St Kilda had it all to play for last Friday night when they went up against the Western Bulldogs.
A place inside the top eight awaited if the Saints could topple the Dogs in what would have put them in an ideal situation with five rounds remaining.
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It quickly became evident the Saints weren’t up for the challenge as the Dogs took the contest by the scruff of the neck and put the result beyond doubt in the first half.
The disappointing outing has seen the players come under immense fire from all corners and now a media legend of the game has put them under the flame.
Mike Sheahan joined the extensive queue to deliver a shot at the Saints, and he did not hold back in his assessment of their performance.
“That effort, that was an indictment on the entire footy club against the Bulldogs,” Sheahan said on AFL 360.
“That first forty minutes was disgraceful. It was as if the club didn’t care and of course they care, but you can’t get beaten like that.”
St Kilda legend Nick Riewoldt backed up Sheahan’s stance and said the club lacked that hard-nosed intensity week in, week out.
“There’s trying and then there’s really trying and they’re not a dog hungry group. It’s a nice group and that’s why the inconsistency comes,” Riewoldt said.
“I heard a lot about ball use that it was direct enough and good enough. You laid 11 tackles in a half of footy, that’s effort that’s intensity and it just hasn’t been there with this group.”
St Kilda coach Brett Ratten has declared some players will be dropped and others are on their “last chance” after a horror post-bye run that led to some serious soul-searching and honest feedback from players to each other at Moorabbin this week.
A finals-bound 8-3 record before the bye has become 9-8, with five losses in their past six matches by an average margin of 35 points. The Saints have fallen outside the top eight, if only by percentage, following a meek first half in last week’s 28-point loss to the Bulldogs.
After the defeat, Ratten spoke to his players for more than half an hour and then the leadership group led another warts-and-all review of the past month in which players gave honest appraisals of each other and vowed to take responsibility for their on-field actions.
Ratten was more matter-of-fact on Thursday ahead of a must-win clash against West Coast in Perth on Sunday, putting players on notice to perform now or lose their place in the team with St Kilda’s finals hopes at stake.
“Some players will be on their last chance. We can’t accept some of those performances. Some players have been pretty good players, but that’s where (the) footy’s at,” Ratten said.
“We’ve had a few discussions about our team. There are some players that have been spoken to already and there are some that will be out of our team for the weekend and some will be on their last chance.
“If they stay in the team, they will be lucky and have a chance to respond, and if they don’t stay in the team, they will have to work damn hard to get back in.
“That’s not just about our young kids whose form fluctuates, these are players that are in our team that have been around for a while and we need a lift. We need more from them in regards to how they go about it.”
– with Russell Gould, NCA Newswire
Originally published as Mike Sheahan and Nick Riewoldt torch St Kilda’s Friday night display
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