PORT ADELAIDE is “really happy” with its fixture and looking forward to the challenge of playing some of the competition’s top sides twice, according to football boss Chris Davies.
The AFL released the 2022 fixture on Thursday, locking in venues, dates, times and broadcast information for the first nine rounds.
The rest of the fixture has been released as a floating fixture with venues and opponents confirmed but dates and times left to be confirmed as the season progresses.
DOWNLOAD: Click here to view Port Adelaide's full 2022 fixture
Port Adelaide will kick off its season at the Gabba against Brisbane, and have five of its first nine games broadcast nationally on free-to-air television providing valuable exposure for commercial partners.
“From a club perspective we’re really happy,” said Port Adelaide General Manager – Football, Chris Davies.
“If you look at the fixture you look two ways – commercially having five of our first nine games on national free-to-air (television) and then having some big teams coming to South Australia to play against us for our members and supporters to get along, it’s a really good draw for us.”
Port Adelaide will host West Coast in an ANZAC Round clash, maintaining a long history of the club hosting an ANZAC Round game.
Showdown LI in Round 3 will be a Friday night game for the first time, but it will be broadcast by Fox Footy instead of on free-to-air national television due to the AFL fixturing a double header that night.
Davies said whether it should have been a standalone game was a discussion for Adelaide, broadcasters and AFL, given it was a Crows home game.
“That’s Adelaide’s home game so we’ll hopefully win the game, that’s the main thing,” he said.
Port will play Melbourne, Geelong, Essendon, Richmond and Adelaide twice, on paper a hard task.
But Davies explained it was a reward for the club’s strong performance in the last two seasons.
“We’d rather it that way than the opposite,” he said. “Having teams who historically have performed well is the price you pay for being relatively successful in the minor round, which is what we’ve been in the last couple of years.
“We should be going into every game next year realistically thinking we can win them so it doesn’t really matter who we play twice.
“Testing yourself throughout the year against the best teams is what you want to do and if that means we have to play those teams twice then so be it.”
After two seasons impacted by the global pandemic which restricted travel, Port will make up for it with games in seven cities across the nation including in Alice Springs, Cairns and Hobart.
Davies said the club had no issue with the travel schedule.
“We’re comfortable traveling, we do it really well as a club, I know (coach) Ken (Hinkley) looks to galvanise the group every time we’re away and I think our record when we’re away is pretty decent,” he explained.
“It doesn’t hold any concerns for us. We’ll go away and try and win every game.”
Davies said the club was awaiting more information around what the pre-season looks like in terms of any pre-season practice games.
He expected to know more in the new year.
