AFTER a few years of building down at Moorabbin, St Kilda captain Hannah Priest is looking ahead to the future.

Heading into 2024, the Saints’ skipper says she’d be “lying” if she said breaking the club’s finals duck wasn’t at the front of mind.

“The talk is definitely process and system, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we were really keen to make finals and have our first [finals series],” Priest said. “We just missed out on the finals last season, just right in that last round, so we’re really looking forward to making that one of our goals for the season.”

Priest also agreed that international expectations had changed a little bit at RSEA Park from 2023 to 2024.

“Over the past couple of years we’ve been focusing on being a young side and building, but we’re not that anymore,” she said. “We’re a more mature side so we need to be able to have higher expectations on ourselves and make sure that we can follow through with what we say we’re going to do.”

Reflecting on 2023, Priest noted that the Saints had a “slow start”, but rallied and recovered well as the campaign wore on.

“After Round 3 we got moving, so it was really awesome to win six of our last seven games,” she said. “We’re just going to make sure we capitalise on that momentum of last season, and we’ve been able to do that through our preseason so we’re really looking forward to Round 1.”

St Kilda’s practice matches yielded one win and won loss, and Priest said that she and her teammates learned a lot from either hitout. She also noted that their two opponents  – North Melbourne and West Coast – proved useful as measuring sticks for sides with differing experience levels.

“It’s good to just sort of see where we sit in the competition and it was good to practice a lot of what we’ve been working on the pre season as well,” she said.

When asked about which player – new or old – that fans should keep an eye on this season, after some deliberation, Priest settled on draftee Charlotte Simpson.

“She is a father-daughter and she’s a contested bull,” she said. “We’re keen for her to crack in and have a go there.”