St Kilda football manager Jamie Cox has defended the Saints' selections at the weekend, while stressing that the club had to ensure Sunday's 103-point loss to West Coast was "an aberration".

The inconsistent Saints slumped to their sixth loss from eight games - with the match effectively over after the Eagles booted the first nine goals of the match inside 24 minutes.

Five of those majors were kicked by Josh Kennedy, who was initially stood by Sam Gilbert - only for the veteran to be shifted off the Coleman medallist following his hot start. St Kilda had opted against replacing the sore Sam Fisher with any of tall defensive trio Tom Lee, Hugh Goddard or Luke Delaney, while Jake Carlisle is suspended for the season.

But Cox denied that selection had been the problem. "We were actually quite happy with the match-ups we had. We weren't overly happy with the way that they went about it as a group back there," Cox said.

"The amount of pressure the backs were under in the first quarter was pretty extreme. The ball was coming out of the ball pretty quickly. I don't think it was a selection issue."

Cox said Fisher was "healthy" and in line to return for the Saints' next match - Sunday's Etihad Stadium date with lowly Essendon. Cox added that Delaney, Goddard and Lee all remained "in the mix".

The Saints lost the contested possession count by 13, and the inside 50s by 24. Cox was at a loss to explain the reasons for the first-quarter performance, which midfielder David Armitage described as "insipid". "We just couldn't get our hands on the ball early," Cox said.

"We had a real focus on starting the game strongly and within the first 10 minutes we got clouted terribly out of the middle of the ground.

"It wasn't really competitive at all. We were a bit fumbly, we didn't cope with what they brought to the table."

But Cox noted that the Saints had a strong recent record following poor showings, having bounced back from lacklustre showings against the Western Bulldogs and Greater Western Sydney with wins over Collingwood and Melbourne respectively. "Obviously we've got to figure out what happened. And really, the challenge is laid out to do something what happened.

"I think our football's been better than that this year. It's been better than what we showed at the weekend, so we have to show we're better than that now.

"We have to show that was an aberration, and that"s not the Saints."

Armitage called for introspection. "We've got to have a real good hard look at ourselves in there, especially in the first quarter. We were able to turn things around in regards to contest and cracking in, but for the first quarter it's basically the game [lost] there," Armitage told the club's website.

St Kilda coach Alan Richardson said the Saints had to guard against deluding themselves. "We can't just pretend that this is just an aberration. This was real," Richardson said. "We need to learn from it. There's some really obvious lessons for our guys, that if we don't come with the physicality and intensity like we did the previous two games against the Demons and the Kangaroos, then we can be a pretty ordinary footy team."