PORT
General Manager – Football Chris Davies summed up the season during a press conference on Wednesday.
He said it was evident when the Power lost six of its last seven games that things weren’t right and strong decisions would be made ahead of 2019.
“When you are plus or minus two wins for four seasons, the reality is the situation has to change,” Davies said.
“We’ve got decisions to make over the next period of time to put in place a program for 2019 that will allow us to be better than what we are at the moment.
“Our people deserve that, our people deserve better than what we’ve delivered, we have higher expectations than what we’ve delivered so we need to make some decisions to take this club forward right now because sitting tenth is not what Port Adelaide does.”
Davies said that would involve further personnel changes after the delisting of defenders Jimmy Toumpas and Emmanuel Irra, and the retirement of
“I just want to be really clear. We finished tenth. We have to get better,” he said.
“We’re not shying away from changes,
“That doesn’t make the people who’ve been part of it so far bad people, it just clearly is not what Port Adelaide stands for.
“We have to make sure we’re making decisions into the future with that in mind because this club is more than tenth.
Davies dismissed speculation that classy forward Chad Wingard would be offered for trade.
He said there had been no discussion about that.
“Chad’s good, he’s outstanding, he’s a fantastic player,” Davies said.
"From our perspective, we're planning for Chad to be here and he's contracted for another year.
"It’s interesting the cycle of the AFL now that when players become free agents down the track, there's obviously a fair bit of speculation about them the year before."
When asked about Jared Polec’s future with the club Davies said the speedy midfielder wanted to remain with the club but had a big decision to make because of other offers he had received.
The out-of-contract 25-year-old has had a career-best season, averaging 25.1 disposals per game and finishing third in the competition for
"The reality is going to be, the offer elsewhere is going to be too big for him to pass up at this point," Davies said.
"We've put an offer to Jared previously that he knows exactly what it is and he's got to make some decisions over the next period of time.
"We've been really clear on the fact that he's got offers from other clubs.
"The longer this goes, the more likely he is to be leaving the club."
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