There are plenty of talking points after Round 22 of the AFL season, one of the biggest being the fate and judgement of St Kilda's season following a deflating loss to Carlton, leaving the Saints' finals hopes in serious peril.
Let's get to this week's overreactions column, where we judge the biggest takeaways as legitimate or irrational.
The Saints' season is a failure if they don't somehow make finals
After Sunday night's deflating loss to fellow wildcard-chaser Carlton, St Kilda's season is on the brink. Currently 11th on the ladder, two games (but with a better percentage) behind the Blues with two games to play, the Saints now have to win their final two games, and hope the red-hot Blues drop one of their clashes with the Bulldogs or Fremantle in the final two weeks of the year.
Now four years into the Ross Lyon tenure, the Saints went all in on big improvement in 2026, splashing the cash last offseason to lock in star midfielder Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera and lure big names Tom De Koning, Sam Flanders, and Jack Silvagni to the club.
After finishing 12th in 2025 with nine wins, the Saints are currently 11th with nine wins and two games to come (against Richmond and Gold Coast). While a September berth is still a possibility, it's now quite unlikely.
Is it enough improvement? Should the season be judged a fail if they don't make a wildcard?
Verdict: Not an overreaction
At the start of the year, in our 'pass marks' column, we said: "The Saints will want to show significant improvement on last year, play an exciting brand of football, and, most importantly, finish in the top half of the ladder."
How do you judge significant improvement? Wins? Stats? By making finals? By any metric, so far St Kilda hasn't significantly improved enough (as a whole) to declare the season a success. The club spent millions of dollars in the offseason to improve its best 23, yet after 23 rounds of footy, that improvement amounts to one spot on the ladder - and the Saints are still outside an expanded top 10.
Injuries? Sure, the Saints have been without Max King for just about the whole season, Jack Sinclair was a big loss when he hurt his calf, and Flanders was having a good year until he went down, and Rowan Marshall and TDK have had interrupted years among others.
But injuries affect just about every team. Like King at the Saints, the Bulldogs have been without Sam Darcy for most of the season, but have secured a spot in September. Don't get me wrong, you plan your season around the availability of your best players. But being blunt, King's availability (through no fault of his own) had been nearly non-existent for 24 months and shaky for four years.
As for the stats? Well, they've improved, but not to a level which can allow them to contend with the best.
The football public and St Kilda fans expected a lot more this year. If the finals format remained a top eight, the Saints would have fallen well short. Even with the extended 'top 10', their fate is just about out of their hands.
You can sympathise with the club and acknowledge that things didn't go right on some fronts, but there should rightly be huge pressure on St Kilda next year to make finals comfortably and make that 'significant improvement' given the time and money invested into the playing group.
It'll also be Ross Lyon's fifth year in charge, and with just one finals appearance (and a loss at that) under his belt so far, you have to wonder what his future holds if the Saints can't feature in September next year.
-- Matt Walsh
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