Port Adelaide speedster Dom Barry was disciplined after alcohol-related incident with staff member in China
PORT Adelaide’s Dom Barry was disciplined by the club’s leadership group for a late night alcohol-related incident involving a staff member in Shanghai but it was not behind his absence from the AFL team for the rest of the season.
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PORT Adelaide’s Dom Barry was disciplined by the club’s leadership group for a late night alcohol-related incident with a staff member in Shanghai but it was not behind his absence from the AFL team for the rest of the season.
The Power on Friday confirmed to The Advertiser that Barry was intoxicated, missed the team curfew and was involved in an altercation with a staff member on Port Adelaide’s last night out in Shanghai following the Round 9 win over Gold Coast on May 19.
Barry did not play in the China game but was in Shanghai with the team as a travelling emergency.
There was no police involvement but Barry answered to Port’s leadership group when they returned home and it’s understood it was decided he would be ineligible for AFL selection for up to six weeks.
Port did not confirm the ban yesterday and said he did not miss any football given he played SANFL where he was named in the Magpies’ best players in three of the following four weeks.
In two of those games he earned maximum Magarey Medal votes against Central District on June 9 and Sturt on June 17.
But there was no AFL recall as Port won five of its next six games post-China, and when Barry’s form tailed off in the second half of the season he did not add to the five games he played for the Power early in the year.
“Dom was involved in a minor altercation with a staff member during our last night in Shanghai after he was asked to return to our hotel on the team bus during a night out,” Port Adelaide football manager Chris Davies said.
“It was deemed that Dom was too intoxicated and he didn’t meet the curfew that we set for the playing group.
“It was an internal disciplinary matter that was dealt with swiftly and privately at the time. Dom played for the Magpies the following weekend and did not miss any football as a result.”
Port Adelaide is preparing to return to China for the third consecutive year in 2019 but the game will not be against Gold Coast after the Suns told the AFL it wanted out.
“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,” Gold Coast chairman Tony Cochrane said.
It has been reported that Port Adelaide’s likely opponent for Shanghai next year will be St Kilda in a move that has Victorian Government backing.
Barry, 24, has one year left on his contract at Port Adelaide which handed him an AFL lifeline with pick 61 in the 2017 national draft.
He played five games with Melbourne in 2014 before leaving the club to return to his home in Central Australia.
But while reconnecting with his culture and community, football remained a passion and he won a premiership with the NT Thunder while driving a school bus and working for the SANFL as a match-day co-ordinator of the local competition.
He moved to Adelaide in 2017 and joined Glenelg in the SANFL where he worked his way onto Port Adelaide’s AFL list.
Port Adelaide has delisted two players in the wake of its disappointing second-half slide — Jimmy Toumpas and Emmanuel Irra — but Joe Atley, Jake Neade, Jack Trengove and Will Snelling are out of contract and no guarantee to stay at Alberton.
No further delistings will be made until after the AFL’s trade period in October.
reece.homfray@news.com.au