AFL team ready to snap 20-year losing streak

It’s been a long, long time since St Kilda defeated Geelong down at Cattery.

But coach Brett Ratten believes now is as good a time as any to break a two-decade hoodoo and keep his club’s minute chance of finals footy alive.

Round 10, 1999, was the last time the Saints won a match at Kardinia Park – Big bustling Barry Hall booted four goals and club legend Nathan Burke was awarded the three Brownlow votes for best on ground.

Fast forward to today and the Saints have been buoyed by a season-saving win over top-four candidate Sydney.

Ratten says that gives his charges confidence heading into next week – where it is literally win or go home, given they now sit two points and percentage outside the eight, with two to play.

Current Collingwood coach Robert Harvey played for the Saints the last time they defeated Geelong at Kardinia Park.Source:News Limited

“We’re just going to try and finish the home-and-away rounds and keep pushing to win games of footy,” Ratten said after his side’s 29-point win over the Swans.

“The Cats next week down there, huge challenge. I don’t think we’ve won for 20 years, something like that, so no bigger challenge.

“We want to make sure we take steps forward as a team and to get a consistent performance like that (against Sydney) was critical.

“The way we played last week (in the loss to Carlton) was below par, average, didn’t have a lot of energy. Today, it was nearly completely opposite. We were full of energy and that showed in the game.”

Ratten was particularly pleased with the efforts of his young brigade and sees the clash with an angry Cats side coming off a shock loss to GWS as a learning experience for the likes of Cooper Sharman, Leo Connolly, Tom Highmore and Ryan Byrnes.

“To see some of the young kids; Cooper Sharman developing, Byrnes was pretty quiet in the first half but really came of age in the second and then Connolly, as well, developing; Highmore. These kids are our future,” Ratten said.

“To get some games into them and to play against some of the best teams in the comp late in the year, it’s going to be a challenge for them, but they will learn a lot.”

The task will become that much harder if key forward Max King fails to recover from the right adductor injury that forced him to be subbed off in the last quarter against Sydney.

“He went off, he was sore, we sort of gave him a bit of a go in the last quarter, but you could see he didn’t have the power in his leg,” Ratten said.

“He tried to get through, but he couldn’t so we couldn’t take the risk with that.

“He’ll be a test, he’s going to have to do everything right, it’ll be 50-50, I would think, for next week’s game.”

The Swans’ loss on Saturday night puts their top four hopes in jeopardy. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)Source:Getty Images

Swans on the road

Sydney’s road weary stars were reunited with their families midweek, but coach John Longmire says the Swans are still dealing with the uncertainty of stop-start lockdowns across Australia.

The travelling Swannies, despite being away from home for more than six weeks, had strung together five straight wins before they were outmuscled by St Kilda by 29 points on Saturday night.

Longmire says the players were glad to finally see their families, who had completed 14 days of quarantine in Brisbane, before jetting into Melbourne on Thursday, but were under no illusion things could change again in an instant.

“You can’t really get into (the) mindset of that settling down mode because things are getting thrown up so much,” Longmire said.

“The reality is, the opposition don’t care, you’ve just got to find a way.

“It’s been good to catch up with families. It’s been a significant period away, so it was good to see everyone.

“Not everyone’s got their families here, but, for those who caught up with their families, it was good to see.

“We’ve got to make sure we get that pressure going around the ball.

“It’s been a real strength of ours, (we’ve) got to get back to it being a really good focus for us.”

The No. 1 pressure team in the competition was beaten up by the Saints – the 67-45 tackle count a sore point for Longmire that he says translated to poor ball use.

“We had 13 players with one tackle or less and we only had 45 tackles and went at 49 per cent,” Longmire said.

“If you look at your intensities and what you’re doing, your pressure stakes. Generally, if it’s high, you’re able to execute a lot better skills … almost goes hand-in-hand.”

Callum Mills was a late withdrawal right before the first bounce and Longmire said the midfield star’s treatment for a problem Achilles had been hampered when he was among four Swans forced to quarantine last month.

Mills missed two games after they attended a Wallabies match in Melbourne that was later identified as a Covid exposure site.

“He’s had Achilles soreness for a bit of the year, we thought we were getting on top of it before he went into isolation,” he said.

“It needs a bit of loading through that period, so he wasn’t able to get the loading that he required and we’ve taken a step backwards there.”

Longmire was hopeful Mills would return to face North Melbourne next week.

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