FOOTY LIKE NEVER BEFORE
Game on ... but like we have never seen it before.
No crowds, at least for six months. Shorter games. Home matches that might need to be played away from home. A fixture that is certain with the match-ups for the first four games, but not confirmed on timeslots.
The invisible predator - called coronavirus or COVID-19 - is to test the world, let alone the game of Australian football. This is a torment that is beyond comparison with anything we have known in our lifetimes.
Port Adelaide has played in each of the club's 149 seasons since 1870, even when there was no league from 1870-1876. But nothing - not even two world wars, the financial challenges in the 1930s, 1980s and before the club's refit at Adelaide Oval in 2014 nor the threat of eviction from the SANFL in 1990 during the AFL saga - compares with the challenges of starting Season 2020.
When the SA Football League stopped for World War I, Port Adelaide - noting the public's morale needed to be uplifted with football - stepped up for a "Patriotic League" from 1916-1918 (and won the first two titles) while raising much-needed funds for the servicemen.
When the SA National Football League - and the Commonwealth government - accepted football had a part to play during World War II, Port Adelaide merged with West Torrens from 1942-1944 (and won the first flag and played in all three grand finals).
When the SANFL was in its most tumultous winter in 1990 - through the debate on adding an SA-based team to the expanding, national VFL-AFL competition - Port Adelaide endured the threat of being cast aside (and won the premiership and, ultimately, the battle to be in the AFL from 1997).
Port Adelaide does cope amid adversity.
No one knows how - or even when - Season 2020 will end. It is unlikely to be the traditional "last Saturday in September". But no-one could have imagined the club's 150th anniversary would start with uncertainty beyond how many goals will key forward Charlie Dixon kick this season; who makes up the best starting six in the Port Adelaide midfield and where does the evergreen Justin Westhoff make his mark in his 14th consecutive AFL season (in which he starts 32 games off Kane Cornes' mark of 300 matches)?
The plan has gone from 22 home-and-away games to 17 - and possibly a finals system that involves more than the top-eight teams. Shanghai is off the fixture. And the highly anticipated Showdown - with the bars jumper - in Round 2 will be like none of the 47 derbies before it. Now everyone will have to sing "Never Tear Us Apart" from their loungerooms (social distancing observed).
After six months of hope being rebuilt at Alberton, we start the season with AFL teams being quarantined and tested by medicos rather than the analysis of statistics gathered by Champion Data, vision edits from Channel Seven and Fox Footy or the critique of Leigh Matthews in a commentary box.
There is no "right" nor "wrong" call from the AFL Commission. There cannot be when there is such uncertainty from a virus that has made people stockpile toilet paper as if the rolls were gold bars. No-one can envy the game's leaders in taking the responsibility to call the league on or off when either decision carries enormous repurcussions.
While one medical officer told the Sydney Kings NBL basketball team on Tuesday he would not travel to Perth - nor a wedding party an hour from Sydney - the nation's chief medical officer advised the AFL Commission on Wednesday that the protocols put in place by the AFL allow for the game's players to start a season.
There is a risk - and there is the reality that at some stage the season will stop, as have so many other sporting competitions, with a player testing positive for COVID19.
For now we have a game. Very different than anything we have seen before. And Australian football, as is the catchphrase today, will have to keep finding a way to do as it has done since 1877 ... crown a champion.
ROUND ONE
Port Adelaide at Gold Coast
Remember "dirty ball" and how this manic approach to winning the contest and unravelling the West Coast defence gave Port Adelaide the upset 42-point win against West Coast in Perth as history was made with the Good Friday night game last season?
Port Adelaide scored 13.17, with 10 players putting on goals - and none kicking more than two. And the defence ruled supreme as Josh Kennedy and Jack Darling were held to just one goal as a tall-tandem partnership in the West Coast forward-50.
Charlie Dixon did not play that night in Perth (as he remained on the injury list recovering, with a few setbacks, from his serious leg injuries).
It would be more reassuring to see Dixon was in the goal square at Metricon Stadium on Saturday evening. But his absence - and the refit of the Port Adelaide attack around young gun Todd Marshall, the experience of Brad Ebert and Justin Westhoff and the aggressive work of Sam Powell-Pepper - need not be considered a limitation to what the Power can put on the scoreboard against Gold Coast.
As coach Ken Hinkley has often said, a team - and its success - needs to be based on far more than one player and one way of playing.
Port Adelaide's midfield has been primed to have more and more dimension this season - and the numbers in recent seasons suggest there will be no shortage of opportunities created from stoppages. But it is all about efficiency and productivity with delivery inside-50 and conversion on the scoreboard.
