SINCE producing a huge upset over Adelaide in Round 1, Euro-Yroke (St Kilda) has struggled to produce consistent, four-quarter football, suffering three consecutive losses across the first month of the 2025 AFL Women’s season. The most recent came in the form of a 23-point loss to the Hawks in Cairns where the Saints did not kick their first goal until the 12th minute mark of the fourth term.

“It was disappointing,” a frustrated Nick Dal Santo said. “We came up here with a goal in mind to play a really solid brand of football and to give maximum effort and we felt like we did that relatively well, we would have been right in the contest.

“Credit to Hawthorn, they’re a very good football team and we knew that coming in. A lot of the things we prepped for they ultimately did and got on top in a couple of key areas.”

The biggest issue for the Saints was at the coalface, with the Hawks winning the contested possession count 126-97 despite Euro-Yroke winning the overall clearances (26-19). The minus-29 differential was eerily similar to its Rounds 2 and 3 losses to Melbourne and West Coast, with the same statistic being minus-31 and minus-37 respectively.

“The game’s really difficult when you’re getting smacked in that particular area,” Dal Santo said. “It’s now been a few weeks in a row where we’ve lost that particular stat and majority through the midfield so we’ll have to have a look at that next week and for the remainder of the year.”

Dal Santo said the side felt confident making the trip to Far North Queensland and though he could see some improvements, ultimately it was a case of déjà vu for the Saints as they took more than an hour to put the first score on the board which made it five straight quarters without a goal following on from the fade out against West Coast in Round 3.

“We’re just disappointed, we thought we’d worked through a few things and we’d improved in a couple of areas, which we probably did tonight,” the coach said. “I thought we started the game well but once again really struggled to score and we are a team that is trying to score and we don’t want to kick a couple really late, we’d love to be able to be more consistent throughout the course of the game and get right in amongst and give ourselves a chance to win late so we are disappointed in that part.”

Euro-Yroke also suffered a trio of injuries to Charlotte Simpson, Ella Friend and J’Noemi Anderson which “ultimately didn’t help” in trying to stick with the Hawks, though the spirit to kick a couple of late goals when down rotations was a positive out of the game.

“Now that’s not an excuse (the injuries) it’s just an explanation about why we looked I thought extra fatigued particularly in that last quarter,” Dal Santo said. “I thought a couple of girls that played out the last 20-odd minutes had to dig in. “That was more out of necessity than anything outside of that. It was nice kicking a couple of goals late, but as I touched on it was far too little, too late.”

St Kilda will lick its wounds and prepare for Essendon next Sunday with the Bombers coming off their first loss of the season against Geelong and will look to bounce back. For Dal Santo, the week was about getting “back to basics” and returning to the form that saw the Saints upset the Crows in Round 1.

“First of all we get the eight-day break so we’ll absolutely utilise the opportunity to recover and get a couple of extra days which we haven’t had previously, and I thought coming up here was really good time to be able to spend some time together and connect, all those sort of things,” Dal Santo said.

“We’ve got a couple of key areas that we have to tidy up on. Doesn’t have to be overcomplicated, we have to get back to basics and do the basics really well and give ourselves a chance to be successful next week.”