Todd Marshall and Mitch Georgiades ready to take next step and ease pressure on Charlie Dixon

Charlie Dixon had a career-best season last year but the Power were too reliant on the spearhead. There will be no such problem in 2021, Travis Boak says.

1-4 year players returned to pre-season training in December. Pictured are Boyd Woodcock, Todd Marshall, Connor Rozee and Zak Butters. Picture: Sarah Reed

Port Adelaide star Travis Boak says young guns Todd Marshall and Mitch Georgiades can step up to ease the load on Power spearhead Charlie Dixon in 2021.

Dixon had a career best season for the Power in 2020, finishing second in the Coleman Medal with 32 goals in the home-and-away season and claiming an All-Australian nod.

But the Power at times were labelled as being too reliant on the 30-year-old, and Boak said Marshall, 22, and Georgiades, 19, were primed to step up and help Dixon out in 2021.

“Yeah 100 per cent (they can step up and help Dixon),” he said on SEN.

“Mitch into his second year now, he is a super talented kid and I think if him and Toddie can take their game to another level it will ease the load on Charlie, who had an outstanding year but we can’t just rely on him.

“Toddie and Mitch have the talent and they have the workrate to want to improve.

“What I’ve seen of Toddie this pre-season is really exciting and Mitch is one that just wants to get better.”

The Power have embarked on their hardest week of their pre-season, which senior assistant Michael Voss has labelled “camp week”.

Todd Marshall is ready to go to the next level, Travis Boak says. Picture: Sarah Reed

Boak said Orazio Fantasia had been shining in pre-season since coming over from Essendon, although he got a slight knock earlier this week.

“I reckon he copped a corkie on Monday and had to come off late but other than that he has been quite good,” he said.

Boak said Fantasia would add some quality to Port’s forward line.

“Definitely that is where he has been training most of pre-season and he will add a lot to our group,” Boak said.

“His crumbing work I didn’t realise how good it was.”

VOSS SHUTS DOWN FUTURE COACH TALKS

Michael Voss says he “couldn’t be more entrenched” at Port Adelaide and says a return to the senior coaching ranks would be a “distraction” to the Power’s pursuit of glory.

Voss was expected to have a strong chance to return to a top coaching job – after five years at Brisbane – when the North Melbourne role came up last year following Rhyce Shaw’s departure.

But despite being seen as a leading candidate, Voss pulled out of the race to stay as senior assistant at Port Adelaide with Lions footy boss David Noble signing on.

The three-time premiership player and Brownlow Medallist is now in his seventh year at the Power, and said the city of Adelaide and Port were now his “home”.

He gave a similar answer when quizzed about his coaching aspirations ahead of last season.

“As a coaching group we have also grown with this group as well and we are seeing an emergence of a new wave of talent … it’s a pleasure to be a part of,” Voss said.

“We want to make sure we maximise that opportunity … that loss in the last game should hurt enough to drive us and if we can get everything right at the right time – and I don’t see any reason why we can’t – then we should do well this season.”

Michael Voss coaching Brisbane during the 2021 season. Picture: AAP Image/Dave Hunt

He said this was why he wasn’t entertaining the thought of returning to the senior coaching ranks.

“That’s too early to think about that, it’s Feb 1, we have a couple of things to tick off before we get to that stage,” Voss said.

“I’m quite comfortable to get Tuesday’s training session done and then Wednesday’s after that and we will see how we go.

“I couldn’t be more entrenched with where I am and what I’m doing here.

“There will be no distractions in our pursuit of where we want to go.”

POWER PLAYERS BRACE FOR BRUTAL TRAINING TEST

Port Adelaide senior assistant coach Michael Voss says the Power now has some “genuine confidence” about their chances of premiership glory in 2021.

The Power have embarked on “camp week” at Alberton, in lieu of their regular trips to Queensland as Port’s pre-season heats up.

With nearly every player out on the track, Voss said this week would be the hardest for them in terms of training loads.

“Come Friday they will be pretty worn out, so our workloads will go up a bit, and with that we will also be able to throw in some other things too, have a bit of fun on the way and build on some of the connections we have been able to build over the last couple of years,” he said.

“The campaign is going to get larger this year … being able to get this body of work in for us is really important and the good thing is that we have large numbers on the training track.”

Voss said it would be an important week for Port Adelaide, probably the hardest the players will have all season. Picture: Mark Brake/Getty Images

On previous pre-season camps, the Power have done significant work in the connection space – getting the renowned Hugh van Cuylenburg of the Resilience Project to come in and talk to players.

Voss said this year they wouldn’t do as much because of time constraints.

“We are fortunate in that we are sitting here not trying to change things, we are not spending pre-season trying to overhaul our game style or spending a whole pre-season trying to reconnect the group,” he said.

“We are working on the marginal things that we hope that will make the difference for us and having a lot of people out on the track they can get into the game style really quickly and build that connection on the field.”

Voss said the Power would go into the vital part of their pre-season in a much more confident space than previous years – after going down by just a goal to eventual premiers Richmond in last season’s preliminary final.

Charlie Dixon in action at training in January. Picture: Keryn Stevens

Xavier Duursma, Joel Garner, Travis Boak, Miles Bergman and Willem Drew run laps at Alberton. Picture: Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

“I think that belief has built. Last pre-season we needed some evidence for that to happen,” Voss said.

“Going back 12 months we were largely inconsistent, we felt like we had a really good training environment and were training consistently but were struggling to transfer that to games week in, week out.

“Whereas last year we were able to transfer that week, after week, after week, after week so there should be no doubt that there is some genuine belief in this group, there’s some genuine confidence in this group about what we can do.

“But we still feel like we are a progressive footy team and we have a lot of growth left in us because our list says we have a demographic that has a lot of improvement in it, which is exciting.”