IT LACKED a bit of polish, but Ken Hinkley says his side’s AAMI Community Series performance against Adelaide on Saturday showed improvement and had plenty of positives to take away.

After an opening half in which Port Adelaide failed to capitalise on opportunities and was at times sloppy under pressure, it pulled away with a dominant third quarter at Richmond Oval to turn a five-point half time deficit into a 37-point win.

The eight-goals-to-three third term broke the game apart after a tightly contested first half of football in which the Crows caused Port some trouble.

While happy with the win, Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley admitted there was still room for improvement before his side’s season opener in a fortnight.

“It was better than last week,” Hinkley said of the win, referencing the practice match loss to the Suns on the Gold Coast.

“It took a little while to get going the way we’d like to play. I think both sides had a crack and the conditions made it quite swirly and made it really challenging, certainly early.

“Our polish was off a little, there’s no doubt about that.

“Even pure score in the first quarter 1.5 to the third quarter 8.2 so I think the finish wasn’t where we’d like it to be but you want everything, you didn’t get everything today and we’ve got to keep working.”

Asked about what changed in the second half, Hinkley said his side made better use of its possession and started to take its opportunities in front of goal.

In fact, the stats say that by the end of the game Port had 98 more disposals, 14 more inside 50s and nearly doubled Adelaide’s 52 marks.

“We got some opportunities in some space and when we got some space, we were able to transition the ball really smoothly at times and critically important again we put the ball through the sticks, which helps,” Hinkley said.

“I thought it was a nice strong performance, and I liked that at the end of the day that some players got some feel of our football club.”

Pleasingly, there were good signs through Port’s midfield – often criticised as lacking depth – and running defenders Ryan Burton, Riley Bonner, Darcy Byrne-Jones and Lachie Jones provided plenty of drive.

Brownlow Medallist Ollie Wines was the dominant player on the ground with a game-high 37 disposals and eight clearances but he was well supported by Zak Butters (32 disposals, four clearances, 1.1) and Travis Boak (26 disposals, three clearances, two goals).

Most pleasing for Hinkley was seeing Butters and a host of others adding a different dimension to the club’s midfield.

“It’s deeper,” Hinkley said of his midfield. “It’s definitely got more flexibility to it. I think they can throw in a few more people and if you had a look at the numbers today, there’d be a lot of people spending lots of different time in there and that’s really pleasing for us.

“That’s not always going to be smooth still. This is a work in progress. We still don’t have that to where it’ll go to and we think it’ll go to a really high level.”

Port’s forward line also held up well without the injured Charlie Dixon with Mitch Georgiades (four goals), new recruit Jeremy Finlayson (3.1) and Todd Marshall (1.0) combining well with smaller options Boak and Connor Rozee (two goals each) to rack up a score of 17.9 (111).

“It was really pleasing for Jeremy because it’s his new club and obviously Mitch we know what he’s capable of and Todd, I thought the same,” Hinkley said.

“I thought the three talls together worked really well together and they got a bit of ruck work as well between Todd and Jeremy as well, which gets us in a reasonable position for Round 1.”

The only sour note of the afternoon was Robbie Gray’s early departure from the contest after experiencing some minor hamstring awareness in the first quarter.

Hinkley said the club opted to take no risk with the experienced forward but he expected Gray to be in the mix for the Round 1 trip to Brisbane.