Malthouse accepted that the his side was outplayed by a better side on the night, but said after last week’s ‘steep dive’ the team is back onto the road –to-recovery after keeping pace with the Saints for much of the final three quarters.
It wasn’t the best of starts from the Pies despite Chris Tarrant’s early goal.
In a ten-minute patch midway through the first term the Saints kicked four straight as the Collingwood defence battled with the three-pronged attack of Justin Koschitzke, Fraser Gehrig and Aaron Hamill, while Stephen Milne was proving his usual menace around the packs.
Anthony Rocca kicked the Pies’ second in time-on but they were still some 26 points adrift after the first term.
Things quickly got worse and within ten minutes of the resumption Collingwood was 44 points down and looking down the barrel of a thumping.
But faced with a rampant St Kilda side which is yet to concede a game this year, the Pies stood up with Shane Woewodin and Rocca stemming the flow.
The former was winning plenty of ball out of the middle while the latter kicked two first-half goals and was giving a target for his hard-working onballers.
The Pies, facing a 39-point half-time deficit, played some of their best football of the year in the 18 minutes after the main break.
They kicked five goals in that period, including two to Chris Tarrant, who finished with four for the match.
The midfield was flowing, and Rocca and Tarrant were leading hard. Alan Didak even capped the quarter off with a huge speccy followed by a goal, and the margin was just 31 points at the final change.
But the start they had conceded the Saints meant that much of their efforts went unrewarded and when Gehrig kicked three goals in the first eight minutes of the final term, the Pies’ night was all but over.
Nevertheless they fought it right out with Malthouse seeing plenty to like in the performance, especially the efforts of young ruckman Guy Richards.
“Nineteen hit outs is probably as close as we’ve ever had to the opposition. Blake had 19 and Knoble 12, but I thought Guy did a terrific job.”
He also singled out Ben Johnson, who had 26 disposals and eight marks, for special praise.
“Ben Johnson, even though he is not young player, he is starting to develop into a player that can play in a multitude of positions,” he said.
Clearly positional flexibility is something that Malthouse wants to instil in his young players and he said that the only way to do that was through experience.
He expects players like Tristan Walker, Bo Nixon, Richard Cole, Dane Swan and Mark McGough would learn a lot from the defeat, while he was pleased overall with the efforts of his senior players, who he had implored during the week to lift their games.
“I thought in the main most of those blokes were pretty good,” he said.
“Some of the players, although they didn’t play full games of football even when they were on the ground, showed enough to indicate that if we put it all together, there will be a positive outcome.”
St Kilda: 6.3 10.7 15.10 21.12 (138)
Collingwood: 2.1 4.4 10.9 13.13 (91)
Goals: St Kilda: Gehrig 5, Milne 5, Guerra 4, Koschitzke 4, Hamill 2, Riewoldt
Collingwood: Tarrant 4, Rocca 3, Davis, Didak, Johnson, Licuria, McGough, O’Bree
Best: St Kilda: Milne, Koschitzke, Guerra, Dal Santo, Gehrig, Schwarze, Ball, Hamill, Jones
Collingwood: Woewodin, Johnson, Tarrant, Richards, Rocca, O’Bree
Injuries: Collingwood: None
St Kilda: Harvey (calf)
Changes: None
Reports: None
Umpires: Allen, Rowe, Woodcock
Crowd: 47,898 at Telstra Dome
