IT’s this time of year when many sit down to analyse the recently released AFL fixture and decide whether their side has an easy or a tough draw for the year ahead.

But not Port Adelaide General Manager - Football, Chris Davies.

Champion Data has analysed each club’s fixture and ranked teams from hardest to easiest based primarily on who each team plays twice.

For the record, the Power’s draw comes in as tenth hardest with Collingwood’s ranked toughest and St Kilda’s easiest.

Davies doesn’t buy into the data though, but he is happy with the Power’s fixture.

“The data is interesting, isn’t it?” he said during a press conference on Thursday.

“It doesn’t normally play out in terms of the way the season plays out.

“There’s no easy games in the AFL competition. You’ve got to end up playing who the AFL tell you to play and we’ve got no issues with the draw.

“The draw is what it is. We’ll come up against the teams every week that we need to and we’ll need to be good enough to beat them.”

The Power is scheduled to play three consecutive away games in Tasmania, Shanghai and Perth, split up by the bye.

It will also have three six-day breaks between games, but that is fine by Davies and the football department.

“We think it’s a fair draw overall. We don’t have any issues with day breaks or those kinds of things so we’re really pleased with where we’re at,” he said.

“There are some things that we ask the AFL to keep in mind and that’s day breaks, those types of things.

“There were talks about the potential for five-day breaks and we don’t have any of them so without sounding boring we’re pretty pleased where we’ve ended up from a footy perspective.

“You’ve got to put it into perspective. The Western Australian teams travel every second week just as we do and we’re mindful of travel loads and we manage that around training so no issues there.”

Davies was asked about the Power missing out on a potential grudge match at Alberton Oval against Hawthorn and former player Chad Wingard, with the sides instead to meet in Tasmania.

But he said that wasn’t how he saw it, preferring to focus on winning games rather than where they were played and who was playing.

“We won’t be playing Chad Wingard next year, we’ll be playing Hawthorn and likewise we’ll be playing North Melbourne not against (Jared) Polec.

“We’re not looking at the specifics of where we play each team.” 

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