PORT Adelaide vice-captain Kane Cornes says he’d be keen to see the rushed behind rule, currently on trial in the NAB Cup/Challenge competition, introduced for the start of the 2009 premiership season.

The rule, which penalises a player for blatantly rushing the ball through for a behind, has proved effective in pre-season games and Cornes wants a permanent change of the rule.

“The rushed behind rule is good and, if the AFL is going to bring in any of the rule changes for round one, that’s the one the players would be keen on,” Cornes said.

“It allows the forwards to put pressure on and gives your forwards more opportunities to hold the ball in and score goals. The rushed behind gave defenders an easy out.

“With the forward line that we’ve got with guys that put huge pressure on, like Westy (Justin Westhoff), Daniel Motlop and Brett Ebert, it’s going to create a lot more scoring opportunities for us.”

The Power will take on North Melbourne in a NAB Challenge game at Visy Park on Saturday afternoon.

Peter Burgoyne is expected to take his place in the side after missing last week’s loss to Geelong and his brother Shaun should also play his first game of the pre-season.

Forward Warren Tredrea, who is experiencing minor soreness in the back of his knee, has already been ruled out. Draftee Hamish Hartlett (AC joint) will also be missing.

Cornes said Port Adelaide would use the last two weeks of NAB Challenge games to finalise its team to tackle Essendon in round one on March 29.

“We’ve played some pretty good footy in the first two games and our game style has been good. We’re moving the ball pretty well out of the back line and we just need to keep working on that,” Cornes said.

“We trained for a session today on the things we didn’t do well on the weekend. We’ll put that into place and probably even finalise our 22-24 players who are in the mix for round one. We’ll probably start to see more of the set-up we’ll use in round one.”

Port Adelaide lost its opening four games last year and never fully recovered to finish a disappointing 13th.

Cornes said it was important that the Power got off to a flyer in 2009.

“We want to get off to a really good start and that’s been a focus for us,” he said.

“It’ll get more supporters to the game if we start the season off really well. Besides that, we’re just out to win as many games as we can after last year.”