THE SAINTS take on Carlton tonight with the return of Monday night football to Etihad Stadium.

St Kilda’s 22-man squad has been confirmed for the clash with Luke Dunstan, Arryn Siposs, Josh Bruce and Cameron Shenton all set to line up against the Blues.

Senior coach Alan Richardson said after last week’s “incredibly disappointing” performance against Hawthorn, his men have been willing to train hard over the eight-day break.

“We had an eight day break… we ended up sticking with the decision that we made with clear heads and that was to give them a couple of days off and we trained strongly this week,” Richardson said.

“It gave them the opportunity to get a bit of work into the boys with some real focus areas with some of the learnings we got out of the Hawthorn game.”

St Kilda has won the past two games of the four Monday night fixtures played by the clubs and has enjoyed good form against the Blues in recent times, winning the past 12 of 17 encounters at Etihad Stadium.

With recent injury woes to the list, Richardson said putting the players through their paces on the training track this week was carefully considered.

“We didn’t want to lose anymore on the training track and but when you have a performance like that you need to take the risk and we needed to crack in and defend really strongly.”

“Certainly our inside defence is to be really strong with our tackling so we did a fair bit of work with that part of the game.”

FINAL ROUND 8 TEAM

B: Dempster, Gwilt, Webster
HB: Acres, Delaney, Newnes
C: Montagna, Hayes, Ray
HF: Steven, Riewoldt, Billings
F: Weller, Stanley, Schneider
Foll: Longer, Dunstan, Curren
Int: Siposs, Jones, Bruce, Shenton

In: Dunstan, Shenton, Bruce, Siposs
Out: Geary (elbow), Simpkin, Savage, Saunders

Emerg: Murdoch, Milera, Saunders