WHICH is the best team outside of the AFL top eight? Although it is a label of shallow merit, Port Adelaide is gaining credibility in that conversation about where it stands in the race to September.
Port Adelaide - with that resilience that has defined its fightback from a 0-5 start to the home-and-away series - is now level at 7-7 after a dramatic (and entertaining) two-point win against Gold Coast at Adelaide Oval on Sunday.
After losing four games by two goals or less this season, Port Adelaide has won a close one. It has this two-point win to put against the one-point victory against St Kilda at Cairns in round seven. The "never, ever give up" theme lives on.
Port Adelaide remains 12th - behind Richmond (8-6), St Kilda (8-6) and Gold Coast (7-7) - and two wins behind the eighth-ranked Western Bulldogs (8-6). But while there is spirit in the way Ken Hinkley's crew approaches this uphill battle to the top eight, there is hope.
The super round with four games pitting top-eight sides against each other actually delivered its best match with the 11th-placed Gold Coast and 12th-ranked Port Adelaide in the final match of the weekend. With 11 seconds to play - and with Port Adelaide grasping a hard-earned two-point lead - the last play was a boundary throw-in at the northern end in front of Gold Coast's goal.
How "ironic" that for all the pre-match talk of Port Adelaide facing a nightmare against Gold Coast giant ruckman Jarrod Witts, the Port Adelaide "makeshift" ruck battery stood up at that throw-in ... and Port Adelaide won the stoppage to clear the ball from the defensive 50.
Now the conversation on where Port Adelaide really sits in this race to September - with eight rounds to play - becomes more interesting. Who is the best outside the top eight today?
Since round 5, when Port Adelaide was 0-5 and Gold Coast and Richmond were 2-3, the three teams have across the past nine games delivered at -
PORT ADELAIDE: 7-2
RICHMOND: 6-3
GOLD COAST: 5-4.
Port Adelaide scored 13.15 (93) - well above it season-average (74) on a night it needed to match Gold Coast's opportunist goalscorers, in particular Izak Rankine and Ben Ainsworth.
Port Adelaide answered with eight goalscorers, including three from the midfield from the increasingly imposing Connor Rozee (two goals), Xavier Duursma (one) and Kane Farrell (one, with one denied by score review). This 13-goal scoreline includes key forward Charlie Dixon registering his 300th career goal (after 94 in 65 games at Gold Coast) at the start of the third term with a perfectly curved snap from deep in the north-west pocket.
Todd Marshall, again playing from the goalsquare, was the cool, perfect hand in attack. Four goals without a miss - and a presence in attack that redefines everything that has been thought and said to question his merit as an AFL player.
If this was round 15 game was recast a heavyweight boxing bout, the judges' cards would read best after half-time. This is when Port Adelaide and Gold Coast traded serious blows - and the lead changed twice and never blew out to more than 13 points (in Port Adelaide's favour).
Port Adelaide's opening against Sydney last week was manic - in-your-face pressure to the opposition. Against Gold Coast, the five-goal start was built on control of the ball and some neat connections between the lines.
Gold Coast was late to the first bounce - as noted with the Never Tear Us Apart anthem ending, the siren blasting ... and the umpires hurrying the Gold Coast forwards into their forward-50. No surprise then that Port Adelaide made the better start - and its second-best opening score of the season (5.4, seven points less than the 6.5 against North Melbourne at Hobart in round 9).
The team's fifth goal - and first for Marshall - in the 25th minute gave Port Adelaide a 26-point lead that was reduced to 18 on the quarter-time siren after some defensive lapses in time-on. These included Riley Bonner's kick-in to Trent McKenzie being intercepted by Mabior Chol and a free kick to Gold Coast journeyman Nick Holman on the siren when Port Adelaide was working down the clock. Both shots became behinds, sparing scoreboard pain to the personal embarrassment.
Gold Coast's ascendancy in time-on of the first term was actually a warning of a momentum swing. And it became a momentum wave at the start of the second term with Gold Coast opening with the first five scores - for 3.2 in 12 minutes - to turn the 18-point deficit into a two-point lead off finding space and using speed to attack the northern goal.
As Port Adelaide midfield coach Brett Montgomery noted at half-time - when Port Adelaide led by just five points - Gold Coast was "impressive" with its response during the second term when the contested-ball barometre remained marginally against Port Adelaide (minus four differential at each first-half break, 39-43 at quarter-time and 77-81 at half-time).
It took 17 minutes for Port Adelaide to score its first goal of the second term - and regain the lead - with Georgaides marking strongly ... and kicking soundly from 40 metres. The 1.4 in the term while conceding 3.5 was a fair reflection of the speed Gold Coast was putting into the game.
Port Adelaide defied Gold Coast during the enthralling third term with its trademark resilience - and impressive productivity from winning clearances, setting up inside-50s and making them count with five shots on goal and three goals after Ainsworth had given Gold Coast a one-point lead in the fifth minute.
