St Kilda coach Scott Watters. Picture: George Salpigtidis Source: Herald Sun
ST KILDA coach Scott Watters denies emphatically his side is too old.
And despite having a raft of players with fewer than 25 games to their names, Watters also insists the Saints are not too inexperienced.
He does admit there is an age gap at Seaford and, in his second year as coach, Watters has the second-oldest list in the AFL at his disposal.
Six players on the Saints senior list are over 30 (the equal most of any club) and five players have played more than 200 games (also an AFL high).
But at the other end of the scale, the club has a lot of kids who are yet to play many games.
"Twenty-six of our 45 players are under 23 years of age and 60 per cent of our list have played less than 50 games of football," Watters said.
"So you've got to be careful, stats can be quite misleading.
"How do we handle it?
"We're really fortunate to have six or seven experienced players that are really good role models, terrific mentors.
"We're a better club for having those players involved so we really promote the interaction between those players and the younger group that, for many of them, have just arrived on the doorstep."
Three players in the 50 to 99-game bracket - David Armitage, Ben McEvoy and James Gwilt - are key to the team's development, Watters said. "Those sorts of players really need to stand up," he said.
"And we need to really quickly push through the likes of Ahmed Saad, Terry Milera, Arryn Siposs - some of those guys that played games and got a great taste of senior footy last year."
The Saints went from scoring an average of 84.3 points a game in 2011 to being the fourth highest-scoring team in the AFL last year with an average 106.7, but the defence lagged.
In 2011, the club conceded an average of 76.1 points a game, but in 2012 that blew out to 86.5.
Watters said the club was working on balance.
"You can't really train one without the other, offence and defence are the virtual yin and yang of the game," he said.
"It's not like all of a sudden you go out and say: 'We're just going to train defensively'.
"Your ball movement sets up your defence and the quality of your defence impacts on your ability to provide good offence, so you're always training both."
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