PORT ADELAIDE is not going away. It is not giving up on the prospect of a late entry to the AFL top eight - and on the form shown at Adelaide Oval on Saturday night, there would be a few teams looking uneasily over their shoulders.
Some of them are in the next few weeks to come face-to-face with a defiant Port Adelaide team that has more and more reason to believe its best football is good enough to present on the big stages of the AFL games that matter in September.
Port Adelaide's commanding 55-point win against 13th-ranked non-contender Greater Western Sydney levels the win-loss ledger again, this time at 8-8. The gap from 12th spot to the doorway to September's top-eight finals has become just one win - and the percentage gap also narrowed, just marginally.
The nine-goal win elevated Port Adelaide's percentage from 103.9 to 108.6. At one stage, after such a commanding first half that built a 38-point lead, it might have seemed capable of building even more percentage with the team's biggest win of the season (still 84 points against West Coast in round six).
The second half was more of a grind than a grinding down of Greater Western Sydney, a team that promised with recent form under interim coach Mark McVeigh to deliver much more. Until Sam Powell-Pepper, Connor Rozee and Mitch Georgiades launched an unanswered three-goal surge during the last 10 minutes of the match, Port Adelaide was comfortably holding the much-needed four premiership points with a six-goal advantage.
Port Adelaide now has six home-and-away games to play. The equation remains Port Adelaide must find at least four wins. The percentage gap might mean there will need to be five. This long, tightrope script - Will Port Adelaide stand up or will it fall? - has a little bit more to play out.
Not in question is the Port Adelaide players' patience to live on the edge.
Certainly not in question is the rise on the AFL player rankings of Port Adelaide midfielder Connor Rozee.
Free of the limitations of injury, Rozee now does appear to float where others plod on the football field. He does find space where others see road blocks. He works the ball with such precision that the No. 5 call in the 2018 AFL national draft is game by game earning the right to carry the label of "elite" footballer.
Rozee did as such great midfielders do - he hit the scoreboard. His 4.2 made him Port Adelaide's most-productive player.
Port Adelaide senior coach Ken Hinkley's concept that his team's best football is good enough - it just needs to be seen more often and with more consistency - certainly was evident during the first half.
In every facet of the game, there was a command that made Port Adelaide appear very, very good ... and Greater Western Sydney, by comparison, sub-class.
In defence, where Port Adelaide conceded just one goal in each of the first three quarters and none in the last, the best term to sum up the work of captain Tom Jonas' crew was: "stingy". The 2.4 conceded at half-time is the second-lowest score in the clubs' 13 meetings for AFL premiership points. The full-time score of 3.11 (29) marks Greater Western Sydney's lowest score against Port Adelaide - replacing the 6.10 (46) at Metricon Stadium on the Gold Coast from the shortened games of the 2020 COVID-impacted season.
In attack, Port Adelaide is more and more becoming confident of building its plays to key forward Todd Marshall rather than just Charlie Dixon. The 12 goals were from seven boots - with the midfielders, led by Rozee, taking up the pressing challenge to contribute more.
The biggest concern in this zone remains the goalkicking yips of young forward Mitch Georgiades. Lauded a year ago by some of the game's greatest goalkickers for having a perfect routine, Georgiades today cannot keep his kick on line. He finished with 1.0 on the scoresheet - plus an out-of-bounds on the full after the three quarter-time siren.
And when Georgiades rushes his set shot - as he did from the boundary at the northern end during time-on of the last term - he can make the ball do as he commands. Make sense of that.
And in between the two 50-metre arcs there was this silky connection between the lines, particularly with the foot passing. Given the noted talent in the Greater Western Sydney line-up, keeping control of the match agenda - rather than being caught amid momentum swings - is quite an achievement.
Port Adelaide's forced need to work an unconventional ruck tandem put - again - Jeremy Finlayson in the lead ruck role. His energy for the first bounce might have been fuelled by wanting to make a strong impression against his former Greater Western Sydney team-mates, but there is no questioning how Finlayson does have a genuine eagerness for the demanding role to work in ruck while conceding centimetres to opposition ruckmen.
The key performance indicators reinforce Finlayson's work is truly measured AFTER the ruck contest. He did deliver 15 hit-outs - and followed up with five clearances.
On the "barometer" statistics, Port Adelaide lost the hit-outs 27-35 (5-10 at centre). But it won the centre clearances - against a noted midfield - 9-8 and all stoppages, 37-26.
Port Adelaide's defence remains the cornerstone of this determined campaign to remain relevant in Season 2022. Tom Clurey used his late call-up - to cover the loss of fellow key defender Trent McKenzie - as an opportunity to out-do All-Australian team-mate Aliir Aliir for intercept marks.
The work of Ryan Burton, who had to counter the well-known threat posed by Greater Western Sydney captain Toby Greene, is of high order - in particular is pin-point rebound kicks.
For the fourth consecutive week, Port Adelaide has opened without a deficit at quarter-time. This time, the 16-point lead on GWS was loaded with some special first-quarter highlights provided by Dixon, Marshall and the very industrious Rozee.
Marshall put aside the disappointment of the last-minute miss from a set shot against Fremantle in Perth six days earlier to open with a goal from each side of the River Torrens end.
Rozee was at 100 per cent efficiency with his eight disposals at quarter-time. He also had two goals - and the second from outside-50 just underlined how good the midfielder was off the boot.
Dixon did not score - but his attempt to put up Port Adelaide's first score of the match from the south-east pocket deserved better as a reward for his persistence ... and the dummy sold to Greater Western Sydney defender Phil Davis on the boundary line.
Dixon worked the more conventional script at the start of the third term to out-lead and out-mark Davis in a run through the same pocket to finish with a long-range goal - his first on a night when he again played with vigour, particularly when thrust into ruck relief for Finlayson.
The prize for best goal from a tight situation in a forward pocket seemed appropriately assigned to Port Adelaide half-forward Sam Powell-Pepper during time-on of the third term. Unfortunately, SPP's kick from the south-west pocket's boundary - after shrugging off Callan Ward - did not survive the scrutiny of the ARC score review system that saw enough on the video to declare Callum Brown left his fingerprints on the Sherrin.
For the past three months Port Adelaide has lived in the now - week by week, game by game, to stay on the edge of the conversation of how September would play out with the top-eight finals. But the next month, with four solid tests against recent premiership clubs and noted rivals, is as close to replicating September without offering any silverware: AFL premier Melbourne in Alice Springs on Sunday, followed by league leader Geelong at Adelaide Oval, the super hot Collingwood at the MCG and Richmond at Adelaide Oval.
One game at a time ...
PORT ADELAIDE v GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY
PORT ADELAIDE 4.2 8.6 9.9 12.12 (84)
GWS 1.4 2.4 3.9 3.11 (29)
BEST - Port Adelaide: Rozee, Butters, Powell-Pepper, Boak, Finlayson, Burton.
GOALS: Port Adelaide: Rozee 4, Farrell, Marshall 2, Bergman, Dixon, Georgiades, Powell-Pepper.
INJURY - Nil.
MEDICAL SUBSTITUTE: Jed McEntee (not activated).
CROWD: 24,744 at Adelaide Oval.
NEXT: Melbourne at Alice Springs, Sunday 2.50pm start.