The transformation of defender Dan Houston to a midfielder - and the progress of forward Connor Rozee to the engine room in his second season of AFL football - advances the answer to that challenge.
So how does Port Adelaide put up a winning score against a Gold Coast unit that is noted for its strong starts to AFL seasons? Good Friday 2019 is a good pointer to Season Opener 2020.
TO WATCH
Shortened quarters - 16 rather than 20 minutes - should (in theory) work in favour of teams built on speed and free of the worry about spending "the petrol tickets" before the clock hits "red time" (time-on). This should work to Port Adelaide's favour, provided the players are setting the agenda early - as noted with the Carlton fightback against Richmond in the season-opener at the MCG on Thursday night.
From senior coach Ken Hinkley: “You are taking around 20 per cent of game time and dealing with similar rotations and similar numbers on the bench. That will be really good for the game. It will create some genuine speed in the game and keep the speed there for a bit longer."
SELECTION TABLE
Port Adelaide: Look who is playing! After jumping on everyone's shoulders in pre-season training, Mitch Georgiades (191cm, 78kg) advances from pick No. 18 in last year's AFL national draft in late November to playing a role in the Port Adelaide forward tandem on Saturday for his first AFL game. The trend of coach Ken Hinkley backing first-round draftees at the selection table for opening rounds continues.
From the injury list that expanded during the last pre-season Marsh Community Series clash with the Western Bulldogs at Whyalla, lead ruckman Scott Lycett recovered from his ankle soreness, but key forward Charlie Dixon is not clear of his abductor concern.
The domino effect? Port Adelaide veteran Justin Westhoff will support Lycett in ruck duties. In attack, much rests on 21-year-old forward Todd Marshall (20 games, 22 goals).
Gold Coast: Stuart Dew's refit of the Suns puts three new names onto Gold Coast's roll call of AFL players - top-ranked draftees Noah Anderson (pick No. 2) and Matt Rowell (No. 1) and academy graduate Connor Budarick.
A pair of old hands in new colours - former Crows midfielder Hugh Greenwood and Richmond premiership midfielder Brandon Ellis - start their new AFL chapters with Gold Coast.
From the injury list, captain and club champion Jarrod Witts has recovered from an ankle injury.
FROM THE INSIDE
“Obviously, the situation we face is really unusual and we are just managing that the best way we can. I am really confident the boys are ready to go and ready to go and play."
Senior coach KEN HINKLEY
THE BIRD SEED
(The small details that count)
Gold Coast v Port Adelaide, Metricon Stadium
When: Saturday.
Time change: Now 7.10pm Adelaide time (15 minutes later than scheduled).
Rule change: Now 16 minutes (rather than 20) plus time-on.
Last time: Port Adelaide 13.11 (89) d Gold Coast 7.9 (51) at Adelaide Oval, Round 9, 2019.
Overall: Port Adelaide 10, Gold Coast 1.
Streak: Port Adelaide has won past 10.
Scoring averages: Port Adelaide 99, Gold Coast 59.
Tightest margin: Three points in Gold Coast's favour in the clubs' first clash, Round 5, 2011 at Football Park.
Biggest margin: 115 points in Port Adelaide's favour at Adelaide Oval, Round 23, 2017.
By the venue: Port Adelaide 5-0 at Metricon Stadium, Gold Coast.
Opening-round form in previous five seasons - Port Adelaide 4-1, WWWWL (loss to Fremantle by seven points at Subiaco Oval in Perth in 2015); Gold Coast 2-3, LWLWL.
BRIDGE OF SPIES
(Who has crossed from one camp to the other)
Port Adelaide: Senior coach Ken Hinkley, key forward Charlie Dixon and long-kicking defender Trent McKenzie.
Gold Coast: Senior coach Stuart Dew, assistant coach Josh Francou, defenders Jack Hombsch and Sean Lemmens (drafted from Port Adelaide SANFL).
TIP
Port Adelaide by 21 points.
To get philosophical: You never truly appreciate something until it is taken away from you. No one needs a reminder of this at Port Adelaide, particularly after the events of 2011-2012 with the dark chapter clouding the club's AFL licence. So it is "game on"; it is different, it is challenging for different reasons. But the 150th consecutive season of the Port Adelaide Football Club playing a game of football is on.
NEXT?
A Showdown - originally placed in the Saturday night time slot at Adelaide Oval with Port Adelaide as host and the club's much-loved "bars jumper" to be worn in a derby for the first time. However ... as AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan calls for being flexible and agile, the need to get as many as four games played in 15 days could put Showdown XLVIII (48) into a Thursday or Friday night time slot. Finally in the big time of national television exposure ... but!
