Saints’ unpromising start

With a disappointing season only minutes behind them, the Saints have made a spectacularly unpromising start to the off season with Ross Lyon’s announcement of four retirements.

 

Within hours, Steven Baker and Robert Eddy had revealed they had done no such thing.

 

After the disruptions of the photo scandal and the “seventeen-year-old schoolgirl” over last off-season, AussieRulesBlog would have thought that the club would be making every effort to present a quietly determined and united front to avoid distractions. Not so it seems, or the club’s communications advisers only paused to decide which of the club’s feet they would shoot next.

 

It will remain to be seen whether the exit of veteran Baker in obviously controversial circumstances will further tear the internal fabric of the playing group. Once rent, it is a (football) generational change exercise to repair.

 

Watching the final against the Swans, we took particular note of Malcolm Blight’s observations that Lyon had played one or two extra in defence during the first half, but structured up man on man after half time. The contrast between the Saints’ ineptitude in attack in the second quarter and threatening revival on the scoreboard in the third quarter was marked. Perhaps it’s not too big a call to suggest that the game was lost in the coaches’ box on game day.