ST KILDA played the best it had all season in the third quarter against Melbourne, but coach Alan Richardson was "incredibly frustrated" by his side's inability to translate their dominance onto the scoreboard.

The Saints booted six consecutive behinds, and just two goals, in the third quarter, and allowed the Demons to kick three late goals to cut the margin to 11 points at the final change.

St Kilda then slammed the door shut on any chance of a Melbourne comeback with five goals to two in the final term to win by 36 points at Etihad Stadium.

"In the third quarter, I don't think we've played better footy (this season)," Richardson said after the match.

"I was incredibly frustrated at three-quarter time and I thought it was a really good conversation to have with the players.

"I grabbed the guys before they went to their line coaches. I presumed they would be frustrated. To dominate the quarter the way we had and then not to win the quarter, and for Melbourne to finish off so strongly, that had the potential to knock them about a bit.

"But we spoke about, 'We don't care about the scoreboard, we just want to continue to play our way. We need to park the outcome and focus on the process.'"

Richardson said he was disappointed with the way his side allowed the Demons back into the game on the back of Jack Viney's work in closes.

"We started to get beaten at clearances and we became a little bit too content with where the scoreboard was at," Richardson said.

"It was fair to say that on the back of the last five minutes, with Viney getting hold of us, that there was a more challenging tone to the conversation (at his three-quarter time address), that we can't let ourselves down again."

The way Richardson’s players have been able to respond to opposition teams' run-ons over the past month in their three wins over Geelong, Essendon and now Melbourne has not been lost on Richardson.

The Saints have won five of their past seven games and have shown they are tough to beat when playing the high-pressure brand of footy they produced against Melbourne.

"I touched on that with the guys afterwards," Richardson said.

"Relatively late in games, the opposition has been able to regain control and ascendancy on the scoreboard and the guys have been able to respond.

"That's pleasing and that's shown that we've grown. We think our better footy is at another level and we've just got to be able to bridge the gap."

With North Melbourne's loss to Port Adelaide on Saturday, the Saints are two games behind the Kangaroos (40 points) and equal on points with Port Adelaide (32 points) on the AFL ladder.

But Richardson has not given the prospect of playing in September much thought.

"We're still learning to be consistent with our footy and we're impatient and we want it to happen sooner rather than later, and hopefully today was a turning of the form,” he said.

"Clearly, the past two weeks have been disappointing. Our focus will be to turn up and that we're really strong for massive parts of the game and we're a hard footy team to play against.

"If at the end of the day we qualify (for finals), that would be brilliant. That's certainly what we want to do."