Four premiership points may have just evaded St Kilda on Saturday in Tasmania, but Saints Senior Coach Alan Richardson said the four-quarter effort against reigning premiers Hawthorn is the brand of football he wants his side to play.

An 11-point buffer early in the final stanza was slowly pulled back by the Hawks at Aurora Stadium, extending Hawthorn’s streak at the venue to 16th successive victories. Although, St Kilda wasn’t without its own chances late to pull off a stunning upset.

A disappointed Richardson told reporters in his post-mortem that his players were devastated by the three-point loss, particularly given the opportunities they wasted and handed over in the dying stages of Saturday’s game in Launceston.

“The group was as flat as I’ve seen them after a performance for some time,” Richardson told reporters following St Kilda’s narrow loss to Hawthorn on Saturday.

“When you give yourself such a strong opportunity with the way that they played, to end up not getting the result and to in many way shoot ourselves in the foot with the way we used the footy that’s disappointing.

“The reality is that the way that we want to play the game, the way that we want to attack the opposition defensively and look to go with our own ball movement was positive for four quarters in many ways against a really good footy team.”

For much of Saturday’s encounter, the Saints’ brave ball movement shone brightly as Richardson’s side looked to take the game on through the corridor against the 2013, 2014 and 2015 premiers, whose exquisite foot skills make sides pay for critical turnovers.

Although in the last quarter, when the game was on the line, St Kilda became a little more conservative with ball in hand, an area up until then where the Saints had been damaging through the likes of Shane Savage and Leigh Montagna, who took the game on in difficult conditions.

“We want to be bold from defence, we don’t want to just kick down the line,” Richardson said.

“The way Hawthorn defends makes it really challenging and they’re certainly looking for you to kick long to a contest, so they do that as well as any other team.

“So we wanted to be really positive with the way that we played with the ball in our hand. We wanted to go after our kicks, clearly there were facets of that that worked for us.

“On the whole our rebound was at 33 per cent, theirs was at 31 (per cent), but the last quarter it really hurt us, just the guys in front of the ball just weren’t working hard enough to give easy options. It’s something we need to continue to work on.”

St Kilda has an eight-day break between games, before facing Greater Western Sydney at Etihad Stadium on Sunday, who are 2-2 and coming off the biggest winning margin in their history after their 86-point victory over Port Adelaide on Sunday.

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