Koschitzke had a relatively quiet night in his 150th milestone game against Richmond on Friday night, finishing with 13 touches and two goals.
Speaking after the game, Lyon admitted frustration at constant criticism of the 27-year-old, who was famously taken with pick two at the 2000 AFL Draft.
“I wish I could control how much outside pressure people want to put on him. To be talking about draft picks 10 years later I think is fanciful and ridiculous. Even during the pre-season, the ridiculous amount of pressure he was put under about his NAB Cup performance is unfair,” Lyon said.
“Again, we can’t control it. I wish it would go away but it’s not and he is a part of the St Kilda family. He is a particular part of that core group that came together around 2000, 2001.
"They have a strong relationship and helped raise this club off its knees. We’re certainly not where we want to be yet. They love to respect him and that’s enough for me.”
Lyon said he was satisfied with Friday night’s 38-point defeat of Richmond, a team he said was a lot better than many in the football world gave it credit for.
“There is a bigger challenge there than what people may think based on their win-loss," he said.
"It’s nice to get out of the game with the four points and it’s nice to get it done on Friday night, we can watch everyone else play,” he said.
The Richmond midfield might have lost on the scoreboard but was a big winner in clearances, an area Lyon admitted his side would work on over their nine-day break before next week’s clash with Fremantle.
“We can talk about it all we like but we like to train them on the track, and all of a sudden we’re defending better and scoring better and we can continue that model of working. This week we’ll be working on clearance work and conversion. We will continue to try and improve,” he said.
At the mid-point of the season the Saints are sitting at 8-3, which Lyon said was an impressive effort considering Nick Riewoldt only played for two and a half of those games before going down with a hamstring injury.
“The first thing I’d say is we acknowledge that Nick went down. Everyone was looking to see how we responded and it has been up and down. We have certainly displayed some reasonable football character to end up in this position at the halfway mark,” he said.
“There is no doubt for the first few weeks we had to address what had occurred and what we needed to do. If you’re a one-player team you’re going nowhere.”
