GLORY CALLING
Saints look to create their own slice of history
ST KILDA coach Brett Ratten has referenced famous finals history as he urged his players to believe they could create their own against Richmond on Friday night.
The Saints will seek to blunt the Tigers’ aerial dominance, with Ratten imploring his side to take away one of Richmond’ s greatest strengths.
Josh Battle and Jonathon Marsh last night returned to the Saints line-up, while Shane
Savage edged out Dylan Roberton as the Saints made three forced changes.
They replaced Jake Carlisle, Paddy Ryder and Ben Long from the team that beat the Western Bulldogs last week.
“The big thing for us is we’ ve spoken about everyone’ s opportunity,” Ratten said at the captain’ s run at Noosa Tiger son Thursday morning.
“With finals series, whether it’s your first final or your first game for the year, you look through history and it is littered with people who have come in and had an impact.
“All the way back to Dermott (Brereton who made his debut in the 1982 final), 1995 with Matty Hogg, last year with Marlion Pickett the Tigers.
“People are going to get these opportunities and it’s whether you can grab them with both hands and make the mos to fit.
“We’ve got players here who are going to try to do that.”
Ratten said the Saints had wrestled with the best defensive structure to counter a Tigers side that will be welcoming back key forward Tom Lynch.
“It was a talking point at match committee. Do we roll the dice with a smaller defence, or do we go with a bit more height and make sure that we can defend those players?” he said.
The Saints are making the three-hour trip from Noosa to the Gold Coast on Thursday and will stay the night to avoid any traffic snarls in Brisbane on match day.
“I think there’s some key st ats for( Richmond) that show their team defence … is really important for us to negate,” Ratten said.
“Their intercept marking, when they do that they’ re hard to stop.
“That builds their offensive game.
“And we have to take that away from them.