SAINTS BURN

Coach laments wasted season

ST KILDA coach Alan Richardson says this season “will burn in our guts” and concedes the Saints are unlikely to pull off a finals miracle next weekend.

The Saints chalked up their 11th win of the season with a 49-point win over North Melbourne yesterday but remain only a slim chance of making the eight.

Richardson’s men need to topple Richmond and rely on Essendon losing to Fremantle and the Western Bulldogs going down to Hawthorn to pinch a finals berth.

Richardson said his players should be upset that they probably won’t be involved in September after surging at one stage to 9-6.

“We are disappointed that we still don’t have control (of our finals destiny) and ultimately if we don’t make it I would be disappointed if our group weren’t disappointed,” Richardson said.

“And that it doesn’t, in turn, drive our blokes — not so much on their break, but when they get back we have got to make sure we give ourselves opportunity going forward.”

Richardson said it was important the team “lived up to its end of the bargain” yesterday, especially for the retiring Nick Riewoldt.

The future Hall of famer was chaired off through a guard of honour from both teams and is expected to sign off his outstanding career next week against Richmond at the MCG.

Richardson spent the whole game on the bench, he said, to ensure he could provide clear communication to his players, but will return to the box next week.

Carlisle will sweat the match review panel verdict of his two striking incidents where he appeared to make high contact with McDonald in a push and shove.

Vision of the Mountford incident wasn’t available late yesterday.

Richardson said Carlisle was almost pulled from the game after suffering tightness in the back in the warm-up.

“Hopefully he will be fine, he played a really good game, but with five minutes to go in the warm up he wasn’t going to play, he pulled up in our warm up really stiff in the back,” Richardson said.

“He had a strong game. It was after our initial warm up, I saw him lying on the ground and he was trying to stretch his back.

“It wasn’t freeing up so doctors got a hold of him and did a fair bit of work on him.”