AFL 2024 round five LIVE updates: GWS Giants, St Kilda Saints clash kicks off four-game Super Saturday

Brent Daniels has booted the first goal of the day for the Giants who have had the best of the possession battle in the opening minutes.

He took a handball from Toby Bedford and kicked the goal, Bedford was cleaned up after his pass.

It’s been willing early but Giants are on top.

GWS 8, Saints 0 with 16 mins to go in Q1.

No late changes. James Peatling (Giants) and Hugo Garcia (Saints) are the subs.

St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has urged his side to spread out the Giants in Canberra today.

“We need to spread them and historically, if you spread them and test their team defence, there could be some opportunities there,” Lyon told Fox Footy.

He said first-gamer Hugo Garcia would bring plenty of run to the side.

“He is a hard contest-to-contest runner who has speed and endurance and will do everything for the team,” Lyon said.

GWS coach Adam Kinglsey says his high-flying side can still add killer instinct to their game as they continue to push themselves into the competition’s ‘elite’ category.

Sitting pretty atop the AFL ladder after four straight wins, the Giants face St Kilda at Manuka Oval on Saturday seeking the first 5-0 season start in the club’s history.

Kingsley admitted the momentum the winning run had generated was being felt through the club, but said the season still had a long way to go.

“We review each game and we try and treat each game in isolation, but the more we win, the more confidence we get within the things we’re doing, and certainly individual confidence goes along with that,” he said.

“But the reality is it’s a long season, we’ve still got five months of footy left, and we’re going to lose some games along the way.

“It’ll be how we deal with that, how we review and how we learn from it and how we perform the following weeks from those losses.”

The Giants tackle the Saints with an unchanged side from that which ground out a 28-point win against Gold Coast last weekend. It’s the second straight week that Kinglsey hasn’t tweaked his settled squad.

St Kilda will debut Hugo Garcia and will have Marcus Windhager back from suspension, with coach Ross Lyon dropping Angus Hastie and Zak Jones.

The Saints are yet to truly find their feet in 2024, having fallen over the line to beat Richmond by seven points last time out, a week after a poor loss to Essendon.

“Ross Lyon-coached teams are always really difficult to play against,” Kingsley said.

“They’ll be really strong defensively and we know we’re going to have to execute our offense at a really high level to score.

“We’ve been challenged at different times, certainly last week against the Suns was quite challenging in different phases and certainly St Kilda this week are elite in a couple of different areas.”

For the Canberrans in attendance on Saturday, Kingsley predicted an “inspirational” head-to-head battle between GWS’s Tom Green and St Kilda’s Jack Steele, with the locally-grown pair bringing strong form to Manuka Oval.

“(Steele is) a fantastic player, a fantastic leader of their club and that will be two really competitive guys going at it and it’s gonna be great to watch,” he said.

“We’ve seen (Green) really do what he does at stoppage and he’s done that for a long period of time, but the impact he’s having in transition now is pretty significant for us.

“He’s able to hit the scoreboard and he certainly helps our defence through work rate.”

AAP

Shortly before the end of Essendon’s surprise – and surprisingly emphatic – win over the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium on Friday night, Bulldog Tom Liberatore collapsed as if shot in the middle on the arena, prompting Essendon midfielder Darcy Parish to signal to the bench in alarm.

Post-match, both Liberatore and Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge downplayed the incident, saying Liberatore was not concussed, but had twisted an ankle and it could not bear his weight. Hence, they say, the operatic tumble.

Momentarily, Liberatore personified the Bulldogs. In a match they needed to win to authenticate their dodgy finals bona fides, they put in an increasingly ragged performance and in the last quarter fell away completely, wilting under the pressure of an Essendon team who also confounded expectations by growing stronger as the match went on before bundling it up with a run of five goals in 10 minutes in the last quarter.

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G’day everyone and welcome to today’s AFL live blog. I’m Roy Ward and I’ll be tapping away from first bounce until the end of the last match.

First game is GWS Giants v St Kilda at 1.45pm followed by Carlton v Adelaide at 4.30pm and then we have two games at 7.30pm with Gold Coast hosting Hawthorn and Port Adelaide facing Fremantle. All times are AEST.

Enjoy the hours to come.