Gwilt is 188 centimetres tall, well above the old six feet, but has a low centre of gravity and a propensity for finding the ball at ground level. A goalsneak and half-forward? Maybe. A spoiling full-back? You can't be serious.

But in their most dire circumstances, it was Gwilt whom the Saints turned to last night as they tried to find a way to counter Brendan Fevola and thus get over the top of Carlton at Telstra Dome. Without Sam Fisher, Matt Maguire and Max Hudghton, options one, two and three in the Fevola stakes, it would be fair to say that Ross Lyon and his coaching staff had reached the point of desperation.

And here's the thing. It worked for a while.

Fevola's only touch in the first quarter was a goal gifted to him by Jarrad Waite, who was having a particularly spectacular night. Waite burst on to a loose ball at centre half-forward and laid off a perfect handball to Fevola, who merely had to drop the ball on to that lethal right boot to finish it. Gwilt, three centimetres shorter but able to go with Fevola's quick leads, had nine disposals running out of defence, the most of anyone on the ground to quarter-time.

In the second quarter, Fevola conceded a 50-metre penalty for a high shot on Robert Harvey, who bravely had wandered back into the no-go zone in front of a charging full-forward. For the footballing equivalent of killing a mockingbird, coach Denis Pagan benched Fevola for a few minutes to give him some time to think, giving him the Boo Radley treatment.

Then when he returned to the fray at the 21-minute mark, Pagan sent him directly into the centre bounce and Fevola spent some time aping the midfielders, immediately winning a free kick after putting his head over the ball and copping high contact. Soon afterwards, he kicked a 55-metre goal with a kick that was hit like a Tiger Woods one iron, sailing over the goal umpire's head. As it turned out, Pagan's unusual little manoeuvre worked, in the sense that it drew Fevola into the game.

He is a hard man to keep down. In the third, St Kilda threatened to crush Carlton, then slackened off. Fevola kicked another, then used his body to hold off Gwilt, took a contested mark and drilled another. By the time a bouncing ball turned sideways and into his hands in the goal square at the 18-minute mark, he had a fifth goal on a night when realistically, he had been well held, and Carlton was within a breath of pulling off one of the great heists.

Lyon sent for help, quite literally, and at one point, St Kilda had nine players in its defensive half and only three offensive players.

But Fevola would not be denied. In the final quarter, he found himself stymied behind Gwilt and Leigh Fisher in a marking contest. Not to be denied, he merely reached over the pair of them and marked, then kicked a sixth major.

But Gwilt had done enough, for the way the personnel had lined up, St Kilda would have feared an eight or 10-goal haul from Carlton's spearhead. Six was manageable, and in any case it was matched at the other end by burly Fraser Gehrig.

In truth, the game was won in midfield where Nick Dal Santo's class finishing, Luke Ball's willingness to shoulder a monstrous workload, Leigh Montagna's attack on the football and Harvey's relentless running were too much for Carlton.