St Kilda is set to welcome back key-defender Jake Carlisle for Sunday’s final round clash. 

Carlisle missed the Saints’ loss against Hawthorn due to back soreness.

“It’s important that we get Jake back. He missed for all the right reasons with his partner giving birth, so that was really exciting for Jake, but he just wasn’t able to get up given he was a bit stiff in the back,” Alan Richardson said on Thursday.

“It’s very likely that’ll he come into the team. It might mean that Huey (Hugh Goddard) is a bit unlucky given they both play high defence, not necessarily deep defence.

“We think a real strength of the Kangaroos is their height in front of the ball. They’re a really powerful scoring team with some real talent there.”

Carlisle could spend time on either of Ben Brown or Jarrad Waite.

Meanwhile, captain Jarryn Geary is also set to play, despite suffering a concussion in the final quarter last week.

“The captain should be fine. He’s done all his Cogstate tests and he feels good,” Richardson said.

“It depends how he pulls up from training, but he’s pretty confident that he’ll be right to go.

“There won’t be a lot of change to the team.”

St Kilda put in one of its better performances of the season against the Hawks, despite falling short, and will be desperate to finish the season on a winning note.

“[We’ll try] try and repeat what we did last week.

“That was a four quarter performance and we gave ourselves an opportunity

“This is an important game for us to finish off what has been a disappointing season, strongly, against a team that has been in really good form in the Kangaroos.

“We want to give ourselves an opportunity to win.”