AFL 2021: Port Adelaide news leading into qualifying final

Will Mitch Georgiades take the field against the Cats? Ken Hinkley has made the call on the young star after completing training trying to overcome a minor hamstring issue.

Mitch Georgiades of the Power celebrates a goal.

Port Adelaide does not want to take a risk with Mitch Georgiades’ tight hamstring and will overlook the emerging forward for Friday night’s home qualifying final against Geelong.

Goalsneak Orazio Fantasia will replace Georgiades, who has been in doubt since being substituted out of the Power’s two-point away win over the Western Bulldogs last round.

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Mitch Georgiades looks on from the bench after being subbed from the match during the match against the Western Bulldogs. Picture: Getty Images

Earlier this week Port Adelaide was hopeful the 19-year-old might still be able to face the Cats because scans showed his issue was minor.

But coach Ken Hinkley said the West Australian did not train at a top level of Thursday, making the club’s decision easier.

Hinkley said the West Australian was expected to be sidelined for only one game.

“He’s not right, the risk is not worth taking,” Hinkley said.

“Clearly it’s a massive game and we’d love to have Mitch out there.”

Port Adelaide lost to Geelong by 21 points at home in June but Hinkley said matches that happened two or 10 weeks ago did not have much relevance to Friday night’s result.

Hinkley said his side was better prepared than last year, when it entered a qualifying final against Geelong as minor premier, because of the experience gained from 2020.

The Power beat the Cats in that October clash, only to fall to Richmond by six points a fortnight later.

“We’ve been through this only 12 months ago and, to be fair, it was quite a young group last year that had their first chance of playing in finals for a period of time,” Hinkley said.

“We are better prepared to understand what the challenges of finals will be.

“We know the quality of the sides we have to beat now, they’ll step up and we’ll have to step up with them.”

Hinkley said defender Tom Clurey and midfielder/forward Sam Powell-Pepper had been in incredible form but having a healthy squad had kept them outside the 22.

He said his team was prepared for whatever the finals looked like, regarding a potential bye and the location of games.

This can be Hinkley’s Mark Williams moment

Here we go again.

Same opponents, same stage, same venue, similar build-up.

Port Adelaide hosting Geelong in a qualifying final after another season of Covid chaos, the major round being held outside Victoria and reduced crowds.

This time, at Adelaide Oval on Friday night, it is a second-versus-third clash – the Power has not been the competition’s standout team during the minor round as it was in 2020.

But the club has peaked late in the season to earn another top-two finish and will again enter the finals with a huge opportunity to win its first premiership since 2004.

The Power prevailed by 16 points when the clubs faced off last October, spurred by Steven Motlop’s three goals and aided by the Cats’ inaccuracy.

Geelong kicked 5.12 and Tom Hawkins booted 0.5.

But Port Adelaide’s 2020 flag hopes ended with a six-point preliminary final loss at home to eventual premier Richmond a fortnight later.

Now, the Power has a chance to show how far it has come since that disappointment.

Todd Marshall reacts to the final siren in the 2020 preliminary final.

Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley set the scene for his side’s finals tilt last week the same way he kicked off the club’s pre-season campaign.

By telling the football world “we’re ready”.

Hinkley said it in January after signing a two-year contract extension on the back of the club’s run to a preliminary final last season.

“We’re ready to have a go and we’re ready to win (the premiership),” Hinkley said.

The ninth-year senior coach referenced the comment last Friday after beating the Western Bulldogs by two points at Marvel Stadium to secure its second straight top-two finish.

So. is Port Adelaide ready to win it all?

Dual Crows premiership coach Malcolm Blight says the club is in a familiar position to two decades ago.

“Mark Williams in 2004, he’d knocked at the door for two or three years prior to that (by finishing high on the ladder) and Port are going through that right now,” Blight tells News Corp.

“Ken Hinkley and the whole club have got their fingers crossed the door opens for them, maybe this year.

“I read some of the stuff he said after the (Bulldogs) game – they deserved to be where they are, they’ve got as good a chance as anybody, and he’s right.

“You can plan for this stuff, but you can’t script the result.”

Ken Hinkley was an assistant to Malcolm Blight at St Kilda.

Blight has a long history with Hinkley, who is preparing for his fifth finals campaign as Power coach in his ninth season at the club.

Hinkley played under Blight at the Cats, including in losing grand finals in 1992 and 1994, reinventing himself from “a flighty half-forward to a really solid, skilful, courageous half-back” that was twice an All-Australian.

In 2001, Hinkley worked alongside Blight as an assistant at St Kilda.

They were together again at Gold Coast when Hinkley was an assistant there and Blight was the Suns’ director of coaching.

