Surely the time has now come to ponder this question - is St Kilda really as good as its reputation suggests.
For years the Saints have had a list considered good enough to win a premiership and indeed it was only as recently as 2004 and 2005 that its team was considered better than Geelong - after both clubs burst from the wilderness simultaneously in 2004.
But while the Cats have gone from strength to strength since their finals failures of 2004 and 2005, the Saints' failures in the preliminary finals in those seasons increasingly look as if it was the club's best chance to end a premiership drought stretching back to 1966.
While Geelong ended its own premiership drought stretching back to 1963 last year and has now 25 of its past 26 matches, the Saints are struggling to keep pace with the top eight let alone the top four.
Increasingly it seems last year's mediocre season under then new coach Ross Lyon might be the norm in terms of the club's performance rather than the exception.
The Saints' escaped lightly in terms of scrutiny last year for their fall to ninth - the first time the club had missed the finals since 2003 - mainly because it was Lyon's first season in charge.
But now after six rounds of his second season in charge, there is little evidence the Saints have improved and with three wins and three losses - the latest a poor performance against Port Adelaide at AAMI Stadium - the Saints again find themselves outside the top eight.
Lyon insisted after Saturday night's poor performance - in which the team's lack of strikepower was again all too evident - that it was no time to panic.
Yet with Geelong, Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs all unbeaten after six rounds, the Saints are already well off the pace off the leading sides and history suggest teams that finish outside the top four have no hope of winning the premiership.
In fact the way the Saints are playing they will be lucky to even make the eight for the second successive season - which would be a savage indictment on a playing list which should be delivering much more and on Lyon, whose record right now looks pretty ordinary compared to the man he replaced in Grant Thomas.
Under Thomas the Saints never missed the finals and if not for injuries to key players at the business end of the season could easily have won the 2004 and 2005 premierships - instead of bowing out in the preliminary final in both seasons.
But just as Stan Alves found himself on the scrapheap as coach - just one season after leading the Saints to their first grand final in 36 years in 1997 - only to be replaced by a coach in Tim Watson who led the Saints' backwards, so history seems to be repeating itself at Moorabbin.
Thomas was dumped as coach after the Saints bowed out in the first week of the finals in 2006 by then president Rod Butterss at a time when the president and coach were feuding over many issues, some of them which had nothing to do with football.
Lyon, a former Sydney and Richmond assistant coach, was then appointed and was considered the man that would finally get the most out of what was