Mick McGuane: Where Port Adelaide and Adelaide sit ahead of Showdown 49
Port Adelaide will enter Showdown 49 as heavy favourites. But is Adelaide any a chance of an upset? Mick McGuane takes an in-depth look.
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The Showdown has arrived and two teams at very different stages of their development are set to face off this weekend.
Leading football analyst Mick McGuane breaks down just where Port Adelaide and Adelaide are at this season – and where they sit on the premiership clock.
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PORT ADELAIDE
Game style in a nutshell
I applaud the innovation.
Port Adelaide recognised an opportunity with the AFL’s new rules this season and flipped its game style on its head – to great effect.
However, that game style now needs to be flipped back to the 2020 version.
The Power got ahead of the competition in Rounds 1 to 6 and caught their opposition off guard by being able to transition the ball from their defensive 50 to their forward 50 and score.
Their ball movement was quick, precise and directed through the corridor.
They have aggressive and assertive running defenders, like Darcy Byrne-Jones and Hamish Hartlett, as well as quick forwards in Orazio Fantasia and Steven Motlop who like to get up the ground but complement the slingshot footy Port are currently playing.
After seven rounds, the Power rank first in the competition for points from defensive half, averaging 43 a game.
In most people’s eyes, you would call that a weapon.
But it’s not sustainable.
Port’s brand over recent years – particularly last year – has been a forward-half team.
Port ranked second in the competition for time in forward half differential last season, but this year sit 11th.
Here’s the problem – against Brisbane last weekend, the Power scored only seven points from their defensive half chains.
Hartlett and Byrne-Jones were both quiet due to the close attention the Lions forwards gave them and the team’s game quickly fell away in a 49-point loss, which opposition teams will study closely.
Port was a kick away from a Grand Final berth last year with a model that was really sustainable and coach Ken Hinkley will look to revert back to being more of a front-half team starting this weekend against the Crows.
23-and-unders
The Power might just have the best crop of young players in the competition.
And when I look at them I instantly gravitate to Zak Butters, who brings skill, hardness, selflessness, flexibility and a big heart.
Dan Houston’s kicking is elite.
He brings dare to the team his with aggressive kicking.
It simply complements the team.
Mitch Georgiades is a talent.
I’ve got great admiration for how he attacks a marking contest for one so young.
He has an innate ability to hover in the air to protect his space while at the same time keeping his opponent away from spoiling the contest.
Above all that, he has a simple but very effective kicking technique.
Connor Rozee is an opportunistic forward but could elevate himself into a pinch-hit breakaway midfielder like Cyril Rioli.
Xavier Duursma will become an inside player in time, Willem Drew is a workmanlike talent and Miles Bergman has looked confident through the midfield in his debut season.
Peter Ladhams reminds me of Dean Cox as a mobile ruckman who can accumulate the footy around the ground and Todd Marshall will be a part of a twin-towers future in attack for a long time if he can work on his game and build his body.
This group will be Port’s backbone for a long time.
Coaching corner
A key component of coaching is getting the most out of your players and Ken Hinkley is doing that.
Part of the Power’s early season success has been around their off-season recruiting of Aliir Aliir and Orazio Fantasia, and their crop of kids.
However, there has also been improvement from the incumbents.
Houston has gone to a higher level, Karl Amon has been outstanding and Ollie Wines is an elite stoppage player who is finding plenty of the ball.
That all comes back to Ken understanding where players play their best footy.
The next evolution of his coaching might be around finding their best forward line mix to perform consistently.
Charlie Dixon has always been the go-to forward, but being too predictable can be costly.
Premiership clock
Port Adelaide is a ticking time bomb that could well go off this year.
There is a concern away from home, with two bad losses this season coming to West Coast (37 points) and Brisbane (49 points) on the road.
But all teams will have a form splutter from time to time this year.
If they can get the contested side of their game right and revert back to a more forward-half game, the Power are up to their eyeballs in this year’s premiership race.
