JUSTIN Koschitzke is a good chance to resume for St Kilda against North Melbourne, but key onballer Lenny Hayes is likely to miss with a leg injury according to running defender Sam Gilbert.

With the final team to be named on Thursday evening, Gilbert told saints.com.au that Hayes' hamstring was not serious but is likely to prevent him travelling to the Gold Coast to take on the Kangaroos on Saturday night.

"Lenny Hayes hurt his hamstring last week but it's not that bad ... he should be back after the bye", Gilbert said.

"And Kosi, he should be close this week. I'm not 100 per cent sure on Kos ... [but] he's not too far away."

Gilbert also refuted claims that St Kilda plays an unattractive brand of football, saying instead that the players were not executing coach Ross Lyon's game plan well enough.

"It was ugly because we missed a couple of easy targets," Gilbert said of last week's low-scoring win over Fremantle.

"The game style – if we played the way we should have, and hit a few more targets; there was a couple of turnovers in the backline when they (Fremantle) got goals – we might have won by even more.

"We know we've just got to put it together. We're nearly there – the effort was there last week – and now we've got to keep the effort and clean up the skills a bit."

The clash with the eighth placed Roos shapes as crunch time for the Saints, who are just half-a-game adrift in ninth.

While Gilbert is aware of the need to cover North's expanding range of goalscorers, he is not yet sure at what end of the field Lyon will use him.

"I still don't know if I'll be in the back line or the forward line.

"They've got a lot of small, quick forwards and a few talls … they're a really good side and we know what we're up against. We're going to give a lot of effort and see how we go."