Port Adelaide to get new China sparring partner from Victoria after Gold Coast pull plug on experiment
PORT Adelaide is closer to finding a Victorian rival for its Shanghai match after Gold Coast confirmed it is not returning to China.
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PORT Adelaide will have a new AFL partner in China next year.
St Kilda’s part in the Power’s “China strategy” — with significant Victorian government backing — is closer to reality with Gold Coast ending its role in the Shanghai AFL games.
The Suns confirmed — as long expected — it will no longer sell a home game to the Power to partner Port Adelaide in China.
And in a cheeky slap at Port Adelaide president David Koch after annoying the Power boss by having his Gold Coast team wear a red-and-yellow jumper in the two Shanghai games, Suns chairman Tony Cochrane said: “We have stepped away from repeating the trip again to China and we will leave (Koch) to argue with someone else about the colour of their jumper.”
Port Adelaide left China this season — after beating the Suns for the second consecutive year — well aware Gold Coast would not return to China. But there was heavy lobbying from Victorian State government officials to not only have St Kilda replace the Suns, but also have an AFLW exhibition match played in Shanghai next year.
Port Adelaide is favouring a Victorian rival to lift the profile of the China game in the Melbourne market. Greater Western Sydney also has shown interest in partnering the Power in Shanghai.
Speaking at the Suns’ best-and-fairest count, Cochrane emphasised Gold Coast playing squad was not ready for international commitments after losing in Shanghai by 72 and 40 points in the first AFL games played for premiership points outside Australia and New Zealand.
“The board have decided that to give the playing group every possible chance in the future that the trip is too onerous and too difficult,” Cochrane said. “(We have made) our last foray to China.”
St Kilda wears red, white and black - and has kept this jumper in “home” games against the Power that has been ordered by the AFL to wear a white guernsey against the Saints in Melbourne.
Port Adelaide paid Gold Coast $600,000 for each of the two games moved from Metricon Stadium to Shanghai. The Power cannot move any of its 11 home matches from Adelaide Oval to China under State Government orders for financing the $535 million redevelopment of the Oval.
AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan told The Advertiser on Friday the finer details of next year’s game in China are still to be resolved.
“Certainly, it is proposed that we are going back to China … but the team is working through what that looks like,” McLachlan said. “(St Kilda or another Victorian-based team?) It is being worked on.”
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au