At a glance:

• Brett Ratten has encouraged his players to recognise Bradley Hill's efforts to work into space.
• Hill had seven touches against the Cats on Monday night.
• Ratten says the Saints need to strike the right balance as their midfield chemistry continues to grow.

Brett Ratten has encouraged his players to recognise and reward Bradley Hill’s efforts to get in the clear off the back of Monday’s loss to Geelong.

Hill closed out his evening against the Cats with seven disposals – his smallest tally at the club – and did not register a touch in the final term.

But the senior coach has come to Hill’s defence, saying that although the midfield group still requires more game-time to fully gel, the Saints need to take advantage of the opportunities he creates.

“When he’s out in the open and got five, 10, 20 metres on his opponent, maybe (we should) give him the ball,” Ratten said post-match.

“There’s times there where he should get the ball and we scratch our heads saying, ‘why won’t we give it to him?’.

“I think he worked to some good areas of the ground and we didn’t give him the footy, so I think we played a part in that, and then maybe in the third quarter it went a bit over the top and we tried to give it to him all the time.”

The Catch-22 situation has seen Hill average 15 disposals per game this season – with reduced quarters in effect – compared to 24 during his first year as a Docker in 2017.

Irrespective of his reduced numbers on the stats sheet, his gut-busting running has him charting in the top-three for St Kilda’s uncontested possessions (128) behind Jack Billings (148) and Jack Steele (131).

The answer isn’t just to pass it off to Hill, but Ratten says his young side needs to strike the right balance as their midfield chemistry continues to develop.

“He’s trying to find the connection with the group and still growing that, but there are times there where he should just get the footy and he didn’t get it,” Ratten said.

“He’s working extremely hard and the connection piece we’ll just keep pushing, but I think we can give him the ball a little bit more, especially the obvious ones when he’s completely out.

“We’ve got to give it to him, so we’ll keep working on that.”