Track watch: All the latest news from Port Adelaide’s pre-season

The 2024 preparations at the Power are in full swing, with the club setting the bar high for its young guns, and their fitness staff predicting an explosion from Jason Horne-Francis in 2024.

Port Adelaide fitness boss Stuart Graham says Jason Horne-Francis is on track to become one of the Power’s “elite mid runners” as the young star continues his standout pre-season at Alberton.

Horne-Francis’ first pre-season at Alberton after his highly publicised move from North Melbourne was hampered by surgery on both legs to decompress the arteries behind his knees after experiencing “at times debilitating” pain.

Sporting significant scars on the back of his legs, Horne-Francis’ running was impacted.

But this is not the case in his second pre-season at Alberton with Graham saying it could the former No. 1 draft pick to exciting heights as Power players returned from their Christmas break.

Horne-Francis had a reduced pre-season last year. (Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)

“It is super exciting for him, this is his first pre-season that he can fully immerse himself in and we set him some pretty ambitious running targets,” Graham said.

“That was a thing he wanted to really focus on, his running capacity. We saw glimpses of it and his capability from a physical perspective so we challenged him on that and through the off-season he sought personal trainers to help him and it has really set him up to be one of our elite mid runners so it is exciting to see where that goes to.

“His calf surgery was really the thing we were cautious about it and really meant he could only do straight line running for the initial part of pre-season.

“So it was the football exposure stuff that he lacked, which he is now getting.”

Contributing to Horne-Francis’ stellar pre-season was a trip with Power veteran Travis Boak to the United States to work with sports and human movement specialist Austin Einhorn.

Boak took Connor Rozee and Zak Butters with him to work with Einhorn last pre-season, with the two midfielders becoming stars of the competition in 2023.

Zak Butters in action at Port training. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Graham said it was great that Boak – who himself has returned in “great shape” – took Horne-Francis to America.

“We encourage all the guys to be curious with their training and seek people out to get an edge and those marginal gains and Trav took him under his wing and showed him a few things,” he said.

Here is what else is happening at Alberton.

GEORGIADES GRINDING

There’s a couple of players still away from the main group as they recover from surgeries during the off-season.

Key forward Todd Marshall is set to be integrated into training over the next one to two weeks after significant hip surgery in the off-season while defender Trent McKenzie is coming back after being banged up for most of 2023.

Marshall could be available for the Power’s pre-season hit-outs but Port are monitoring how his recovery is tracking.

But out of guys in the rehab group, Graham is the most impressed by how young key forward Mitch Georgiades is travelling with his return from an ACL injury suffered in late April last year.

Georgiades tore his ACL in the 2023 season. Picture: Russell Millard

The high-flyer has been doing a lot of running and is moving freely.

He has targeted a return for Round 1 and Graham said this was on the cards, but there were still some hurdles to clear.

“Mitch is tracking well, he is probably the best of the rehab guys at the moment. He is well ahead of timeline,” Graham said.

“We have some functional test and some strength tests that he has to get through but he is getting aggressive with his training and his drills as well so we are really pleased with how he is going.

“Yeah it is realistic (Round 1), it is open there are some things that he needs to tick off but he is making all the right moves to do it.”

TIME FOR SINN CITY?

Among all the young talent at the Power Josh Sinn, the 12th pick of the 2021 draft, has been a bit of a forgotten man with his first two years at Alberton heavily impacted by injury.

The impacts of Covid on the Victorian underage competitions in 2020 and 2021 meant that Sinn came to Alberton with not a lot of training under his belt and this has been carefully monitored by the Power.

But ahead of his third season and with a spot on the wing up for grabs, Graham said there was optimism that 2024 could be the breakout season for Sinn.

“He is going well, he is still on a managed load which we do want to get him off but given his history of how he came into the program he didn’t have a lot of training history so we have to be respectful of that and we are training him up and he is getting more exposure as the pre-season goes on,” Graham said.

“We certainly hope it is going to be a breakout season for him.”

New recruit Ivan Soldo in action at Power training. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

HEALTHY LIST

Graham is a happy man at Alberton at the moment, with the fitness levels of the Power ahead of what was planned.

The Power had its pre-season camp in Queensland before Christmas with a lot of conditioning done there ahead of the next stage of the plan for the 2024 season.

New ruck recruit Ivan Soldo had minor finger surgery last year but this hasn’t impacted his training.

Spearhead Charlie Dixon is on a managed training load but that is more about his age and injury history with the foot injury that bothered him so much in 2023 completely healed.

While Ollie Wines has had a strong pre-season after a down year in 2023, which came off a significantly impacted preparation.

Graham said Lachie Jones could go to another level physically, while Jase Burgoyne and Kane Farrell had also impressed in the condition they returned to the club in.

Originally published as Track watch: All the latest news from Port Adelaide’s pre-season