AFL Friday Footy Fix: Saints bore their season to pieces as brilliant Bont keeps the Dogs alive

The only dare about St Kilda on a night where their season hung in the balance was the logo on the front of the jumper.

With so much to play for, and an opponent in the Western Bulldogs that has spent the last fortnight getting ripped to shreds by properly good sides, this was as insipid an effort as you could see from an AFL team with finals aspirations. The Saints were dreadful in the first quarter, bland as tepid water in the second and third, and finally waking up in the last quarter when the horse had bolted an hour and a half ago.

Any loss of this magnitude – don’t be fooled by a final margin of 28 points and the Saints’ two extra scoring shots, this game was never remotely as close as that – would have Brett Ratten facing pressure and criticism from a multitude of fans not exactly enamoured with his recent contract extension. But it was more than that – this was as baffling a night from a senior AFL coach as you could wish to see.

Luke Beveridge copped plenty of heat in this pages seven days ago, and deservedly so; but at least he had the excuse of his 22 Bulldogs not showing up against Sydney. Ratten’s Saints weren’t as awful as all that, but their game plan was thoroughly inexplicable; and that fault lies solely with the coach.

If any team – hell, any mug punter – had been paying attention to the Dogs’ losses to the Swans and Brisbane in the last fortnight, two things should have become clear. One: the Bulldogs’ defence cannot cope against speedy, aggressive ball movement. And two: once the ball is in defensive 50, you’ll usually score and score often.

So what was the Saints’ response? Glacial ball movement. Seemingly spooked by a few glaringly bad errors attempting to centre the ball in the first quarter, two resulting in direct Dogs’ goals from the turnover, the Saints took another two quarters to ever try the one play that has rent their opponents asunder in recent weeks.

The new move was a slow, suffocating death rather than chance the instant decapitation of an ungainly turnover: the Saints’ backline saw more chips than a landfill teapot, racking up marks and kicks but gaining precisely nothing, either in territory or on the scoreboard.

The Saints were always going to struggle to match the Dogs at stoppages, unless Paddy Ryder wound back the clock with another supreme night of tapwork as he had against the Blues. Recent wins at the coalface over Carlton and Fremantle proved a false dawn, with the Dogs dominating the clearance count 41-21, with a wounded Ryder bested by Tim English and Brad Crouch handed a competitive lesson by Tom Liberatore (11 clearances).

Callum Wilkie had an incredible night in defence to keep the Dogs at bay virtually single-handedly: but once they’d won the ball back, their problems began.

The Saints took a staggering 158 marks on Friday night – the highest by any team this season, and 36 more than their previous 2022 high.

Some, to their credit, were intercepts – Wilkie alone had eight intercept marks for the evening, and Josh Battle five, as the continually outpointed an Aaron Naughton-less Dogs attack under the high ball – but far too many were the Saints switching back and forth along the defensive 50 arc, making not the slightest bit of ground until eventually giving up and bombing long in hope.

Normally, this sort of play would be silly – against the Dogs, it was plain irresponsible. This is a team that has conceded a score from more than half their opponents’ inside 50 entries for the past six weeks. It’s a team that has given up far more contested marks than any other side going around, and loses more than a third of its defensive one-on-ones, also last in the league.

And on the flipside, the Saints have Max King, the exact type of strong, big-clunking key forward that gives Luke Beveridge sleepless nights. Ryan Gardner had not a hope in Hades of stopping him in a one-on-one contest… if it ever got down there.

By the time the Saints finally opted to bomb the ball forward, the Dogs had flooded back, got numbers behind the ball to compete in the air, and ensured King was never able to fly solo. That he took six marks for the night was mostly down to him busting a gut working down the wings to provide an outlet on the rare occasions the Saints moved forward with any sharpness, and a purple patch in the final quarter where he began to find space inside 50.

Wilkie had 16 marks for the night; Jack Sinclair 11; Josh Battle 14; Jimmy Webster 11; Cooper Sharman 10. None you could argue had bad nights, but it’s that kind of stat line that is more damning on a team than the ordinary five or six grabs for an evening. If your half-backs are taking that many uncontested marks, it’s because your opposition is perfectly fine letting them have it.

Bradley Hill has been their usual avenue for speedy ball movement through the middle, as has been Sinclair; but the Dogs were careful with both. Hill was sat upon by a rolling group of Dogs smalls, chiefly Jason Johannisen, and was given no leeway to run past markers for handball receives all night.

Two poor passes early seemed to dent his confidence, with the Saints falling back to 2021 ways of barely looking to give him the ball. He finished with 11 touches for the night; for a player who remains one of St Kilda’s most damaging with ball in hand, that was a significant win for the Dogs.

Sinclair was far better, but up until the last quarter, the Dogs took care with him too. Handball receives were a rarity, with Sinclair also never allowed to move freely into the middle of the ground. Only on the outskirts did the Dogs permit him to rack up marks, meaning all too often the Saints’ sharpest kicker was forced to do the same as everyone else: either switch the play, or bomb and pray.

