St Kilda coach Ross Lyon delivered a strained plea to the AFL following his side's tight loss to Hawthorn at UTAS Stadium.
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Lyon followed in the footsteps of Geelong coach Chris Scott's "discussion" on umpiring and the AFL as Launceston delivered its biggest crowd since 2019 with 15,112 spectators flooding through the gates for the 8.10 (58) to 7.11 (53) contest.
"After coming back into coaching, there's a lot of pressure on us, there's a lot of pressure on me now," he said.
"I'm happy for the AFL to hear this and it's not an excuse, we've had a lot of tight games but we get four messages each quarter and with three minutes to go, we can't send the runner, which I get.
"In my previous iterations, you could use the runner almost at will but you see things you want to fix and things you want to do ... from my end I find it incredibly frustrating.
"We're like neutered dogs, we sit there, can see stuff but you can't use and you can't fix - it's very difficult."
Although he admitted he "doesn't know what the number is", Lyon said he hoped the other coaches would jump on board.
"There was a lot of pressure, a lot of intensity around the ball, a lot of repeat stoppages - I think the players handled it pretty well today," he said.
"There were some momentum shifts but they [our players] felt like they were on top but they actually didn't hit the scoreboard well.
"There was a little bit of perhaps luck with the goal-kicking but our players managed the momentum of the game well.
"That's the second week where we've had some problems in the game but we haven't been scored against as heavily as some other games."
The win saw Hawthorn win the Blue Ribbon Cup in its 25th year, paying tribute to police who have died in the line of duty.
The Hawks began brightly as Connor Macdonald started his 50th game with a goal, but the Saints bit back immediately as Mitchito Owens got on the end of a ball that spun with Shane Warne proportions.
From there, the Hawks seized momentum, dominating centre clearances and goaling through players of contrasting heights - Nick Watson, Lloyd Meek and stand-in skipper Dylan Moore.
A Riley Bonner bullet found Tim Membrey to peg it back for the Saints before a Max King mark and goal put the quarter-time margin at four points.
Moore's second extended the lead to 10 early in the next term before the teams traded 50-metre penalties and goals through Jack Ginnivan and Owens.
As scoring cooled off, both sides produced attacking efforts held off by the respective defences, with neither team finding the big sticks for the last 17 minutes of the quarter.
Trailing 6.2 (38) to 4.4 (28) at the half, the Saints made their tactical sub, taking off Jack Hayes and bringing on Ben Paton for his first game of the season.
The goal-less run continued for almost 25 minutes, finally broken by St Kilda's Josh Battle, who was swung forward for his 28th career goal.
The Saints held a lot of play in their attacking half but it was the Hawks who goaled next through Watson - kicking two goals for the first time in his fledgling career.
St Kilda were made to rue missed opportunities as the Hawks' substitute Luke Breust made an immediate impact, marking on the goal-line and sealing the deal after coming on for Calsher Dear.
"I thought they really controlled the third quarter despite the scoreboard and some other aspects, so I wanted to get Luke on because I thought of his leadership and how he would be able to structure the field and help us defend," Mitchell said.
"It was a little bit risky taking off Calsher but I thought if we could get an aerial contest in front of the ball, that would help us.
"It ended up being a good call but Calsher has done nothing wrong, his intensity GPS-wise is much higher than he's ever done before."
Breust's 530th career major and a Watson behind after the siren gave the home side an 8.6 (54) to 5.3 (39) lead going into the final break.
The Saints eventually made inroads into the margin with Battle's second and Max King followed with a goal late in what proved to be the only majors for the hotly-contested quarter.
St Kilda kicked into their forward-50 with less than a minute remaining, almost taking a big contested mark before several ball-ups ran the clock down to the final siren.