ST KILDA has become timid and gone away from the attacking style of football that had them touted as finals contenders, according to coach Alan Richardson.

The Saints (5-6) were blown off the park in the first half on their way to a 57-point loss to the Crows at Adelaide Oval on Friday night. 

Full match coverage and stats

"At times we looked like a rabbit in the spotlight," Richardson said.

"We've just become a conservative, easy to defend, easy to score against footy team.

"That's what we need to fix and the other stuff will look after itself."

Five talking points: Adelaide v St Kilda

After three straight defeats, the Saints are in danger of regressing after looking like they were on an upward curve following a 12-10 season last year.

"We're not thinking about making the finals or playing finals at all, we're thinking about fixing our footy up," Richardson said.

"We've had three weeks where we've been disappointing.

"Our focus is on our play, getting a strong contribution from 22 blokes, making sure we get the right guys that are going to play the right way for four quarters.

"At the moment, we just don't have that.

"But more importantly, getting back to the way we want to play, and we've just dropped away from that.

"Our response will need to be a holistic one.

"There's not a lot going the way we want at the minute, so we've got a lot of work to do."

The Saints are banking on regaining veteran Nick Riewoldt from a lingering knee injury for next Friday night's crunch clash against North Melbourne.

"We were hopeful this week, he didn't quite get there," Richardson said.

"By all reports he's trained pretty strongly. 

"We'd like to have Nick back in, but a large percentage of this group will need to lift and improve if we're to get back winning games of footy."

Richardson is unlikely to swing the axe, preferring instead to keep faith with the majority of his players.

He made special mention of the performance of forward Josh Bruce, who booted four of the Saints' seven goals in his first game back after a spell in the VFL.

"I thought he was exceptional in front of the ball, it would've been a tough night and Adelaide's defence was really strong," Richardson said.

"Philosophically, I'm a coach that backs the group in.

"I don't know if we were a little bit sloppy coming off the bye, we were really positive last year off the bye against Geelong.

"We got some positive response out of some selection change.

"That's something that we'll need to look at as a coaching group."

Defender Jake Carlisle received a "pretty bad" cork to the back of his hamstring and will be assessed.