ST KILDA coach Alan Richardson says the Saints must embrace the chance to finish their season on a high next week against West Coast, after slumping to a horrible 97-point loss to the Sydney Swans on Sunday.
Richardson said the Saints were "outplayed" for four quarters, and then made matters worse by giving up after half-time.
The second-half surrender was a "recipe for an ugly scoreboard", which was exactly what happened as the Saints failed to score a goal in the last quarter and fell to their worst loss for the season.
Five talking points: St Kilda v Sydney Swans
The only positive for Richardson was the fact his team, which has won hearts this season for its exciting brand of football and never-say-die attitude, has a chance to atone for the performance next week against the Eagles.
"It's a challenge and one we need to embrace," Richardson said.
"We have six days, we'll get together as a group and fly and we need to make sure we're much more competitive and much stronger and make sure we've got a bit more fight.
"We'll review [the game] in real detail tomorrow and Tuesday, and the good thing is we get the opportunity to respond against a really good footy team.
"We get the opportunity to go away as a group and spend some time together and do something about today."
The players met behind closed doors for a lengthy period after the game to pay tribute to retiring veteran Adam Schneider, who was the Saints' only multiple goalkicker with two.
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Richardson said they simply "didn't cope" with the Swans' pressure, but it was a cop-out to blame a let down from last Saturday night's thrilling draw against Geelong.
"That's weak if that's the case. Footy's hard," he said.
"We had the opportunity to win a game of footy last week and we didn't do that, we were pretty strong and pretty competitive for the early parts of the game but after half-time we fell away.
"We weren't able to match Sydney's intensity, their run, way too often they got forwards isolated against our defenders and we weren't able to get that."
The Saints made 50 entries into their forward arc but could only translate that to four goals, with Heath Grundy and Ted Richards making life tough for their forwards.
Grundy played mainly on Tom Hickey, who was subbed out in the third quarter after two disposals, while Richards had a variety of opponents including Nick Riewoldt.
Josh Bruce was held to six disposals by Dane Rampe and goalless for the first time this season, which saw Riewoldt pulled back from a preferred role on the wing to help out in attack.
But nothing worked as the Saints slumped to a lacklustre loss that Richardson didn't see coming.
"We were trying to get 'Rooey' up the ground and in the end we had to get him forward a bit more and he looked a bit more dangerous," he said.
"But none of our forwards were able to get off their man.
"I was really positive coming into today. I was really positive with respect to the way we trained, our preparation was as strong as I'd seen it.
"There's some things that our guys have identified that are heading in the right direction, and coupled with the way we trained I thought we'd be pretty strong tonight so that's disappointing."
