AFL Gather Round: Port Adelaide Mitch Georgiades to make long-awaited return against Essendon

Port Adelaide forward Mitch Georgiades will make his long-awaited return on Friday night. Coach Ken Hinkley says he’s a “better AFL player” now – and his role will be a new one.

Port Adelaide forward Mitch Georgiades will play his first AFL game since rupturing his ACL last year – but he’ll be in a new role.

The Power will bring back the 22-year-old for its Friday night Gather Round clash against Essendon, less than a year after he suffered the serious knee injury in a SANFL game.

“Mitch Georgiades will play his first match after coming back from an ACL, which is a great story for our footy club,” Port Adelaide senior coach Ken Hinkley said.

“We are pretty excited to go out and see Mitch play.”

Hinkley said the 192cm Georgiades would coexist in the forward line with fellow talls Charlie Dixon, Todd Marshall, Jeremy Finlayson as well as ruck Ivan Soldo.

“We will stick with the one ruck and go with the way we have been playing,” he said.

“Mitch has played pretty well over the last two or three weeks… there is never going to be an absolute perfect time to bring him back in but we are excited of what he is going to bring to our team.

“You just have to look at his history and form, it is pretty hard work for an opposition to stop.

“He is a great athlete, not just an aerial athlete but on the ground as well.

“We are really hopeful he will add to our speed on the ground.”

Mitch Georgiades will return to the Power side on Friday night. Picture: Mark Brake/Getty Images

As part of this, Hinkley said Georgiades would be playing a different role in the forward line.

“He has had time to get better and focus on certain areas of his game that will make him a better AFL player,” Hinkley said.

“He had a really significant knee injury that early days after surgery he was struggling to overcome. But since then he has been rapid in his recovery.

“We have enjoyed the way he has trained this pre-season in a different style, Mitch has been pretty much the goalsquare lead-up forward at the ball whereas now we think he is growing his game to play a true half-forward flanker role if you go back to the old days when there were half-forward flankers.”

As well as Georgiades, young star Jason Horne-Francis returns to the side after missing the past two weeks with a hamstring injury.

He replaces Brownlow Medallist Ollie Wines, who has a hamstring injury of his own.

Wines was running at Alberton on Thursday and Hinkley said he was hopeful he would just miss this week.

The Power will be looking to return to winning ways after going down to Melbourne last time out, despite dominating nearly all of the key stats.

This included a significant imbalance in forward 50 entries, but Hinkley said the Demons made shots the Power were comfortable in giving them.

Ken Hinkley is hopeful Ollie Wines will only miss a week. Picture: Mark Brake/Getty Images

“To Melbourne’s credit they played a really good game and executed really well in front of goals,” he said.

“Ultimately that was the most significant stat in the game they kicked goals.

“It is pretty hard to stop a team if they are going to kick the goals they did, we put them in really good positions to take shots that were less likely than likely to kick goals but they turned them into goals.”

Last week Power forwards coach Chad Cornes said he hoped Port fans would stick with the club on its goalkicking program after an inaccurate start to the season.

Hinkley said he was confident the results on the scoreboard would come quickly.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on our goalkicking, sometimes as with everything you do it can take some time to transfer,” he said.

“There will be games that we kick really well, I hope there aren’t many games where we don’t kick well.

“We can’t spend any more time on it.”

Originally published as AFL Gather Round: Port Adelaide Mitch Georgiades to make long-awaited return against Essendon