St Kilda will defeat Melbourne this Sunday provided it can answer coach Ross Lyon's call to toughen up, Saints captain Nick Riewoldt vowed on Wednesday.
Three days after his team-mates were labelled soft by Lyon following the 46-point drubbing by Brisbane, Riewoldt talked the talk at his press conference.
He acknowledged Lyon's criticism that the Saints, with the exception of Robert Harvey, Lenny Hayes and Luke Ball, were 'not tough enough consistently enough', saying 'clearly the evidence was there for everyone to see that we were soft'.
Riewoldt said Lyon, who replaced Grant Thomas as coach following the 2006 campaign, had the full support of the players and denied the Saints had been 'stifled' by the second-year coach and were no longer enjoying their football.
He said the players were '100 percent' behind Lyon's game plan, blaming the Saints' mediocre start to the season on the players' inability to execute roles asked of them by the coaching staff and their failure to adhere to team structure.
He refuted suggestions the club was in a rebuilding phase, claiming the Saints could still achieve its lofty pre-season aims of making the top four and possibly winning a premiership.
"Have those expectations changed? Well now we're in the position where we've got to start winning games, we can't talk about finals or what follows that until we're playing in them," said Riewoldt, whose team was a game and percentage out of the eight after nine rounds.
"Now it's about us winning games and fixing the things we've spoken about with how we approach the games and then later in the year hopefully we're in a position to talk about that."
And in a public show of confidence rarely seen in the modern era where players are guarded about what they say ahead of a game, Riewoldt vowed the Saints would defeat the bottom-placed Demons this Sunday at Telstra Dome.
"We're all very confident going into this week that if we rectify what we spoke about earlier, the hard and tough style of play that we'll win this week," he said.
He said that just as the club had approached last week's match against Brisbane as a season-defining contest, it would do so again for the clash with the Demons.
"There's a lot of pressure on the club but we're absolutely positive that if we can fix, and I'm sure we will, that when we fix what we've spoken about we'll come out on the weekend and we'll have a really strong win for our supporters," he said.
Despite not being excluded from Lyon's heavy criticism last weekend, Riewoldt was adamant the comments were not directed at him.
"I didn't hear those comments but I've spoken to Ross about how I went on the weekend personally," said Riewoldt, who returned figures of 13 disposals, eight marks and one goal against the Lions.
"He said obviously you didn't play up to your normal standard but your effort couldn't be questioned so I didn't take that as a personal offence."
"With respects to our trademarks as a playing group that's (effort) one thing we stand for very highly and that's one area I know I can tick off personally."