Port Adelaide confident it has prepared perfectly for the AFL’S longest road trip

The question still remains as to whether five years will be long enough for Port Adelaide to nail its off-field “China Strategy”. But on the smooth ride to Shanghai, the Power certainly has the on-field agenda nailed.

Port Adelaide Power Chairman David Koch speaks to the media. David Mariuz/AAP

• Power confident of success in China
• Port’s final 22 remains a secret

PORT Adelaide is back in Shanghai … and, as club president David Koch knows with eternal regret, this is the Power’s first win in the latest chapter of the Power’s “China Strategy”.

Three years after Koch was left on the storm-hit tarmac at Hong Kong airport to miss the club’s bold announcement through Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai of Port Adelaide’s plan to play for AFL premiership points in China, the 26-player Power squad and football staff arrived as planned at Shanghai at lunch-time on Tuesday.

No flight delays, as can happen – as has in previous Port Adelaide trips – in the crossing from Hong Kong to Shanghai. All true to Power football chief Chris Davies’ confident pre-departure declaration that Port Adelaide, after spending four years on the road to China, had a well-tested plan for the AFL’s longest road trip.

There will those in international sport – particularly at Adelaide United that has played Asian Champions League soccer games in China and quickly turned around for A-League matches at home or New Zealand – who will say that in 2018 the AFL’s only game that requires a passport is no big deal.

But the A-League does not have old guard club presidents stuck in the suburbs, such as Hawthorn leader Jeff Kennett. Earlier this year, Kennett labelled Port Adelaide’s mission to find international money while taking Australia’s game to the world as a waste of time.

Gold Coast, having remarkably kept co-captain and defender Steven May in its travel party after a stunning reprieve at the AFL tribunal, is here for the second time – and perhaps last.

Port president David Koch is all smiles about the China experiment. Picture: Morne de Klerk/Getty

The Suns have packed their red shirts, the ones that agitated Koch last year for being an instant attraction for the Chinese as the jumpers matched China’s national flag.

The second rendition of Power-Suns in Shanghai has been better for no encore from Koch and his Gold Coast counterpart Tony Cochrane. There won’t be one this week as Koch is even further away, in London - doing his day job at Channel Seven’s Sunrise breakfast desk leading up to the Royal wedding on Saturday.

Koch’s initial wish to avoid a Victorian-based AFL rival – preferring the new expansion franchises at Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney as his partners in China – probably needs to change next year. As much as the Australian game needs to move away from a Victorian-centric theme, there also is the commercial reality of Victorian attention.

The Power-Suns game – by television deals signed in China earlier this year – will be the most-watched AFL match with predictions of viewership between 8-10 million.

But at home, the match moves from free-to-air national television with Channel Seven to pay-TV Fox Footy.

Seven, with its Melbourne agenda, would be easier to tempt back to Shanghai if next year’s match involved a Victorian club, such as St Kilda – as many expect will happen next season when Port Adelaide works the third year of its five-season nod from the AFL Commission.

The question lingers as to whether five years will be long enough for Port Adelaide to nail its off-field “China Strategy”. But on the smooth ride to Shanghai yesterday, the Power certainly has the on-field agenda nailed.

[e-mail]