You knew it was going to be one of "those" Ross Lyon press conferences as soon as AFL Media's Gemma Bastiani opened proceedings simply by asking: "How did you see that one?"
"I think like you all saw it. What did you think?" Lyon said. "Well, it would be disappointing from your perspective I imagine?" said Bastiani.
"Yeah, but specifically, what did you see? Q1," Lyon persisted, doing his "playful and quirky Ross" routine, but no doubt hoping for a faux pas or inaccuracy upon which he could pounce and flex his "superior" tactical knowledge.
Bastiani, though, really knows her stuff, and refused to play to the script, though she would have been well within her rights to say: "Answer the question, your fans want to know what you think, not what I think."
What she did say, correctly, was: "A lack of ability to exit D50 and then just get ..." "How did it get there?" Lyon interrupted, making you seriously doubt he was ever interested in her answer. "From contest/clearance," said Bastiani. "So, you summed it up right," nodded the coach, who could simply have said in his first response: "We couldn't win enough contests and clearances."
This is the sort of byplay which is guffawed at heartily by several football types, almost always either the former player contingent now dominating football media who someone like Lyon would never subject to such condescension, or the more reflexive diehard fans who inevitably frame all media-coach interactions as "us and them".
Some of Lyon's biggest "fanboys" in the media are the former players who still like to feel that they're part of an exclusive club which has a perspective and a status more worthy than their non-playing colleagues. Unfortunately, it also too often leaves those colleagues unsupported when they're subjected to the sort of rubbish Bastiani was on Saturday.
And what the latter group seem to overlook and what other more thinking fans might be frustrated by, is that the gaslighting disguised as "banter" actually deprives them of some simple explanations about what's going on with their own team.
Actually, perhaps that's exactly what Lyon was trying to avoid in this case, given St Kilda had just been taken apart for a third game in a row, and Lyon's famously stingy defensive mechanisms had been blown apart once more, the Saints now having conceded more than 100 points four games out of seven and ranking a dismal 15th for points against.
That wasn't the end of it, though. Bastiani then asked an obvious follow-up about the early subbing off of Hugo Garcia. "Was it the contest stuff that made you pull the trigger on your sub so early in that second quarter?"
That seemed to touch a nerve. "No, Hugo was part of it ... like, I don't know ... how much do you guys know about stay-ahead mids, and swiveling and turning?" The obviously implied answer was "not a lot".
Things got worse when Bastiani asked if Lyon may have regretted the early sub when Mason Wood was concussed later in the game. "Why would I regret it?" he snapped. "I live in the world of action, right. So, you'd sit there and go: 'Why didn't they pull the sub?' I pulled the sub, tried to get something done."
"I just coach action. That's all you can coach, right? You can't read their minds, can you? Can I talk about their feelings? Can I coach feelings? Do you coach feelings? Emotional pitch? Spirit? What do you see? What are we talking about here? Action, aren't we?"
There's a lot of stuff going on here, but let's consider at least a couple of points. There'd be no shame in Lyon conceding that while he doesn't back away from pulling the sub lever early, the unfortunate twist of fate meant it wasn't available when it would have been pretty handy.
In fact, Lyon's famous defensive-mindedness when it comes to game style means the odd gamble would probably be more approved by the critics than pilloried.
And can he coach feelings? Well, hasn't much of recent fashionable AFL coaching philosophy revolved around coaches finding connection with the psyche of their playing group? That's coaching feelings, isn't it?
Like Damien Hardwick and his Tigers celebrating vulnerability on their way to three premierships in four years? Or like Craig McRae's overnight turning of Collingwood from angst-ridden club to a happy and unified bunch who won a famous flag? Or the obvious bond between Brisbane's Chris Fagan and his Lions?
But Lyon's sensitivity around his use of the sub was apparent and perhaps not helped by footage taken of him chewing out Garcia on the bench. And it's a debate which got another kick-a-long when AFL Media analyst Kate McCarthy, in my view one of the best in the caper, was critical of Lyon's early removal of Garcia.
"He's pointed the finger at Hugo Garcia for not playing the 'stay forward' mid," she said. "But in the first quarter, Lachie Neale's direct opponent was Jack Steele -- the captain of the club -- and he allowed Neale to waltz into an open goal and kick the first goal of the game.
"For me, if you're sending a message, it's a player like that you send a message through, not a 16-gamer who's still learning the ropes. ... For me, roasting a player on the bench before quarter-time and subbing him out in the second quarter is not going to help a player learn. It's going to send them the other way."
Now had McCarthy asked that directly of Lyon at the press conference, the answer, had he deemed the question worthy of his time, would have made fascinating listening. For St Kilda fans, mostly.
They'd certainly be more informed about their coach's approach to his younger players, to reacting to adversity during a match, and to just when their team can expect some sustained improvement. Well, at least more than they are every time Lyon instead sooks it up and plays the smartarse. That does them, and him, no good at all.
You can read more of Rohan Connolly's work at FOOTYOLOGY.