Why Port Adelaide captain Ollie Wines might need a bit more time to mature into strong captain
No AFL club — certainly not Carlton — expected to be asked to consider Port Adelaide co-captain Ollie Wines in the recently closed trade period. Was it a crazy moment in football’s annual silly season or another real chapter in Wines’ testing year?
Michelangelo Rucci
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Every AFL trade period has its unsuspecting victim, such as Port Adelaide co-captain Ollie Wines this year. Perhaps even Essendon forward Orazio Fantasia. And Josh Jenkins.
But Wines is one player who did not change AFL clubs in the 11-day exchange period left to wonder how he became part of the trade chatter this week. And he will not escape the wash-up of the silly season.
It is the most bizarre episode of a trade period that tests everyone’s tolerance in separating fact from fiction, hope from delusion. But it has been that sort of year for 25-year-old Wines.
This was to have been a memorable football season for the Victorian. Instead there is so much the strong-bodied midfielder will want to forget, but will not be allowed to brush away.
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The year began with a bad headline in late January — and a far-reaching debate on player off-field pursuits — with Wines suffering a significant right-shoulder injury in a waterskiing accident on the River Murray (while now-departed Power swingman Dougal Howard was at the boat driver’s wheel).
No doubt (and already proven with a newspaper interview in the local newspaper at his Echuca family home base) Wines will face questions on how he intends to escape the off-season football routine this summer. He will stay on the skis (as he has done for most of his life), but not again after Christmas.
The year ends with a concerning headline in mid-October with Wines linked to a still-born trade to Carlton. Port Adelaide says it did not put Wines on the trade table. Wines’ management says it did not approach the recharged Blues to set up a homecoming deal to boost the Carlton midfield.
But someone clearly did “represent” Wines’ interests in testing Carlton’s interest in the 2012 first-round draftee (No. 7).
Wines’ waterskiing habits will be a footnote — to the mysterious Carlton episode — when he returns to pre-season training at Alberton in the next month to find the television cameras intensely focused on him and the interview requests at record numbers.
The fans will repeatedly utter one wish: “Say it ain’t so Ollie, say it ain’t so.”
Why would anyone in the Wines’ camp seek to measure Carlton’s willingness to ask for the 141-game midfielder in the trade market? More so when Wines, from the moment he became the image of coach Ken Hinkley’s revival plan at Alberton in 2013, has become indoctrinated in the Port Adelaide way to the point of speaking passionately and enthusiastically of wearing the club’s traditional black-and-white guernsey.
In far from scripted or rehearsed responses, Wines has often declared himself part of the “Port Adelaide” spirit by saying: “This club has done everything right by me and my family since it welcomed me into the club (in November 2012).”
But the prospect — the apparent certainty — of Port Adelaide reverting to one captain for its 150th anniversary celebrations next year stokes another “myth” from past silly seasons. Did Wines, in renewing his contract at Alberton at the end of 2018, sign an extension to the end of 2022 on the promise of being the Power’s skipper?
True or not, it appears clear Port Adelaide will choose between Wines’ fellow co-captain Tom Jonas and vice-captain Hamish Hartlett to be the Power team leader next season. At 25, Wines still appears to need time to grow into meeting the demands of AFL captaincy. His time for such a leadership role appears in the future rather than present.
This will be resolved at Alberton by the Port Adelaide board in February. This time, the backlash of the members against co-captains is carrying more power than the recommendation of the club’s football sub-committee.
In the meantime, Wines can expect a summer of being quizzed on water skiing, captaincy and that question supposedly asked of Carlton by a mysterious agent in another AFL trade period of unsuspecting victims.