St Kilda senior coach Ross Lyon has been left disappointed by his side's efforts in their scrappy four-point win over Richmond at the MCG on Saturday afternoon.
While St Kilda started strongly, winning a first quarter for just the seventh time this season, an array of skill errors and slow ball movement allowed Richmond to re-enter the forray and get ahead in the final term.
Lyon was underwhelmed by the Saints' delivery going inside 50, where they converted at an abysmal rate of 37.2%, even with the fact that they were missing several key talls, notably Mitchito Owens.
"It was a pretty ugly game, wasn't it? I'm pretty flat, I had to get myself up," Lyon said post-game.
"The emotion of [Steele's 200th] wasn't going to get it done.
"Richmond do hold their defence really well and they're a really strong intercept team for a whole bunch of different reasons going in, but there's a few different ways you can take care of it.
"You need to shift the ball against them... they hold up pretty well. We were conscious of that but then we lost our flow. You can shift the ball but get run and flow from behind and we didn't have any of that.
"There was no chaos of the game in our front half, it was very predictable and slow. Should have got onto it earlier... It was a pretty disappointing day."
While the Saints have now extended their win-streak to three games, with all three wins secured by a margin in the single digits, Lyon highlighted there's still a strong need for further development with the current playing list.
"It was ugly, horrible skills from both teams. I don't know [why], it was a beautiful day, perfect day.
"Our brand is a little bit all over the shop at the minute, we've just got to get more consistent. We've had too big of wild swings.
"Maybe that's because we're a young group, is it our coaching, is it our training? We'll have to keep diving in."
St Kilda will now turn their attention to Essendon in what presents as another winnable match, headlining a Friday night double-header for Round 23.
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