The Saints celebrate after Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera kicked a goal to defeat the Demons at Marvel Stadium in round 20, 2025. Picture: Getty Images

NASIAH Wanganeen-Milera almost didn’t play against Melbourne on Sunday afternoon.

Instead, he was the matchwinner in the biggest comeback after three-quarter time in AFL history.

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon awoke to four missed calls from the club doctor on Sunday morning, and expected the worst. What he learned was that his star player had a stye that was causing him some grief.

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“He said ‘Nas’ has come in, (we’ve) upped his antibiotics, given him an injection,” Lyon said.

“I mean, they can sound quite morbid at times, the doctors. So, then I just said ‘How’s Nas’, he’s pretty confident. Then I rang him, he goes ‘No, I’ll be right’. But I just said, if you’re not right, no pressure, we’ll tap you out.”

Wanganeen-Milera, thankfully, got up for the game and kicked two goals in the final minute of match play to pull off the 52-point turnaround and hand St Kilda its sixth win of the season.

“Obviously his last score was pretty special. (I) thought his first quarter was pretty good,” Lyon said.

“But there’s a lot of contributors.”

After tagging Melbourne star Kysaiah Pickett for the first three quarters, Marcus Windhager was able to throw off the shackles and play an attacking brand in the last quarter. It also opened the door for Max Hall to move on the ball to record seven disposals and four clearances in a crucial final-quarter performance.

Capping off the significant swing in momentum toward St Kilda was pure confusion at the very last centre bounce for Melbourne, resulting in a free kick handed to Saints ruck Rowan Marshall with eight seconds left on the timeclock.

Marshall was able to neatly kick the ball over to Wanganeen-Milera who was standing alone inside 50, and the rest was history.

The history-making victory is one that will fill the young Saints with confidence after a tough season.

“You get confidence from quarters and performances like that. So, our young players never gave up, and our leaders never gave up… and that’s how the brain works, right? There’s the dopamine release of the rewards that are automatic, like kicking goals,” Lyon said.

“So, the scoreboard gives you that natural enthusiasm, but you know, the deliberate brain can make choices to keep rewarding efforts that aren’t obvious to everybody. So, clearly out group did that, and in the end, they started to get that automatic reward, which, you saw it.

“We spoke about, you saw that with GWS didn’t you, after half time, that it just sort of builds and builds and it pops like a souffle.”

For Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin, the late free kick was simply the last nail in the coffin of a devastating final quarter performance from his side, that was sitting 46 points up at three-quarter-time.

“It’s a pretty simple process to get 6-6-6 done, you need to communicate, get organised, and we didn’t get that done,” Goodwin said.

“We had seven forwards and we had two wingers so, as I said, it’s a pretty simple process to get right.”

Goodwin is determined to get his side’s ruthless nature back, and return to the dominant team that won the 2021 premiership. Unfortunately, despite strong performances from Melbourne’s leaders across the first three quarters, panic set in when momentum was handed to St Kilda, and it just went from bad to worse.

“It’s a part of becoming a ruthless team I’m talking about (when addressing players). You know, there’s leadership, there’s ability to communicate in a way that gets people organised under pressure, and clearly at the moment, we were under a fair bit of pressure, we’d lost momentum in the game,” Goodwin said.

“We had goals getting kicked against us, we need to stay calm, get organised and execute what we need to get executed under the greatest head. And, clearly, when you’ve had seven or eight goals kicked against you in a row, you need to find a way to execute those things under pressure. And we didn’t do that well.

“So, we’ll learn from it, clearly, and grow from it. But it’s unacceptable at the same time.”