain of the week: NICK RIEWOLDT (St Kilda)
Riewoldt is increasingly starting to look like a flawed genius as it becomes increasingly evident that he has problems converting set shot goals under pressure.
The star Saint, one of the best marks in the AFL, just undoes too much of his good work through poor kicking for goal and last year he actually kicked more behinds (36) than goals (33) for the season.
And on Friday night his inability to convert set shots under pressure may have cost St Kilda victory when he marked just 20 metres from goal with the Saints having closed to within 14 points of a Cats side that was vulnerable considering it had lost four games in a row.
With about 10 minutes still to go, a goal would have put the Saints only eight points down and with the momentum they had, Grant Thomas’ side could well have steamrolled over the top of the Cats.
But Riewoldt’s miss immediately lifted the pressure off the Cats, who then went down the other end to seal victory through a Kane Tenace goal and it was of little consolation to the Saints that Riewoldt’s next shot at goal went straight through the middle from a set shot after the final siren had sounded and the pressure was off.
The sad news is that I can't really argue with these comments
7:12:58 PM  G!
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