Lyon: Riewoldt's form a bonus

St Kilda's recent increased attacking potency is not solely due to the form of star skipper Nick Riewoldt; according to coach Ross Lyon.

The Saints - long accused of playing negative football under Lyon - have just recorded successive scores above 100 for the first time since Lyon took charge at the start of last season.

Riewoldt - the Saints' four-time best and fairest - has booted nine goals in the past two weeks, including six in Saturday night's thrilling come-from-behind win over highly-rated Hawthorn at Telstra Dome.

But Lyon, whose team has emerged as a chance to finish in the top four given its good run home, insists his team is not overly reliant on its champion skipper to kick them winning scores.

"We have won our last four (games) and that (Saturday night against Hawthorn) is his first bag of six," Lyon said of Riewoldt.

"We are not reliant on him because our backs are kicking goals and our midfielders and our small forwards are also kicking goals."

"We had nine goalkickers on the weekend (and ten the week before against Carlton) so we like to share the load and we don't want to be dependent on one person to kick goals."

And such is Lyon's confidence in the Saints' new found potency that he will allow Riewoldt to continue to play his free-roving role in attack - which often sees him go up the ground - rather than force his best player to play close to goal.

"On the weekend he (Riewoldt) took a number of marks on centre wing and what is pleasing is he has improved his ground level play and he is getting goals in different ways such as from handball receives as well as from contested marks and on the lead so he has added some strings to his bow."

"He has improved as a player and he is the everywhere man - he will run into defence and on the wing so you don't know where Nick is going to be and that is the way I like it."

The Saints' recent boost in attack - with the team having kicked 119 points in each of its last two games - is in stark contrast to its lack of strikepower throughout Lyon's tenure to date.

Prior to the last fortnight, the Saints had not only never booted 100 points or more in successive matches but had only done so in 10 of 36 previous matches under Lyon.

After being the competition's second highest scoring side in 2004 under former coach Grant Thomas, the Saints last year kicked the lowest points' tally of the season with just 1874 points (or an average of just 85 points per game) despite finishing ninth on the ladder.

But this year they have now scored 1502 points in 16 games (an average of nearly 94 points per game) and have outscored five other teams this season with this year's improvement coming despite their leading goalkicker of the past five years and dual Coleman Medalist Fraser Gehrig having barely played this season due to chronic arthritis in his hands.