PORT ADELAIDE midfielder Tom Rockliff has credited a full pre-season with getting him back to his best football in his second year at the club.

The Power brought Rockliff in from Brisbane ahead of the 2018 season but injuries meant he didn’t complete much of the pre-season and he never hit full form in a disappointing first campaign.

The former Lions skipper, renowned for racking up possessions, had 44 touches against Melbourne on Saturday in an impressive first showing for 2019.

“Last year wasn’t ideal coming off shoulder surgery,” Rockliff said during an interview with Melbourne radio station RSN on Monday.

“I had the same surgery again this year but it felt like it was a lot better this time around and no interruptions this year in the pre-season, I’ve completed every session and I think they’re really important pre-seasons when you’re really young and really old.

“I think you can get away with it a bit in the middle of your career when you can do a bit less during the pre-season but especially the older you get with the kids coming in now – and we had four that played their first game on the weekend – it’s really important that you get that running done, and you get your legs conditioned for a big AFL season.”

It was a difficult first year at Alberton for Rockliff, who played 18 games but averaged just 20.5 disposals per game, well down on his career average of 25.84 and even further below the 32.7 touches he averaged in his best season in 2014.

He thanked coach Ken Hinkley for sticking by him and being patient through his injury-riddled 2018, saying he was eager to repay the faith to Hinkley and supporters in 2019.

“Last year I got a knee setback and then calf problems early so I didn’t play any pre-season games going into a brand-new team that I had never played with and they hadn’t played with me,” Rockliff explained.

“There was that to work through and then in Round 4 I came back from a calf and you could see I wasn’t moving all that well – not that I move well at the best of times – but I was moving even a bit worse than that.

“Credit to Kenny and he said ‘look go back, get a couple of runs under your belt, make sure you feel good, get a bit of touch in the SANFL and then we’ll go from there’.

“I think once I came back in I was able to do that for a five or six week period and then unfortunately the shoulder had another accident where it popped in and out and I had to carry that towards the back end of the year.”

As for Saturday’s impressive win over Melbourne, it caught many in the AFL world by surprise.

Rockliff said despite a host of new faces at the club and in the side, there was confidence among the group that it had the talent and game plan to challenge the more-fancied Demons.

“It was good to get out there and find a bit of the footy and play the way we did,” he said.

“I think we started a little bit slow and were a bit fumbley a bit early on.

“They brought the pressure, there’s no doubt about that but once we got the momentum going our way it felt like we had control of the game and played the way we wanted to.”