Don’t believe the naysayers - Port Adelaide can still win the 2018 AFL premiership
HEADING into Sunday’s clash with the Bulldogs, Port has won 11 games and lost six. That’s the same win-loss ratio as last year’s eventual premier Richmond had heading into round 19 last season.
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THE line-up to kick Ken Hinkley and his Port Adelaide players this week was a popular one.
Former stars Paul Roos, Terry Wallace and Garry Lyon were at the front of the queue. And Hinkley would have hated the irony more than the actual condemnation.
Heading into today’s round 19 clash with the Western Bulldogs, Port has won 11 games and lost six. That’s the same win-loss ratio as last year’s eventual premier Richmond had heading into round 19 last season. But instead of being kicked in the teeth, Damien Hardwick was being praised as a mastermind, because in his eighth year at the helm, he suddenly had the Tigers in a premiership-winning position.
The extended irony of the slight double standards is that media’s golden boy coach this year has been Nathan Buckley, who has rightly been praised for doing a Hardwick — coaching Collingwood into a premiership-winning position in his seventh year at the helm. And yet Collingwood entered this weekend with only one more win than Port Adelaide and, after the Magpies loss on Saturday, will be in no better place to win the flag than Port by the end of this round.
What is undeniable is that Port, just like 11 other teams right now, has arrived at its moment of truth. Just like Richmond this time last season, and like the Bulldogs in 2016 when they were seventh with five rounds left … and won the flag.
Gary Lyon may have sounded harsh with his “whinge” ultimatum, saying: “Now’s the time, boys. There’s five weeks to go, you’ve got enough talent to finish in the top four, stop worrying about everyone else, put your head over the footy and start to play the footy we know you can”.
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But it made sense as a timely reminder for every Port player that his destiny, and what his team will become known for this year, is poised precariously in their own hands.
Terry Wallace was nastier with his assessment, but also made a reasonable point.
“I just don’t trust what they are as a group,” Wallace said. “I just don’t trust some of their players to be consistent enough when the whips get cracking”.
Wallace also personally cooked recruits Jack Watts, Tom Rockliff, Jack Trengove and Lindsay Thomas for their light performance in last week’s loss to the Giants, saying, “You’ve brought in four blokes when it really was on the line for your footy club, and they’ve really made no difference whatsoever”.
Sadly, the stats do back up a large chunk of the Wallace statement.
Port was the second-highest scoring team in the AFL last season. Then over summer it added Watts, Rockliff, Thomas, Trengove and Steven Motlop. And with them, Port has dropped to the 13th-best scoring team in the competition this year.
The only consistent thing in Port’s inconsistency with its new player mix, has been the lack of scoring impact of many of its stars when pushed forward. Ollie Wines has kicked only four goals in 17 games, as has Brad Ebert. Sam Powell-Pepper and Paddy Ryder have only kicked five goals each.
The glass-half-full counter-stat is that when Paddy Ryder (who has missed six games and been injured early in others) is fit to ruck, and proven goal-kickers Charlie Dixon, Chad Wingard and Robbie Gray are the main go-to forwards, Port wins more clearances, registers bigger scores and looks a premiership contender.
Which is why the Roos punch to Hinkley’s jaw was so perfect in it’s timing.
“This is almost the biggest underachieving footy team in the last five years with the talent they’ve got,” Roos said.
Roos is not actually wrong yet. But he’s not right yet, either.