PORT ADELAIDE has a list capable of competing with the best teams and isn’t looking to rebuild through the draft, according to its General Manager of Football, Chris Davies.
Davies was asked about the club’s strategy of attacking the 2018 draft for young talent by former Essendon star Matthew Lloyd on NAB Trade Radio on Thursday morning.
Lloyd said he was confused by the club recruiting six experienced players last season but looking to top up with young players at this year’s draft.
“You talk about those six players, three of those players were on one-year contracts, the other three were guys we wanted to bring into the club to fill a need,” Davies said.
“And where a lot of other clubs look to their state league clubs as solely about development, we have an element of performance in that.
“We were disappointing last year, and we thought Trent (McKenzie), Lindsay (Thomas) and Jack Trengove as an example would play some pretty good footy at SANFL level and help develop our younger talent.
“We probably didn’t get the outcomes that we wanted at SANFL level as well as AFL level last year but to suggest that those six confused our strategy, I think is probably a step far.”
Last month, Power coach Ken Hinkley said the club had planned for three or four years to be a big player in the 2018 National Draft.
Davies echoed that plan, saying it was about having the strongest list for next season and beyond.
“We have gone to free agency, trade and then the following year to draft in the last few (years) if you have a look back at strategy,” he said.
“And as Ken said, this year is one where we pegged a while back that we were going to attack the draft.
“We don’t look at things in premiership windows as much as we think we’ve got a list that we think can compete and compete really strongly.
“The reality is that we think we’ve got a list that is better than where it finished last season so we’ll attack the draft this year but that’s not to suggest that we don’t think we’re going to be competitive next year.
“You’ve seen now, there’s been plenty of pundits who’ve got things wrong where they’ve excluded clubs from being in contention far too early and we hope that with what we can do through this trade period and the draft period, we’re highly competitive again next year and pushing to finish far better than we did last year.”
Davies said the club would consider trading draft picks to position itself higher up the order to try and secure some of South Australia’s Under 18 national championship winning players, who would be highly sought after this year.
“Our goal for the entire trade and draft period is to maintain as much talent on our list as possible and also to get as high up in the draft as we can as well,” he said.
“There’s a number of South Australian players in the draft this year that look like they’re going to go at the top of the draft order… so we’ve got some draft capital, we did some work last year to make sure we were in this draft in a pretty significant way.
“If we get to a point where we say look we want to package up a couple of picks to move up in the draft then we’re in a good position to do that, so that will unfold throughout the trade period but it’s fair to say we are open to moving up the draft order.
“Nothing’s off the table at the moment.”
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