PORT ADELAIDE is promising to be aggressive in the trade period in an effort to improve its list and compete for next year’s premiership.

The Power missed the top eight in 2022 after playing in successive preliminary finals in the previous two seasons.

West Coast forward Junior Rioli has already indicated a desire to move to Alberton, and speaking on AFL trade radio on Tuesday, Port Adelaide’s General Manager – Football, Chris Davies says the club will also seek to bring in other players who can make the side stronger.

“We attack the trade and draft period wanting to get better,” he said. “We were really disappointed with our season and clearly, we’ve got things that we need to get better at.

“We were comfortable with the type of footy we played in the second half of the year but the reality was that 0-5 start put us too far behind the eight ball in order for us to get on a roll during the year and be competitive come the end of the year.

“We don’t just want to make the finals; we want to make sure we’re competing for premierships and the reality is we were a long way from that this year.

“We’ve got some areas of our list that we want to address and we’re not going to hide behind the second part of the year as the reason why we don’t need to be aggressive through this period.

“We want to be aggressive enough to get some good players in and to help the areas of our list that we think need some assistance.”

One player who will not be at the club is wingman Karl Amon, who has elected to exercise his free agency rights and seek a move to Hawthorn.

Davies said he expected a first round or end of first round pick as compensation but said the club would have to wait and see because it was not aware of the exact contract he had been offered, which was part of the AFL’s considerations around the compensation the club would receive.

He was also asked about various other potential trade targets and answered questions about the club’s rucks and media suggestions Mitch Georgiades might be involved in the Junior Rioli trade.

Chris Davies on Junior Rioli:

“It’s really his goal sense, his ability on ground to link that midfield forward area - an area of our team we need to get better at if we’re going to be better than we were this year.

“That high half forward position is an area I think is becoming more important from a team standpoint and with Connor Rozee and Zak Butters spending more time in the midfield this year and us being unable to get Orazio Fantasia on the park, we left ourselves short in that position and short of real quality.”

Chris Davies on Richmond’s Jack Graham and Melbourne’s Kysaiah Pickett:

“We’ve got interest in South Australian players who might be interested in coming home. Jack is obviously a good player. I’m not sure where his situation is at with Richmond but any player who is from South Australia who wants to come back, we’ve got to take an interest in.

“There are too many players who leave South Australia to go back to their home states and for that matter for every club, teams who lose players because they want to go to other states.

“We need to make sure we’ve got an interest in players who are wanting to come home at any point in time.”

Chris Davies on Mitch Georgiades’ future:

“That was one that gathered a head of steam itself. I imagine that when Junior (Rioli) highlighted that he wanted to come to Port Adelaide, it was more coming from Perth who West Coast might potentially be interested in from Port Adelaide. It’s not something we’ve contemplated at all. George (Georgiades) is contracted to our club and we see him as a pretty important part of our forward line into the future.

“There’s not too many 20–21-year-old players who have had the number of shots on goal he has had over the last couple of years. We took a punt on him. He hadn’t played the year before we drafted him. He’s done some really good work for us and he’s going to be a 10+ year AFL forward that you don’t want to give up, or contemplate giving up lightly so Mitch will be at our club for, we hope, a good period of time.”

Chris Davies on Port Adelaide’s ruck options:

“Lycett needs to come back and get fit. He had a collision type injury that set him back. He’s clearly the club’s number one ruckman. We think Charlie Dixon could work there, Jeremy Finlayson certainly did some good work, even though it’s not the conventional way teams would look at to get through the issue, we thought that might have changed the game for us a bit.

“The way that plays out in the off-season will be interesting but right now our primary number one ruck is Scott Lycett and we’re keen to get him back and get him back fit because we think Finlayson can play a really important role forward and as a second ruck.

“We’ve got Sam Hayes on our list who played seven or eight AFL games this season and will be better for that experience as well, and we’ve brought Brynn Teakle in and have a young developing ruck in Dante Visentini on our list who we’ve got a fair bit of time for. I think we’ve got enough numbers. Whether we can get them fit and playing the right footy at the important times is going to be the key factor to the ruck situation at our club in 2023.”

Chris Davies on the club’s interest in Brodie Grundy:

“We had an initial discussion with Brodie’s manager about where he wanted to end up. It was reasonable to suggest that he saw his future still in Victoria so that conversation came and went pretty quickly.

“Again, we have to maintain interest in players who might be contemplating coming back to South Australia but I don’t think Brodie was ever in that mindset.”