After slotting his third goal of the contest to bring the margin back to 12-points, the game was well and truly up for grabs.<\/p>\n
But then the 23-year-old was seen running from the ground and onto the bench. The call left Channel 7\u2019s Brian Taylor seething.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy would you take him off? And he\u2019s asking the same question \u2014 why?\u201d Brian Taylor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is one of the most bizarre things I\u2019ve ever seen. Time is running out!<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no explanation. He\u2019s not even puffing. He\u2019s ready to go, he\u2019s going to rip the game to bits! Get him out there!\u201d<\/p>\n
Even the Saints star couldn\u2019t quite believe the decision. But to make matters even worse, he remained parked on the sidelines for six minutes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After finally getting back out onto the field, time ran out for the Saints as they fell to their second straight loss to start the season.<\/p>\n
During his post-game press conference, Lyon was asked why the star player was left on the bench for an extended period of time.<\/p>\n
His response was initially blunt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019re focusing on that,\u201d Lyon uttered under his breath.<\/p>\n
Lyon then spent the next minute plus talking about the entirety of Wanganeen-Milera\u2019s game instead of answering why he spent so long off the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really simple \u2013 (Wanganeen-Milera) had a licence to go anywhere. He was getting tagged, so you just put (pressure) on a tag and you open up your forward line,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018mate, you can go and take a kick-in, you can go behind the ball, you can go to the stoppage or you can go (to the bench)\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you\u2019ve got to let them drive the car \u2026 but it\u2019s a steep learning curve. We\u2019re not a proven top-four team or finalist, and with a lot of experience to just edge him on a little bit better than we are.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he fought \u2026 I\u2019ll take three goals from him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watch the Saints coach avoid the question in the video player above<\/p>\n
Lyon\u2019s bizarre response to being asked a questioned countless fans wanted to get to the bottom of went down like a lead balloon with fans.<\/p>\n
Sports reporter Trent Masenhelder wrote on X: \u201cDeflection 101. A poor response from a perfectly reasonable question.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comm Games medalist Barrie Lester wrote: \u201cHave you ever heard so much dribble.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third wrote: \u201cNever ever takes accountability, avoided the question and put the onus on nas saying he effectively chose to stay in the goalsquare \u2026 so why bring him off? clocks ticking on Ross.\u201d<\/p>\n
A fourth added: \u201cRoss Lyon has been out coached in his first two games. The team has gone backwards. Lyon has always made excuses and lacked accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just fans who were lashing out at the Saints with Kane Cornes taking a flamethrower to the club over the inexcusable mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cNAS spending 13 mins of the last quarter resting in the goalsquare, kicking a goal with 11 mins to go, then coming off for 6.20, will be hard to beat as the dumbest move this season,\u201d Cornes wrote on X.<\/p>\n
Collingwood great Scott Pendlebury said the baffling call wouldn\u2019t happen again if the club could rewind time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if St Kilda had their time again they would have said if you need a break, just stay in the forward line, don\u2019t worry about playing too much defence until you\u2019ve got the wind back and then get after it again, because six minutes is a long time for one of your key players to be off in such a clutch period of the game,\u201d Pendlebury said.<\/p>\n
The Saints will have a chance to capture their first win of the season when they travel to Sydney next weekend for a clash against the GWS Giants on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has been torn to shreds over his bizarre response to a journalist\u2019s question…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-542764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}