St Kilda are more potent and better prepared for the AFL finals than last year, despite losing two of their last three games.

That's the firm opinion of coach Ross Lyon, who confidently outlined their line of improvement ahead of Sunday's qualifying final against Collingwood at the MCG.

"In simple terms we're a harder team, we're a more flexible team, we score more heavily, we're fourth in attack and we defend a bit better," Lyon said.

"We're a very strong clearance team and the contested ball, over the journey of the year, I think we're number two.

"If they are your basic indices, attack and defence, we certainly didn't rank as highly in all those figures last year."

Last year's preliminary final loss to eventual premiers Hawthorn prompted an intensive review from which the club has benefited, Lyon said.

"It certainly stimulated some analysis and we felt we analysed the list and went out and targeted what we needed and worked hard over summer to fix the areas we needed to fix," he said.

"It's really been as simple as that. But ultimately it gets back to the individuals walking away and not giving up the fight and saying `we want to improve individually and collectively'.

"And they came back with a great mindset and attitude to work hard and where they've got to to this point has been a product of their commitment and their hard work."

The Saints finished the regular season two games clear in top spot, despite their surprise losses to Essendon and North Melbourne.

They were also clearly below their best in Sunday's easy win over Melbourne.

"But the real challenge is starting now. We've obviously got a good starting spot on the grid but we're the exact same odds as three other teams (with the double chance)," Lyon said.

"But it's certainly been a home-and-away year that exceeded some expectations in a win-loss sense but not in our work ethic and attitude - I was always confident we could deliver on that.

"The wins-losses don't always go the way you want them to - you need a little bit of luck and I think we've had a little bit of that with sometimes last kicks (to win) or an umpiring decision or (lack of) injuries."

Saints captain Nick Riewoldt said that despite the two late losses, the team had still improved over the past month.

"We've taken the opportunity to freshen some players up with our training and I think we're now in a really good position going forward," he said.

"It's a different feeling I think to last year from the playing group.

"A lot of the experts last year said we didn't deserve fourth, we limped in whereas this year we're going in with a full complement of players and we're really confident.

"We sat down about a month ago and identified that there was a unique situation that we were in (finishing on top of the ladder) but there was still the opportunity to go out and improve.

"And I think we've done that. We've identified areas of our games in our debriefs that we've had to improve from week to week."

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