ST KILDA made unwanted history on Saturday afternoon, recording its lowest ever score and only troubling the goal umpire in the final 46 seconds of its loss to the Western Bulldogs.
Its 0.1 (1) is the equal-lowest score in AFLW history, and the lowest score kicked by any side since round 10, 2022, S7.
BULLDOGS v SAINTS Full match coverage and stats
Head coach Nick Dal Santo pointed to the conditions, youth, inexperience, a short break heading into the match, and recent travel as reasons behind the poor performance.
"We've got a very young group, we've got an extensive injury list which we're aware of… That's not how we planned on today going," Dal Santo said post-match.
"We're aware that we had a challenge of coming back from the Gold Coast last week. Six-day break, (the) Dogs had two extra days to recover, didn't travel, and then we travelled to Ballarat on top of that. So, there were some other added layers to it. I thought we looked a little bit tired today, but maybe rightly so when we had two days less and had to travel twice."
A somewhat positive turn last week against the Suns, in which the club kicked its third-highest score of the season, was dashed on the Mars Stadium deck. The Saints are now the only winless team remaining in the AFLW this season, with a meagre percentage of 37.2.
"I wouldn't isolate just today because you touched on last week. So, if you want to isolate a game, I think that's risky. I think you need to get a greater body of work. I think there's areas that we've been challenged with this year that we haven't experienced in previous years, and injuries is a simple one for you guys to identify," Dal Santo told journalists.
"But there's things that are happening during the week which a really promising. The ownership, the willingness to get to work, to stay positive, to trying to find areas to identify to get better at, and it didn't translate today. That's just the facts. We didn't see that today for a couple of hours, but I think it's a bigger journey than just two hours."
In 2026 St Kilda has suffered its greatest ever loss – a 92-point deficit to North Melbourne in round four – and it's second-greatest ever loss – 85 points to Geelong in round two.
It has lost its opening eight games by an average of 39 points.
For the Bulldogs, despite the scrappy nature of the contest, coach Tam Hyett was pleased that they've snagged a sixth win for the year, keeping them in touch with the top six heading into the final month of the season.
"It's a nice one to bank. I don't know whether we'll watch it back, it wasn't pretty, it'll be a pretty tough review, but they're the wins that you've got to back, and the conditions were pretty tough," Hyett said.
The disappointing part of the game for Hyett was her side's inability to be ruthless on the scoreboard, finishing with just three goals from 16 scores and 40 inside 50s.
"I thought fundamentals probably weren't great today. I thought some of our options we probably needed to thin it out a little bit more inside 50 and give our keys a greater opportunity to impact, but yeah, that's something we'll go to work on," Hyett said.
"We spoke about getting the ball in quick, and probably sometimes we chose the wrong way to get the ball in… we didn't capitalise on our work, and that comes down to some of the decisions that we made with ball in hand."
