Port Adelaide football boss Chris Davies addresses key issues, including captaincy, trade targets
Will Port overlook Ollie Wines as its next skipper? Will Scott Lycett stay at Alberton? Port Adelaide football boss Chris Davies addresses key issues at the Power.
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Ollie Wines is far from a certainty to be Port Adelaide’s next captain, Scott Lycett is considering retiring and the club expects to lock away a trio of young guns.
They were among the key take-outs from Power football boss Chris Davies’s lengthy press conference to wrap the club’s 2023 season.
Four days on from Port’s straight-sets finals exit, Davies fronted the media for about 28 minutes on Wednesday, in almost certainly the club’s longest press conference of the year, to discuss the loss as well as hot off-season topics.
■ ON WHY THE POWER FELL SHORT IN FINALS AGAIN:
“The minor round was actually quite a good performance … then we went into the finals campaign where clearly we had some guys who were underdone. Ultimately some of the things that worked during the minor round didn’t work during the finals. Our midfield in both games weren’t at their best and they were people who were good for us during the year. It’s very hard to think Connor (Rozee), Zak (Butters), Jase (Horne-Francis), Miles (Bergman) won’t be better for the experience they’ve gone through this year, but we’re definitely going to need them to be better when the whips are cracking into the future.”
■ ON PLAYING TRENT MCKENZIE (ANKLE), TODD MARSHALL (HIP) AND CHARLIE DIXON (FOOT) DESPITE INJURY CLOUDS:
“Todd played probably the second half of the season with niggles and that was a challenge for him. The second discussion with regard to Trent was ‘is a three-quarter fit McKenzie a better alternative than who the coaches might have played?’ Whether it was a good or bad decision, it looked like Trent wasn’t as fit as maybe he had been earlier in the year. I actually thought Charlie played quite well in terms of a guy who came in off a significant break out of the team. It’s not an excuse for the performance overall, but we definitely had some guys who are key-position type players who weren’t at their fittest. Sometimes that’s the cards you’re dealt.”
■ ON WHETHER VICE-CAPTAIN OLLIE WINES WILL SUCCEED THE RETIRED TOM JONAS AS SKIPPER:
“We’ll have to work through that. We have to think about what’s setting individuals and the team up for success down the track. It’s not a fait accompli that Ollie is captain. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think he’s an outstanding leader and potentially the best one. But we have to be mindful of how we can get Ollie back (to top form), he’s 29 now (next month) and what the future of our club is going to look like. What we have seen this year is a generational reset in our club that’s come naturally that we have to jump on the back of. The Bergmans, the Marshalls, those three boys (Rozee, Butters, Horne-Francis) that I mentioned before. That’s the future of what the next generation of Port Adelaide is going to look like. It doesn’t mean we don’t want success now, we do.”
■ ON THE FUTURE OF OUT-OF-CONTRACT RUCKMEN SCOTT LYCETT:
“Scott right now is more thinking about whether he wants to continue to play. He’s had a pretty injury-interrupted last few years … and as big of a warrior as he has been, he’s really banged up”.
■ ON WHETHER OUT-OF-CONTRACT GOALSNEAK ORAZIO FANTASIA WILL STAY:
“We haven’t been able to finalise some of those list decisions because we need to go through a really important time for us from a trade perspective. We all see Orazio has significant talent and we would’ve liked to have seen it more at AFL level in the past two or three years. I think it’s more likely than not we’ll want to give Raz an opportunity, but how the numbers fall out from a trade and list number perspective, I can’t answer that right now.”
■ ON LOOKING TO RE-SIGN ROZEE, BUTTERS AND MARSHALL BEFORE NEXT YEAR, THE LAST SEASON OF THEIR DEALS:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that all three of those players ... are committed to Port Adelaide and will be committed long-term.”
■ ON MISSING OUT ON MELBOURNE RUCKMAN BRODIE GRUNDY, WHO APPEARS SYDNEY-BOUND:
“We ended up in a situation where we thought Brodie was better off elsewhere and Brodie ultimately thinks he’s better off elsewhere.”
■ ON LINKS TO RICHMOND RUCKMAN IVAN SOLDO AND WESTERN BULLDOGS’ JORDON SWEET’S TRADE REQUEST:
“We’re interested in all of the potential ruck people who are thinking of moving from their initial club. If that’s Ivan Soldo, then we’ll certainly be in that conversation. We think Jordon is the premier ruckman in the VFL and probably behind the best ruckman in the AFL (Tim English). We think he’s got obvious talent, but we also think Dante Visentini has a career ahead of him as well”.
■ ON GEELONG DEFENDER ESAVA RATUGOLEA AND ESSENDON BACKMAN BRANDON ZERK-THATCHER REQUESTING TRADES TO ALBERTON:
“Typically when players are out of contract it makes it easier for all these types of deals to get done. Bringing in both Esava and Zerk to the club has the potential for us to fill some gaps we think we struggled with at the end of the year.”
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