ADELAIDE
Game style in a nutshell
They wouldn’t have wanted it that way, but it was very much ‘roll the dice’ for the Crows in the opening four rounds.
The Crows’ trademark is all about contest and pressure.
Winning your own ball in contested situations has stood the test of time and this is an area the players must become more consistent at.
After Round 4, Adelaide ranked first in the competition for scores per inside-50 and Taylor Walker was leading the Coleman Medal with 20 goals.
In two of those first four games, they kicked over 100 points in shootouts and they ranked first for scores from stoppages differential in the opening month.
Their speed of ball movement and efficiency once inside forward 50 was troubling teams they came up against.
However, the contest has dropped off over the past three weeks which has dried up the scoring and left a leaky defence exposed.
The loss of Rory Sloane to an eye injury has hurt their clearance and contested ball game, but the Crows desperately need to get it back and control stoppages to cover their gaps in defence.
As much as you want to bring an exciting brand of football for your fans, coach Matthew Nicks wouldn’t want to be involved in high-scoring matches every week and rely on kicking 100 points to win.
Accuracy did not help in last week’s loss to Greater Western Sydney, either, with Adelaide kicking 4.15 (39).
But there’s no doubt the focus against Port Adelaide this week will be on trying to win the contested ball count – something the Crows have done just twice this year.
23-and-unders
Lachie Sholl got a second Rising Star nomination in as many years in Round 4 – and it’s easy to see why.
I love guys who can kick the footy and he seems to lap up the responsibility and execute well by foot.
A diamond in the rough at pick 64 in the 2018 national draft, Sholl has proven a great find for Hamish Ogilvie and the Adelaide recruiting team.
Harry Schoenberg has risen as a midfielder this year and is clean around clearances, finding consistency the next area of growth in his game.
From a rookie perspective, Jordan Butts has been the perfect replacement for Kyle Hartigan in a key defensive post.
No. 2 draft pick Riley Thilthorpe has only played two games but looks incredibly exciting as a young forward who can also serve as a relief ruck – which is a good model to operate under.
Small forward Ned McHenry is super competitive and there is upside in him, while midfielder Sam Berry is going to be a player of the future.
However, there are also a couple of concerns among the Crows’ group of young players.
Darcy Fogarty, a pick 12 in 2017, is out of contract at the end of the year and has shown positive signs of what he is capable of at times but simply is not fit enough and is far too inconsistent because of that.
He’s purely a stay-at-home forward because he can’t get up and down the ground and work over an opponent like a Brody Mihocek does at Collingwood.
Until Fogarty gets to that level, we’re going to see a player that is inconsistent and won’t stay in the team because of it.
The question for the Crows is do they stay patient, or is a hard call about his future not far away?
Where is Chayce Jones, too?
A pick No. 9 in 2018, he looked like being a player who could become a competent midfielder but he has been a non-playing medical substitute in his only senior match this season after playing 15 matches last year.
Coaching corner
Matthew Nicks had a tumultuous start in the hot seat and lost his first 13 games as coach.
However, he has stayed the course and won six of 11 matches since.
Nicks has come from some strong cultural clubs – none more so than Sydney – and has worked with some successful coaches.
He’s identified what style suits his current crop of players.
Getting consistent speed on the game with better ball security is his next challenge.
Get that right and scoring want be an issue.
But for now, the Crows have to find some better balance in their game between offence and defence and talk about being harder for longer around stoppages and in contested situations.
Premiership clock
The Crows are at about 3 o’clock.
They’re one-and-a-half years into a rebuild under a new coach and they have energised their team with some youth.
The absence of important senior players like Rory Sloane, Matt Crouch, Daniel Talia and Tom Lynch in the early part of the season have hurt, but have also helped give some game day experience to other players.
This group is in the early stages of team development but also individual growth.
Realistically, the Crows are three to five years away from being in a serious premiership conversation.
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