And the last term ... it was brutal, it was Gold Coast living off speed and Port Adelaide patiently looking for control and the killer blow. First, Karl Amon missed from a set shot; then Mitch Georgiades did the same; and Travis Boak with the snap that gave Port Adelaide an eight-point lead with 3:38 to play.
The AFL's score review "ARC" was busy during the second term using the "snickometer" on both goal posts at the northern end to deny goals to Gold Coast off Chol's boot. But the call on Port Adelaide wingman Kane Farrell's booming left-foot kick during time-on is contentious for the call of being "touched on the line" when vision appeared to be using the back of the goalpost padding - rather than the goal-line - as the marker.
Port Adelaide's reshuffle of the magnets on the team board - as forced by injury and COVID protocols - kept balance and maintained the development of players in new roles.
Jeremy Finlayson again led the ruck (a week after handing the role to mid-season rookie draftee Brynn Teakle) - and again the Greater Western Sydney recruit proved he has much more to offer than novice ruckman Sam Hayes after the hit-out contest. His field play while serving as a "makeshift" ruckman cannot be underestimated - and is not suitably defined on reading the raw statistics of 13 disposals.
Even after standing up against Gold Coast's 209-centimetre giant Jarrod Witts in a battering series of centre-ruck contests, Finlayson even outreached Witts in the 14th minute of the last term and followed up his own hit-out to set up an inside-50 for Port Adelaide. Such spirit against the odds - and determination to play the ball at ground level after being tested in the air - is making Finlayson present the perfect response to the critics who have defined his 78-game AFL career as inconsistent.
Witts did - as expected - win the majority of the hit-outs against Finlayson and Dixon. Witts had 41 of Gold Coast's 43 hit-outs. Finlayson had 12 of Port Adelaide's 21; Dixon, eight.
Port Adelaide was - as forecast and planned against the towering Witts - winning the centre clearances 9-4 at half-time, but losing 20-12 away from the centrebounce. This figure finished at 16-13 in Port Adelaide's favour at centre bounces and 43-42 with Port Adelaide holding the edge at all stoppages. Vice-captain Ollie Wines (seven clearances) and Rozee (six) led the resistence.
Duursma came off the medical substitute seat to join from the wing the midfield rotations denied Zak Butters (knee injury).
Dan Houston did move from the midfield to defence - and Lachie Jones stayed in attack as he shed the label of "half-back flanker".
Trent McKenzie returned to a key defensive role - in the absence of Tom Clurey - to work on the last line against Levi Casboult (and later Chol) while Aliir Aliir was higher in defence in a starting match-up against Chris Burgess.
The forced re-adjustments held up - giving greater belief in Port Adelaide's "squad mentality".
Sam Mayes, the late call up to the Port Adelaide squad after deputy vice-captain Darcy Bryne-Jones joined fellow defender Tom Clurey on the COVID list, was the medical substitute. He was not activated, despite some heavy hits taken by Port Adelaide players, in particular captain Tom Jonas.
Every match leaves much to appreciate - and digest, either with pleasure or frustration.
For the highlights reel - and the team review - is yet another Jonas moment of desperate defence when working against the odds. Scroll to the 19th minute of the first term when Gold Coast first-round draftee forward Ben Ainsworth is running to the open goal - and is dispossessed by the oncoming Jonas. And take note of the back heel from Houston to ensure the spill stayed with Jonas. The captain never, ever gives up.
And half-forward Sam Powell-Pepper not letting the ball spill from a marking contest to over the eastern boundary in the 19th minute of the third term when his keeping the ball alive allowed Georgiades and Rozee to worked a tandem run for Port Adelaide's ninth goal.
Plus the back-to-back tackles by Duursma (on Brandon Ellis) and Steven Motlop (on Matt Rowell) in time-on of the third term reaffirm how Port Adelaide has recently led the AFL for forward-half pressure.
For the Monday cooler talk at the office will be the play-on call - that bewildered Charlie Dixon - when Travis Boak was pushed in the back while kicking into Port Adelaide's forward 50-metre arc during the second term.
For the bigger picture, where will Port Adelaide rate in conversations about teams to make a late charge to September's top-eight finals?
And next is a team that is carrying the title of best non-finalist of 2021 to emerge as a top-four contender: Fremantle at Perth Stadium where Port Adelaide has not beaten its portside counterpart in two AFL home-and-away meetings since 2018.
PORT ADELAIDE v GOLD COAST
PORT ADELAIDE 5.4 6.8 12.11 13.15 (93)
GOLD COAST 2.4 5.9 10.10 13.13 (91)
BEST - Port Adelaide: Rozee, Marshall, Finlayson, Wines, Houston, Bonner, Aliir.
GOALS - Port Adelaide: Marshall 4, Georgaides, Rozee 2, Dixon, Duursma, Farrell, Finlayson, Jones.
INJURY - Nil.
MEDICAL SUBSTITUTE: Sam Mayes (not activated).
CROWD: 26,214 at Adelaide Oval.
NEXT: Fremantle on Sunday at Perth Stadium.
