ST KILDA coach Alan Richardson concedes the past two weeks have been disastrous but says it shouldn’t detract from big strides the Saints have made in 2015.

After a draw against Geelong in round 21, the Saints copped almighty beltings from the Sydney Swans (97 points) and West Coast (95 points) the following two weeks. 

It leaves St Kilda 13th on the ladder, unless Melbourne beats Greater Western Sydney on Sunday, with six wins, 15 losses and a draw.

“If I can park the past couple of weeks, there’s been some improvement. We reckon we’ve found some young players … we’ve been much more competitive with our pressure,” Richardson said.

“But what the last few weeks have shown us is that we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

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He said the rebuild at St Kilda was still in the early stages but the club understood what was ahead and where it sat.

“The reality is we’ve been pretty strong against the teams below us of which there’s not too many, about five; we’ve been competitive against those in and around us without winning with the exception of getting a draw against the Cats and a result against the Bulldogs,” Richardson said.

“But the gap between us and the top four, five or six teams has been significant and the past two weeks have probably exaggerated that really.”

Richardson was particularly disappointed by the second-half fadeout at Domain Stadium which saw them Saints concede 11.10 and kick just 1.1.

“We were incredibly disappointing in the contest (after half-time), we got smashed around the footy,” he said.

“They are a great footy team but … we just embarrassed ourselves in the second half and that takes nothing away from West Coast.

“Their pressure was just relentless, constant, aggressive, in our face, we just couldn’t get any sort of momentum going really.”

The experienced Richardson said it was hard to split the main contenders for this year’s flag.

“They are all really strong but that (against West Coast) was as frustrated as we’ve been in terms of being able to move the footy from the back to the front,” Richardson said.

“There’s a lot of talk about West Coast and how good they are with their team defence but some of their in-tight defence, we got through a couple of times, but we only scored four goals.

“Their ability to put pressure on and get in our face so quickly was incredibly impressive tonight.

“I don’t know where to rank them – they (the contenders) are all very strong.”