St Kilda will be aggressive in AFL trade and free agency after they missed out on a finals berth for the sixth year in a row.
The Saints were still a mathematical chance of making the finals if they had a big win over Richmond on Sunday and other results went their way, but the Tigers jumped them early to set up the 19.8 (122) to 12.9 (81) victory at the MCG.
St Kilda finished the season with an 11-11 record and have now finished 18th, 14th, ninth and 11th under Alan Richardson.
The coach is adamant his squad already has the talent to succeed and has improved this season despite dropping down the ladder.
But he concedes the Saints must also look for help from outside the club.
"We're looking to add quality players, I won't go into individual names, but we're looking to add some quality," Richardson said.
"We think that our recruiting staff have done a really good job of bringing in great players, but we've still got a bit of work to do.
"It's hard to get in who you want but our club is committed to doing whatever we can to try and get good people to our club.
"That could be at the national draft or it might be through trade.
"You've only got to look at the three footy clubs that are often contending - Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong - and how aggressive they've been for a long time now.
"And we're in that space."
St Kilda farewelled retiring champion Nick Riewoldt after 336 AFL games for the club, but doubt continues to surround the future of fellow veteran Leigh Montagna.
"There's still a bit of work to do with that one," Richardson said.
"We'll get into that this week. I mentioned that we'd parked that ... Joey was certainly not in a rush.
"There's ongoing conversations about what it might look like (next year) but we're not quite there yet."
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