ST KILDA coach Ross Lyon has staunchly defended the club's approach to Max King after the Saints spearhead failed to complete his first AFL game in 757 days.

King left the field in the third quarter of St Kilda's 13.15 (93) to 8.14 (62) win due to hamstring tightness. 

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The 26-year-old will undergo scans, but wasn't spotted again - even in the team song - after being taken to the rooms.

After two games at VFL level earlier in the year, Lyon declared King had trained strongly in a four-week block to justify playing him on limited minutes against the Kangaroos.

"I don't even know what the outcome is, so how can it be an error before there's an outcome?" Lyon responded to repeated questions about King.

"But we stand by our decision to play (him). We have high-performance experts ... we have conditioning, we're really quite confident.

"Hindsight's 20-20, isn't it? You can't be timid souls sitting in the sidelines. We're in the arena making decisions."

Lyon laughed when asked for further detail on King's injury and his welfare, saying he had already answered it.

"It's about resilience and coming again," Lyon said.

"He's run down an AFL race, feels good, had a start, get a feel for how hard it is, and rehab a potential soft tissue injury.

"I haven't seen Max King; I was coaching, he wasn't in the rooms, he wasn't in the song.

"When we get the results, we'll update it. There's no angst.

"We've got to stand by the decision because we made it."

After taking command midway through the third quarter, North Melbourne were left reeling when Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera conjured three goals in quick succession, before a fourth in the final term buried the Kangaroos' finals hopes — the St Kilda superstar finishing with a career-high 46 disposals.

North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson said it wasn't the volume of possession that his team would lament, but the impact Wanganeen-Milera had in front of goal.

"The whole game plan is nearly set up around him," Clarkson said. 

"It wasn't so much the possessions that hurt us; it's the goals. That's why he's best on ground; he kicks four goals.

 "He's always going to get his touches because with the stand on the mark rule that's in play, he's running past, and every time he runs past, they give him the footy."

Wanganeen-Milera became the first player in AFL history to record 30+ disposals, 750+ metres gained and 3+ goals in the first three quarters of a game, while finishing with 1062 metres gained - more than half a kilometre greater than the game's next best, Saints' Darcy Wilson (489). 

"A lot of the cases they give him the footy in the wrong spots, and it actually hurts them," Clarkson said. 

"But four times he got the ball in the right spots and kicked goals, and that's what hurts us the most.

"End of the day, that's pretty much the margin." 

The Kangaroos also had an injury scare when Charlie Comben was taken to hospital after coughing up blood following a late hit to the chest, but Clarkson said doctors were confident the key defender hadn't suffered any internal damage.

"They're just taking him there for observation because he was just coughing up a little bit of blood," Clarkson said.

"It was a heavy hit, open to his chest area, but they seem to think he's going to be all right."