St Kilda backman Nathan Brown says he and fellow new inclusion Jake Carlisle have worked hard on fitting into the Saints' defence this pre-season, learning each defender's style to enable them to fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Despite the Saints rising from six wins in 2015 to double that mark last year, the club was still ranked 13^th for points against (92.8 points per game) and will be hoping the addition of Brown and Carlisle will help improve that facet of the game.

Having played an integral role in Collingwood’s 2010 premiership, Brown has seen how a premier defence operates and is adamant the most important part of a backline is the cohesiveness of the unit, not the individuals that play down there.

“Like any backline, they’ve got to play well together, gel and mix – they don’t have to be superstars they’ve just got to play as a back six or seven unit,” Brown said at a press conference on Wednesday.

“That’s what we’ve worked on really hard this pre-season, just getting to know everyone’s game style, particularly myself and Jake; new players coming into the system, we’ve worked really hard on getting that gel amongst the guys.”

After St Kilda missed out on playing in September last year due to an inferior percentage to North Melbourne, Brown says the Saints are determined to return to finals football.

“We missed out on finals on percentage last year and we lost a couple of close games that we could have easily won,” Brown said.

“We want to play finals this year, as every single team does. It's going to be hard and we're going to be up for it.”

And given St Kilda’s second last appearance in a final came in the 2010 Grand Final replay, where Brown was stationed on Nick Riewoldt and helped break red, white and black hearts, the new Saint admits it has been raised by some of his new teammates, but he is now focused on helping the Saints and himself to a second premiership.

“It has been brought up a few times, but I sort of play it down a bit,” Brown said.

“Obviously I’m very proud of that and have a lot of great memories of that, but I’m here at the Saints now and I really want to be part of a flag here at this club. I’m really excited for the future, but not forgetting the past.”