“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. It is something you have to deal with," he said.
"At the end of the day it’s a bit deflating but at the end of that game I don’t think there were too many boys who wanted to go another five or ten minutes."
Goddard said he saw some real improvement in the St Kilda side that lost to Collingwood a week earlier. The Saints kicked 6.16 against the Magpies but were far more accurate against Hawthorn, booting 14.3.
“The only measurement we lost was contested footy. It was more in our forward 50 and every other measurement we came out on top,” he said.
“It is a great improvement on last week and our clearance work probably has a bit of work to do out of the centre square but there is always room for improvement and you can always take positives out of tonight.”
Goddard said the embarrassment of the Collingwood game had stung the Saints and they made a conscious effort to bounce back strongly this week.
“We thought last week was a bit of an aberration, to be honest. We really let ourselves down. We talk about our training and our preparation probably wasn’t 100 per cent,” he said.
“It really reflected in our game and it was a hungry team that we came up against last week and it was similar this week. It is all about improving on last week and concentrating on our own game which we thought we did tonight but it wasn’t enough to get us over the line.”
Players from both sides slipped over numerous times on the Etihad Stadium surface and Goddard admitted to having some concern with the most talked-about turf in the AFL.
“It’s quite slippery, to be honest. I don’t think it’s getting any better. It’s fine to play on, it’s safe but it is probably not ideal,” he said.
“Even guys with screw-ins were slipping. It doesn’t really matter, the surface probably goes 10 cm down. The roots don’t go very deep and the top surface is pretty damp and wet so regardless of what footwear you do wear, it doesn’t really make a difference.”
