St Kilda Coach Alan Richardson believes the 'pass mark' for his side this season will be improving on last year’s form, not simply whether the Saints play finals or not.
In his third year at the helm, St Kilda won more games than they lost for the first time since 2012, finishing with 12 wins to narrowly miss out on playing in the finals due to percentage.
Richardson admits that the gap between ninth and featuring in the last month of the season isn’t much, but won’t just happen if St Kilda doesn’t become a more consistent force in 2017.
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“Improving is the pass mark and when you finish with 12 wins and 10 losses and you miss out by percentage there’s not too much of a gap to make up for us,” Richardson told reporters at his pre-game press conference on Thursday morning.
“But if we don’t become more consistent, if we don’t bridge that gap between our best and our worst we won’t play finals, we’ll get what we deserve.
“Our guys are fit, we’ve got really good numbers on the training track, we’ve got some headaches at match committee and that’s healthy.
“We’ve got some blokes in good form, we think our team’s in good form, albeit it’s JLT form, and we’re looking forward to Saturday.”
St Kilda may not have lost against Melbourne since the elimination final in 2006, but Richardson believes the 14-game winning streak won’t help his side at Etihad Stadium.
“I would have no idea, really. Here’s what I know: our players have been focusing on becoming a better footy team,” Richardson said.
“We like our best footy, we think it’s been really positive. It almost got us to where we want to be and that’s to play finals. So our focus has been making sure we improve or grow.
“We know that Melbourne’s will be exactly the same given that they were in a fairly similar situation to us last year, played some really good footy, would want to improve and grow.
“So we’re up against a really hungry, desperate opposition keen for a win and we’re exactly the same.”
