PORT ADELAIDE made a move into the top three of the SANFL ladder after comprehensively beating West Adelaide by 77 points at Alberton Oval on Sunday.

The Magpies kept the Bloods to just three goals for the entire match while booting nine goals to two in the first half - a pleasing result for Port coach Matt Lokan.

“There are a lot of positives to come out of that match, their midfield is as good as any in the competition with the likes of Kaine Stevens and Tom Keough – who our captain Cam Sutcliffe went to today and did a good job,” he said.

“We were up for a really good challenge today and I was really pleased that the boys could respond to that.

“Looking at our backline, it has changed a lot over the past month with Joel Garner and Jarrod Lienert coming out of the AFL side and Matty Broadbent back playing some good footy.

“Some of the young guys are starting to get some consistency with the way they play.”

It was the Magpies tall forwards who took hold of the game from the outset with Billy Frampton having a standout four-goal, nine-mark and 25-disposal performance, working in partnership with fellow talls Sam Hayes, Peter Ladhams, Paddy Ryder and Todd Marshall.

“Billy was great, by his own admission he was a bit quiet last week and to be able to respond, hit the scoreboard and be a presence in the forward line was great, sometimes it is hard to perform down there with quite a few tall targets,” Lokan said.

“We are starting to play the brand of footy that we want to play, our younger guys are starting to get some experience at the level and is resulting in some good results.

“We were able to be more efficient going inside forward 50, it is something that we have struggled with at times but today when we got it in there we tended to score and that was the difference in the game.”

Port have focussed on delivering a tough and attacking brand of football over the past month and have now claimed four consecutive wins.

The Magpies will be hoping to extend that run when they travel to Port Pirie this Saturday to face the top of the table Crows.

“It is four in a row now and we have had a good core of players playing in our team regularly and we have been able to play the style of footy that we are wanting to play,” he said.

“We were hard at the contest today, first to the ball, our groundball numbers were really strong and our contested possession numbers were really high.

“That is the type of game style that we wanted to play, the running and aggressive game and if we can use the corridor or our defenders to do that it is certainly something that we try and do, we are slowly getting to where we wanted to be and play some good footy.”