PORT ADELAIDE'S AFL program made its return to training on Monday, signalling a promising fresh start to the new year.

Senior coach Ken Hinkley, spoke to the Adelaide media about individual player progress, pre-season expectations and his thoughts ahead of the 2023 season.

Hinkley on players returning from surgery:

Jason Horne-Francis: “He's made some really good, steady progress since surgery and he was running just before Christmas and is building up his running now. He'll probably get back involved in some training and some skill drills by – I would hope – by the end of next week but not too far after that, if not.”

Ollie Wines: “Ollie’s had some knee surgery in the off-season and it’s been a real careful and slow build for us. We've been very mindful of Ollie. He's such a big trainer but we've just got to manage him really well. We've done that now and he'll be back into some skills training within a couple of weeks.”

Josh Sinn: “Josh has had some surgery again in the off-season and is building his way back in there. You would have seen him running out there today. He’s probably got another three or four weeks behind Ollie before he builds back into full training. We're really positive about what he’s looking like at the moment. One hundred per cent he is (an option to replace Karl Amon on the wing). He's a high-quality player and a high draft pick who our club invested big into and if we look after him really well, we'll get the return over the next 10 to 12 years, not just the next 12 months.”

Hinkley on Junior Rioli:

“(Junior’s) been really good since he got here. He started early, he got back into training early with our young players … he’s been on camp with us and really got to know his new teammates well. He seems to be enjoying his time already here at Port. The upside for us is he’s a really talented player who brings some real class to our front end.”

Hinkley on Orazio Fantasia:

“(Orazio is looking) really promising. So far he's had a really good build in his pre-season, which we know is really important to him. His first year (with us), he had a really strong pre-season and played well. Unfortunately, last year it was well documented he didn’t get anything go his way and we certainly missed him. He's one of our real shining lights in the pre-season and one that all Port fans can look forward to seeing early in the new year. Orazio, for us as coaches, is almost like another new player for 2023.”

Hinkley on pre-season plans:

“We’ve got 39 days now until our first internal trial … everyone involved at the whole football club wants to maximise those 39 days and put ourselves in a really healthy position to start the season off. Unfortunately we weren’t in that position last year, so hopefully it will go our way at the start of (this) year.

“It an expectation at Port Adelaide that we do train hard and we train hard all the time. We expect that from our players all the time and again, that 39 days that we've got to prepare ourselves, a fair bit of that becomes fitness and physical (preparation) so we need to maximise that. Our boys have come back (from the Christmas break) in good shape.”

Hinkley on goals for 2023:

“Our mentality for the season is to prepare ourselves as best as we possibly can to give us a chance because we know that ultimately, last year wasn’t the season we wanted. We put ourselves behind the eight ball to start…we expected to be better than that and like every club in the competition, we need to maximise our period of time now to make sure we get a chance to have a great season.”

Port Adelaide is holding three open training sessions in January - click here to see the dates and times.