PORT ADELAIDE General Manager - Football Chris Davies says the club must continue to have a long-term view of how to keep improving its list.

There has been mounting pressure on senior coach Ken Hinkley, but Davies is adamant the club is more focussed on building a team that can compete for a premiership.

“The idea that we are building to win a final is not right,” Davies said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon at Alberton.

“We are wanting to build a list to win a premiership.

“We got to the end of 2018 and made some decisions that were reasonably bold at the time.

“We brought some players in who we think are going to help us longer-term and short-term.”

The head of football at Alberton said the players the Power brought in last year had an immediate impact, and the club will continue to look to bring in high-end talent.

“Rozee and Duursma had fantastic seasons,” Davies said.

“Butters will have a better season next year. Bringing in Ryan Burton - another first-round pick - last year. High-end talent.

“We think we can do that with three or four players in this upcoming draft. This is more than looking at the finals, this is wanting to build a list that can compete to win the flag.”

Davies admitted it was an extremely difficult decision to trade Dougal Howard to St Kilda, but said the club had to weigh up a number of factors.

“In these situations you have to weigh up what you believe is best for the club for any point in time. There are a whole heap of factors that go into those decisions.

“At no point do you look and think that they’re not hard decisions to make. They are made on the balance of what you think is right at the time.

“List management is an inexact science, but the reality is, we think we will be better off for this trade happening, and that’s why we did it.”

It has been widely documented that the 2020 NAB AFL Draft is highly compromised with a number of father-son and academy players already linked to clubs, and Davies said that was front of mind as the Power headed into this trade period.

“We knew the 2020 draft was going to be a compromised one, so you begin to make decisions as early as you can based on that,” he said.

“It may well be trading players next year. We’ve gone through different years where we have attacked the draft hard. Or we’ve gone through free agency.

“We will have to keep all of those options in mind.”

Port will take picks 12, 18, 29, 66, 67, 71 and 86 into the 2019 NAB AFL Draft.