By the last quarter, the Dogs’ pressure and ability to control the corridor had waned, and with Sinclair running hot with 11 touches and a goal, it’s no surprise it coincided with their best period of the game. The Saints could have drawn even closer than 22 points with better kicking for goal – but that’s never a given, or even a likelihood, with this mob.

Beveridge must have been watching from the coach’s box with uncontrolled glee every time the Saints looked to switch the play, rather than running the gauntlet and attacking up the middle in the manner of the Lions and Swans.

Their kicking game mightn’t have been up to it, and no doubt some howlers against Freo and early against the Dogs had a psychological impact… but when your only hope of knocking over a team is via that avenue, it was incredible to watch the Saints instead choose to drive up the nature strip and into a small child’s bedroom.

The Dogs, meanwhile, stood back, set up behind the ball, brought it to ground, and then watched Marcus Bontempelli go to work. And here, at least, was something the Saints couldn’t blame for their evening.

Marcus Bontempelli of the Bulldogs celebrates a goal. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

Bontempelli’s place at the forefront of the game is always controversial – no doubt he’s had a below-par year by his lofty standards, and ceded the title of the best in the business to Christian Petracca with last year’s grand final. He’s not as consistent as your Clayton Olivers or your Andrew Brayshaws, he’s not as electric as your Petraccas or your Sam Walshes, but I’m still confident that the Bont’s turbo mode is more unstoppable than any other midfielder.

This was a proper ‘I’m the best player in the team, just get out of my way’ game from the captain; it was perhaps the first time all year he has put together his elite decision-making skills with his knack of breaking away from a stoppage and belying his pace to power away from any would-be tacklers.

It’s hard to find a fault in his game: he’d wind up with 34 touches, 20 in the first half to set up the game, 17 contested, five clearances, 12 score involvements, and even eight intercepts for good measure. Two of those Saints’ inboard kicks were cut off by him early to set the tone, and his two goals were world-class for different reasons.

The first, a standing start drop punt from 50 that never looked like missing in the shadows of half time, was almost the match-sealer; the second, following a towering contested mark at the hot spot in a manner no other Dog had even looked like plucking one all night deep in the last, definitely was.

A passage in the third quarter, where he outpointed a Saint, tapped it over the head of another, ran onto the crumb, gathered without breaking stride, and dished an unimprovable pass to Johannisen running towards goal, who never had to break stride, was football poetry in motion. Wherever the Dogs needed him to be, there the Bont was.

Getting beaten by Bontempelli having one of ‘those’ nights would have been perfectly acceptable for the Saints, but they themselves were the architects of their own doom.

Contrast it to the way the Bulldogs played; with far more dare and dash from half-back than in previous weeks, they looked to capitalise on Saints turnovers with maximum impact, and were ultra-quick to play on from marks for much of the game.

This is the Dogs at their 2021 best; fill the defensive 50 with midfielders to clog space, then sprint hard the other way to turn defence into attack in the blink of an eye. The return of Bailey Smith from suspension helped, with the gut-running midfielder as hard-working as he was wayward by foot.

Often, attacking chains would break down with an errant kick inside 50 to be chopped off by Wilkie – the Dogs couldn’t break the habit of sitting everything on the absent Naughton’s head hoping for something amazing – but there was always another chance. And if the ball hit the ground, everyone from Riley Garcia and Cody Weightman to Jamarra Ugle-Hagan looked capable of hitting the scoreboard.

The most emblematic play of the game came in the second term, with the Saints, courtesy of a score review on a touched behind, given plenty of time to set up for the Dogs kick-in. Bailey Dale’s clearing kick was a shocker, yet it tumbled its way to Jack Macrae hemmed on the boundary line, who saw two players in 20 metres of space on the wing. Riley Garcia marked, Josh Dunkley received the handball, and within moments the Dogs were approaching attacking 50.

It didn’t amount to anything, but it spoke volumes to the way the Dogs wanted to take the game on, and the Saints’ inability to stop them and refusal to try anything similar. It was nothing short of insipid football, made all the worse by the stakes at play.

The Saints are officially shot – they’ll only be a game and percentage out of the eight by the end of the round, assuming Richmond take care of North Melbourne, but this isn’t a team good enough to play finals. It’s been a dramatic and ugly fall from a side that looked to have the world at its feet earlier this season, but the way these Saints are playing is just so lifeless that it’s impossible to see them forcing their way in.

As for the Dogs, they forestall judgement by another week. Naughton will be back to face Melbourne under the roof again, and Steven May can hardly take more intercept marks than Wilkie.

But the Dees aren’t likely to be as wasteful in front of the big sticks, as outclassed through the middle, and as uninspired with their ball movement as the Saints were tonight. Frankly, not many teams could be.