“I think he’s got a terrific handle on the game, both from a technique and a strategy point of view,” Blight says.

“And he does build relationships, which we do know is the key thing now from every coach to get involved in.

“But Kenny was doing that a long time ago.”

Among the longest relationships Hinkley has had at Port Adelaide are with club greats Travis Boak and Robbie Gray, as well as Brownlow Medal fancy Ollie Wines.

The trio has been part of each of the Power’s finals campaigns under Hinkley since 2013, has stepped up at crucial stages again this year, including last week, and looms as key players in the premiership race.

Bullocking midfielder Wines is in the All-Australian squad for the first time, along with Power wingman Karl Amon and intercept defender Aliir Aliir.

Boak and Gray, both 33, are desperate to win a flag, having stuck with the club and knocked back offers to return home to Victoria.

They deserve a premiership and who knows if they will get any better opportunities after this.

Blight says on Friday night the duo will not be thinking that their time for success is running out.

“After the game they might,” he says.

“Prior to the game and during the game they won’t, they’ll do what they normally do, try to create and be a nuisance to the Geelong team.”

Mark Williams beat the choker tag when he led Port Adelaide to the 2004 premiership. Picture: Fiona Hamilton

Port Adelaide has only beaten the Cats, last year’s runner-up, four times in their past 24 meetings.

The Power also lost their match at Adelaide Oval in June by 21 points.

“I never used to take that as a yardstick,” Blight says.

“There’ll be different players – (Tom) Stewart’s out (injured) and he’s been a terrific player for Geelong all year.

“Sometimes it’s dangerous to look back.

“Even as a player, you sort of half-remember it but you don’t.”

When it lost that match to Geelong in June and fell short earlier this season against Melbourne, Brisbane and the Bulldogs, criticism came the Power’s way about its inability to beat the best teams.

But it never strayed from the rhetoric that what mattered was how it finished the minor round then what it did from there, not what happened in the middle of the year.

To them, the season was a marathon, not a sprint.

Last week Port beat a quality side when a top-two spot was on the line.

Now it gets an opportunity to back that up when it matters even more.

It will be the only club playing in front of a home crowd – up to 15,000 – and needs to capitalise, particularly knowing the other finals may be at a neutral Perth Stadium.

Will history repeat from last year or can Geelong prevail again?

The result is tough to call.

“It should be a ripper game,” Blight says

PORT RECEIVES HUGE QUALIFYING FINAL BOOST

— Simeon Thomas-Wilson

Port Adelaide is the form team in the competition right now, so the scrapping of the pre-finals bye is sitting extremely comfortably with Power assistant coach Brett Montgomery.

Instead of having a week off the Power will take on Geelong on Friday night after the AFL made the decision to get straight into the finals series.

With the Power on a six-game winning streak — their last loss coming against Melbourne in Round 17 — the opportunity to keep this run going is one that Montgomery is a fan of.

“It sits comfortably with us,” Montgomery said.

“We are not waiting for players to come off our injury list.

“We think our game, while we did not get it on our terms in the first six minutes against the Western Bulldogs, is in pretty good shape.

“We are more than happy to just keep rolling.”

The Power’s thrilling win over the Bulldogs on Friday night was the first time they have beaten a top-four side this season, a criticism that had hung around Ken Hinkley’s side for much of the year.

Montgomery said the Power still had room to improve.

“It is a great thing that, internally we believe, we have got more to give; we have not played the perfect game,” he said.

“We do feel we are in some pretty good form right now ... and it is the right time of the year to be feeling that way.

“It is a nice feeling to have people think we have another gear and we have some more room to grow. But internally we are pretty comfortable with how we are tracking.

Mitch Georgiades was subbed off with a hamstring injury in Round 23.

“The whole concept of us not being at our best, or us having another gear to go to — we have won nine of our last 10, we finished only a couple of points off top spot and we have rarely conceded any more than 10 goals a game.

“We are clearly doing a lot of things well.”

In a further boost to the Power young key forward Mitch Georgiades may not miss any footy even though he injured his hamstring against the Bulldogs.

Orazio Fantasia will be available for selection after he was managed in Round 23 and Montgomery said Sam Powell-Pepper, Boyd Woodcock and Tom Clurey all could come into the thinking if the Power need to, or decide to, make any changes.

“Whether it be one change or no change depends on the hamstring question with Mitch Georgiades,” Montgomery said.

“He will get scanned (on Monday) and the early indicators are it is at the minor end and maybe he does not miss any time at all.”

Originally published as AFL 2021: Port Adelaide news leading into qualifying final