St Kilda midfielder Leigh Montagna has revealed that a column by Michael Voss suggesting the Saints had too many players who wanted to be the star had touched a nerve at the club.

Montagna said the column in Friday's Age was inherently accurate and the topic had actually preoccupied the team earlier in the week.

"We'd actually discussed that issue during the week, before the article came out, and a few of us even made a joke that Vossy must have been sitting in our team meeting," Montagna said.

"It was pretty spot-on about what he was saying — basically, we had a pretty deep conversation with the leadership group and the whole group … about what our mindset is like in regards to that selfishness aspect," he said.

"In the morning, I know (captain) Nick Riewoldt sent a text message to a few of the leaders to have a look at the article — only because we respect Michael Voss and what he says."

Montagna said it was not a matter of players putting themselves ahead of the team but that some senior Saints had to stop thinking they had to do all the hard work.

"It's just little, subtle things — covering a man and sticking with that player, a little subtle block here and there, maybe sacrificing your turn to win the footy to allow your teammate to win the ball," he said.

"They're little, subtle things that we're not quite doing well enough at the moment, that we're addressing.

"We just think sometimes that it's more of a mindset of our better players … that when the game is in the balance, they need to do it themselves, rather than do it as a collective group.

"That's more what we spoke about, sharing the workload as opposed to relying on our better players to do the job."

Meanwhile, Montagna also said he was "good mates" with Essendon's Andrew Lovett despite the pair clashing heatedly during last Friday night's match at Telstra Dome.

Yesterday, Montagna said his "blood was boiling" after an incident just before the break "and that's why I went over and had a go at him".

"Andy Lovett and I are actually good mates," he told Seven's AFL Game Day. "We'd had a flat third quarter and Essendon were coming back and I thought a little bit of spark might just get the boys going again.

"So I just had a bit of a scuffle with Andy and I knew he wasn't going to hurt me cos we're mates. He might have just thrown a leg into me — given me a little corky or something like that — which got me a little bit agitated, especially coming from Andy, cos as I said, we're mates."


Correction:

An earlier version of this story indicated that Leigh Montagna admitted he was the St Kilda player responsible for shouting 'You bash your f------ missus' at Essendon player Andrew Lovett on Friday night at the Telstra Dome. We would like to clarify that Montagna did not make the offending remark and apologise for any distress caused to the player. The error was made by a reporter.