A Week In Football Becoming Longer

The Age

Monday April 5, 1999

GREG BAUM

Six minutes into the second quarter at Waverley Park yesterday, St Kilda had kicked more than its total score against Brisbane the previous week. By half-time, Melbourne had yielded as many points as in four quarters against Richmond the previous week.

Midway through the second quarter, Melbourne had taken five marks. By half-time, it had taken 18 to St Kilda's 62. David Schwarz and David Neitz had taken one mark between them, Stewart Loewe 12 by himself. The Saints had had 100 more possessions, more than twice as many as the Demons.

The match was effectively over, save for St Kilda's ritual howling down of the umpires at the final siren. The Saints had notionally improved by 22 goals in a week and the Demons deteriorated by 10. So which is the real St Kilda? And for that matter, the authentic Melbourne?

Both, said Saints coach Tim Watson. Nothing had changed about St Kilda from last week to this, not even the names, particularly. It was just the way of modern football that a team, any team, could be Mr Hyde one week and Dr Jekyll the next.

``Anybody who knows anything about football will appreciate that from time to time, sides are going to get belted in the course of a season," he said. ``That's the type of game that is being played in AFL ranks these days.

``Look at Melbourne today. The wheels fell off. Everyone's going to get a towelling from time to time. When the floodgates open in modern football, they open wide, and everyone walks through. It's very difficult to stop.

``When you open a side up, you can REALLY open them up. You can't do much about it. It's like shuffling the chairs on the Titanic after a while. Even in the third quarter today, when Melbourne got a run on, really, there wasn't a lot you can do.

``You can throw your players around, but at the end of the day, you really need that time at three-quarter-time for them to take stock and have a good think about how it had gone in that third quarter before you could think about turning it about."

It is because football now is so mercurial that Watson thought media reaction to last week's humiliation had been excessive to the point of hysterical.

``I don't think anyone in conversations I've heard or what I've read actually paid credit to the way the Lions played last week," he said. ``They were phenomenal.

``Everyone knows this game sometimes can be in the head. Last week I thought our players were pretty switched on. But we soon realised when they got out there that they weren't."

It is impossible, said Watson, to know the corporate state of mind of a team for any one game. Even as a player, he did not. It is now the custom for teams to warm up on the ground in T-shirts and track shoes, but no one could have predicted while watching that exercise yesterday that one team would be so marauding, the other so meek.

``That's the most difficult thing. You're never sure when that switch is on, and when it's not," said Watson. ``All I can say is that in terms of the way we prepared ourselves during this week, I thought we were pretty good. There was a lot of intensity and urgency in the way they trained.

``I thought there was something renewed. They'd copped a belting last week and were steeling themselves for a performance the next week."

So it proved. Loewe took the game into his own hands, pulling down an extraordinary 18 marks. Barry Hall, Jason Heatley, and Gavin Mitchell were imposing on the forward line; Joe McLaren, Andrew Thompson, Jason Traianidis and Tony Francis dynamic in midfield; Matthew Young and Shane and Darryl Wakelin impassable in defence.

Evidently, Demons coach Neale Daniher agreed with Watson that in the face of an onslaught, a side could hope to do no more than wait for it to blow over and hope that the damage was not too severe.

Even as St Kilda's lead grew to 10 goals midway through the second quarter, Daniher made few changes other than to tighten up the tag on Robert Harvey. It was not until the second half that he conceded St Kilda's aerial supremacy by repatriating Neitz from the forward line to the back.

Though Melbourne closed nearly to five goals, there was never a sense of a real comeback. Peter Everitt's goal on the stroke of the third-quarter siren effectively the last play of the match. For the second week in a row, St Kilda's match was finished by three-quarter-time.

So which St Kilda can be expected to turn out to play Adelaide at Football Park next week? And which Melbourne will appear down at Geelong? The answer is, the best side that each, with all its planning, professionalism and panache, can be. It just might not be enough to avoid a 10-goal beating, that's all.