Promising so much, delivering little — how Port Adelaide flatters to deceive
THE numbers don’t lie - Port Adelaide has become an average AFL club, with an average team packed with average players playing a very average game style.
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PORT Adelaide has become an average AFL club, with an average team packed with average players playing a very average game style. That’s not an opinion. The numbers and the math say it as fact.
A 10th-placed finish in an 18-team competition this year to go with seventh, 10th and ninth in the previous three seasons, is not just perfectly average, but sad confirmation Port is now consistently average.
Take emotion out of it and pick any stat category from this season and it screams middle-of-the-road.
Port was the second-highest scoring team in the AFL in 2017 and boasted the second-best defence. But this season Port had the 13th-best attack and the ninth-best defence.
And it hasn’t happened by accident. Port’s game style, by design, has become a dour, high-stoppage, tackle-heavy, boring scrap and its ball movement stagnant, predictable and beatable.
At Port Adelaide’s pre-season members convention, defence coach Nathan Bassett explained marking defenders were coached to stop and hold and wait for considered options, rather than play on immediately.
Port deliberately slowed its ball movement. Port was 17th this season for playing on from marks and 15th for handballs received. And that adopted style failed.
It was the No. 1 ranked team for ineffective kicks, and kicked the ball directly to its ready and waiting opponents the second-most of any team.
The Power once prided itself on forward-half pressure and scoring from forced opposition turnovers, but dropped from being the best team in the AFL last year for time spent with the ball locked in the forward half, to a below-average 12th this year. And they dropped from second to ninth for scores from forward-half intercepts.
And again it appeared to be by design. Instead of locking the ball into their attack, the numbers suggest Port pulled its defensive wall back a little in an effort to protect its own defence and stop from being scored against by opponents who might break through their wall and into the free space.
Port also had a long list of individuals whose personal numbers dropped this season.
Champion Data’s Relative Ratings measure all players compared to other players of the same position and age. It’s a rough guide, but only three Port players improved at a comparative rate worth highlighting — Tom Jonas, Dougal Howard and Dan Houston.
Charlie Dixon dropped from 28 per cent above average last year, to below average this season.
Chad Wingard dropped from 25 per cent above average to just 5 per cent above. Sam Powell-Pepper dropped from 18 to just 2 per cent above average and Ollie Wines dropped from 21 to 10 per cent above average.
Even Robbie Gray (50 to 30 per cent), Paddy Ryder (47 to 26) and Justin Westhoff (33 to 11) saw their ratings drop, although they remained in the “elite” category.
But the three star recruits who were expected to make Port an above-average team and lift the Power into premiership contention this year, all registered below average relative ratings.
Tom Rockliff was a whopping 31 per cent below. Jack Watts was a disappointing 17 per cent below. And Steven Motlop was 12 per cent below.
Port chief executive Keith Thomas sent a letter to members this week explaining that “Port Adelaide is not a near enough is good enough sort of club”. And the club’s mantra is “We exist to win premierships”.
There is a theory coach Ken Hinkley may have adjusted his game style this year because his old game style wasn’t good enough to beat the top teams, many of which played the same forward-pressure game style, but executed it better. So rather than accept being average, Hinkley changed in an effort to become better.
The problem is, Port got worse.