Two genuine premiership contenders launch
the AFL season proper tonight as last year’s runner-up, West Coast, hosts
St Kilda.

The AFL has been so concerned
by the lack of pre-season hype due to the Commonwealth Games vacuum that
it launched some hastily-made advertisements to whip up excitement. There was
no need. Eight games between now and Sunday will focus fans’ attention like nothing
else.

Tonight’s game is a brilliant match-up to
kick things off, if nothing else because there’s plenty of humour for
opposition fans in watching St Kilda pretend it doesn’t matter if they happen
to lose – and of the endless newspaper tipsters, 39 of 49 “experts” tipped the
Eagles, while the official odds had West Coast as a strong favourite at home.

The fact is that 2006 is the most important
season for St Kilda in a long time. It’s become fashionable in football circles
to talk about the “window of opportunity” for teams to win a premiership –
years when a squad has the right mix of experience, talent, leadership, youth,
balance across the park, and so on, to go all the way.

St Kilda’s window has been open for the
past two seasons and while the team will no doubt try to deflect the pressure,
2006 could be the last chance for a flag before that window starts to close.

The Saints boast a squad that other teams
can only dream about, the result of a sustained period of true St Kilda
underachievement in the late 90s/early 00s that delivered a stream of top draft
picks, including Nick Riewoldt, Justin Koschitzke, Luke Ball and Nick Dal
Santo.

Now they need to deliver. For all the youth
and talent oozing out of Moorabbin, there are a few foundations of the team
that are ageing fast. Andrew Thompson, Robert Harvey and Justin Peckett, for
starters, must think that this is their last shot at a premiership while
Stephen Powell, Max Hudghton, Aaron Hamill and Fraser Gehrig are all floating
around the 30-year-old mark.

Thomas has bucked a lot of conventions in
his time as a coach, including rotating the captaincy and introducing other
methods that had the footy world scratching collective heads. You get the sense that this is the season
that will make or break the reputation of him and his team, starting tonight.