{"id":85030,"date":"2021-06-14T14:02:55","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T14:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=85030"},"modified":"2021-06-14T16:06:04","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T16:06:04","slug":"afl-greats-unload-on-saints-over-blame-and-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=85030","title":{"rendered":"AFL greats unload on Saints over 'blame' and 'excuses'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes<\/a> has ripped St Kilda<\/a> for its "blame" and "excuses" after another disappointing loss which all but ended its finals hopes for 2021.<\/p>\n

The Saints held a 36-point lead against a young Adelaide side in Round 13, before collapsing in the final quarter to go down courtesy of a last-minute goal to Crows youngster Riley Thilthorpe<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Cornes showed little sympathy when assessing the plight of St Kilda, urging for all aspects of the club to be reviewed, namely its "diabolical" injury management.<\/p>\n

"I'm just sick of the blame and the excuses out of St Kilda this year," he told Nine's Footy Classified<\/em>.<\/p>\n

"We've blamed the media, we've blamed the umpiring, we've blamed players not giving Brad Hill the ball. <\/p>\n

\"Riley<\/p>\n

"These are the things we would look at right now: the recruiting, their fitness and injury (management) has been diabolical and their last quarter was a testament to that against the youngest team in the comp, Adelaide. <\/p>\n

"Then you look at football, I can't remember a drop-off year on year like we've seen with St Kilda in a long, long time."<\/p>\n

Cornes showed a graphic which has seen St Kilda have an alarming year-on-year drop-off in several key statistics such as points for, scores per Inside 50 percentage and disposals per goal.<\/p>\n

"These are the number and they absolutely stare you in the face," he said.<\/p>\n

"We loved them last year and we loved the style of game. Did they do enough pre-season with the longer games? <\/p>\n

"Have oppositions worked out the small-forwards getting in over the back, because in every key category they've gone from top-eight, some top-four, to a bottom-four side. <\/p>\n

\"St<\/p>\n

"It's a mess and I think everything should be looked at."<\/p>\n

Essendon great Matthew Lloyd also backed up Cornes' point, adding that the manner of the Saints' losses were more worrying than the results alone.<\/p>\n

"I like Brett Ratten's honesty and the way he speaks, but he's spoken a lot about how they haven't adjusted well to a number of things in 2021, yet other teams have," he told Footy Classified<\/em>.<\/p>\n

"What worries me for St Kilda is the way they're losing. They were one of the stories of the year last year, everyone jumped on the ride of them winning a final and all those sorts of things.<\/p>\n

"They have losses of 75 points, 86 points, 54 points, 111, and the way that game swung on the weekend, you see that things aren't quite right at St Kilda."<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em>For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Port Adelaide great Kane Cornes has ripped St Kilda for its "blame" and "excuses" after another disappointing loss which all but ended its finals hopes […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85032,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85030\/revisions\/85032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}