The Saints coach urged his side to channel the veteran backman's reliability heading into its round one clash against Portland on Saturday. And didn't it respond.

Koroit gave Mooney the perfect milestone present, notching a 91-point thumping without captain Liam Hoy and premiership player Todd White.

"Dallas was the theme we took into the game. We wanted everyone to play and contribute like Dallas. He's so reliable, I can't remember him ever playing a bad game," McLaren said.

"He's so team-orientated and dependable, reliable and consistent.

"He played a lot of reserves footy before he played senior footy so he's really earned his stripes. He's become a gun runner too.

"I think he's arguably one of Koroit's greatest players. He's a classy player and a really good, modest person."

McLaren was pleased with his side's endeavour at a rain-soaked Hanlon Park.

"We played pretty well to be honest. We put a bit of work into our offence and it was nice to kick a bit of a score and to keep our opponents to a low score as well in awfully windy conditions.

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"We copped a fair bit of weather over there.

"We probably over-handled the footy a little bit and maybe that was a bit to do with the change in conditions from last week and how we want to play.

"We had to adjust to the conditions a bit more and once we did we played quite well."

Gun forward Sam Dobson kicked four to extend his season tally to nine while Clem Nagocka was best-on-ground.

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