Big Men the Difference for St Kilda

So the Saints have made the first Grand Final in 12 years and remain on track for a first premiership in more than four decades.

And they did it tough.

The Western Bulldogs threw everything they had at St Kilda for 120 minutes and one thing you can’t accuse the Dogs of is giving up. They won the possessions, they won the contested ball and they won the inside 50s by a huge margin of 56 to 40. The only area they lost was where it mattered – on the scoreboard.

Without a key forward to kick to teams simply will not win premierships. Look at every premiership team from the last 20 years. They’ve all had good to great full forwards.

They don’t have to be absolute superstars like Matthew Lloyd, Lance Franklin or Jonathon Brown – the Cats showed that in 2007.

But they have to at least force a contest and give you something to kick to – and for the two sides without a dominant key forward in those years in West Coast and Geelong, they at least had big bodies who could do that.

Ash Hansen, Quinten Lynch and even Andrew Embley could give you a target for West Coast and for the Cats it was Cameron Mooney and Nathan Ablett.

The Dogs have no-one. If they don’t go after Barry Hall it will be one of the more baffling decisions this year.

For the Saints, the biggest week of the footballing lives awaits, and they were certainly made to earn that right.

The tenacity of Lenny Hayes and the unrelenting work rate of Nick Reiwoldt were what saw them over the line.

Reiwoldt is in the top five players in the competition now, there’s no doubt about that. The only question over his game for me is his readiness to go to ground looking for free-kicks. He milked one off Brian Lake just after half time and looked forlornly at the umpires on a number of occasions. He’s too good for that – maybe that’s the most frustrating thing – he doesn’t have to resort to those tactics.

The atmosphere at the final siren was astonishing. There was a perceptive outpouring of emotion from the Saints fans around me. Hundreds stayed for 15 minutes, after the players had left the field, singing the song. They will certainly enjoy the week ahead and why not – they’ve earned it and on the balance of play this season they deserve to be Premiers.
But you don’t always get what you deserve on Grand Final day.