Port Adelaide open to talent from any state as it focuses on next month’s AFL national draft
SOUTH Australia has a raft of draft hopefuls in next month’s draft but Port Adelaide will not hesitate to pick from other states if that’s where it sees the best talent.
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PORT Adelaide football manager Chris Davies says the Power will dismiss state lines and draft for talent with its top pick in next month’s national AFL draft.
And Port Adelaide will consider further trading of picks — which is open until a week out from the draft, or during the draft itself — to get higher than its first pick at No.5.
But as much as getting players already based in South Australia would be a bonus, it would not sway the club from picking the best player available.
West Adelaide’s Izak Rankine and Woodville-West Torrens’ Jack Lukosius are expected to go in the top-five — tipped to be taken by the Gold Coast at two and three in the draft — North Adelaide premiership player Connor Rozee is tipped to be a top-10 pick.
There is also a stack of talent coming out of the state’s under-18 team, which won the national championship this year.
But Davies said parochialism would be put to the side at the draft table.
“I know there’s been a lot of talk about us taking the South Australian players,” he said.
“At pick five we’ll take whoever we think is the best player that’s left in the draft and whether that’s a Victorian, whether that’s a Tasmanian, a Queenslander, whoever that will be, we’ll take.
“Of course, being based here in South Australia … it’s a consideration but we’re not going to take a South Australian over who we think is the best player to take at that particular point.”
There is still a chance Port Adelaide — which holds picks 5, 10 and 15 in the first round — could advance up the pecking order if it trades picks with Gold Coast or St Kilda.
Davies said the club was open to further dealing ahead of the draft.
“We’ve got the potential to trade next year’s picks into this year’s draft if we see the value in doing so,” Davis told the club’s website. “If we see a player who slips in the order who we rate highly there are things we can do to get up higher in this year’s draft.
“It’s something we’ll certainly look at so it’s not in the back of our mind, it’s in the front of our mind because we want our list to be as good as it can be.”