For tough taskmaster Ross Lyon, there was no sugar-coating the nature of St Kilda's first-week exit from the AFL finals.

After the most dramatic of off-seasons, the Saints stumbled into the 2011 campaign.

The losing grand finalists of 2009 and 2010 won only one of their first seven games.

They had slumped to 15th on the ladder after round eight and did not break into the top eight for the first time until round 18.

But the fact that they recovered well enough to finish sixth and earn a home final was cold comfort for the coach in the wake of Saturday night's 25-point elimination final loss to Sydney.

"I'm not very easily pleased, I'm really hard to work with," said Lyon.

"I'm really demanding, I'm unrelenting.

"You show me a coach who is unrelenting and I'll show you a player group who generally reflects that.

"I'm far from satisfied.

"The previous effort is irrelevant.

"We had every opportunity and I'm hurting because we didn't deliver.

"I don't like losing, I don't like losing finals, I don't like losing at home.

"There's no satisfaction with me."

Lyon was particularly unhappy with the skill errors from his team against Sydney, particularly in the second term and again early in the last when they had cut the margin to eight points.

"Our best tonight would have been good enough," he said.

"But we weren't hard enough when we needed to be, we weren't skillful enough when we needed to be and we weren't organised.

"For whatever reason, the message that doesn't normally get lost, did get lost.

"I thought we were unrecognisable in the second quarter to be honest."

After the match, grand final players Michael Gardiner, Steven Baker, Andrew McQualter and Robert Eddy all announced their retirement.

Although none of the quartet played in the loss to the Swans - and Eddy had already been relegated to the rookie list - Lyon admitted it felt like a changing of the guard at the club.

"There's a natural attrition, most clubs churn x number of players per year," said Lyon.

"Certainly it sort of feels like the end of an era to be honest.

"To lose a home final at Etihad, against a good team, but it was a really disappointing night.

"There were some of the old warts there that came out."

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