MILESTONE marvel Stephen Milne believes St Kilda could storm back into premiership contention if it continues the barnstorming form that took it to a 71-point demolition of Essendon on Saturday night.
Buoyed by his team's surprisingly easy win over the Bombers in his 250th game, and that of Carlton over Collingwood on Friday night, Milne hopes the Saints' stunning performance wasn't a one-off.
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"After last night's result and tonight's result, it's such an even competition, and if we can keep playing that way the sky's the limit," he said.
"We've got to bring that every week. That's the standard we set. We don’t want to go up and down; we want to start getting, two, three, four wins in a row."
In any case, it appears Milne will have a big say in the Saints' destiny.
Teammate Justin Koschitzke revealed that Milne addressed his team before they took the field against the Bombers.
"All he wanted was a great team effort, and we gave him that," Koschitzke told AFL.com.au. "He clearly didn’t want the focus to be on him."
But it was, courtesy of Milne's heroics.
The irrepressible 32-year-old was the headline act against the Bombers, kicking five goals and setting up two others. As Koschitzke observed, it was "just vintage Milney".
Milne was at his opportunistic best in the third term when he slotted four of the Saints' six goals to virtually put the result beyond doubt.
In that frantic half-hour, Milne's majors were exclamation points - coming after 37 seconds (to extend the margin to 29 points), 3min 14sec (to extend the margin to 35 points), 26min 33sec (41 points) and 29min 11sec (47 points).
His only miss for the match came in the second term, when he uncharacteristically missed what he would regard as a regulation snap.
Watters was effusive in his praise of the veteran goalsneak.
"I reckon I was slightly misquoted today when they said I hated him when I was outside the club," he said. "I hated the way that he played because he was such a damaging player and I had to try and plan for him from a defensive point of view.
"I can understand why his coaches have loved him along the way. The way that he cares for his family, cares for his teammates, the passion he brings to our footy club training-wise and on game day, to do that over 250 games, the impact is immeasurable.
"He's a champ, there's no doubt about that."
Milne, who has kicked 32 goals this season (behind only skipper Nick Riewoldt, who has 38), described the milestone win as "a dream come true".
He said he had questioned his future earlier in the season but now he wanted to play as many games as possible.
"I was touch-and-go earlier in the year. I had a couple of good chats to Scotty but now I'm feeling pretty good," he said. "The old cliché, just take it one week at a time, but I'm pretty keen to go on."
Koschitzke said it would be a sad day when the livewire of the Saints' playing list finally retired.
"He's a very resilient bloke," he said. "How old is he, 38 or something? He seems to have been around forever. But I reckon he can keep going for a while yet because I haven't seen him miss a training session. If he can keep that continuity going and playing like he is, there's no reason for him to stop.
"No matter what's happening, he's always up and about, everyone bounces off him and you certainly notice when he's not around. But hopefully we'll have the little bloke around for a while yet."
