LOAD up the asterisk.

It is time for the Port Adelaide Football Club's mid-season review. Why break with tradition? More so when it makes for such a good read.

Port Adelaide carries the unbeaten tag from the first half of the season. Yes, there is an asterisk.

The record reads two wins from two pre-season games against two of last year's top-eight finalists - a 21-point triumph against Brisbane in Queensland on February 23 followed by a 10-point win against the highly regarded Western Bulldogs at Whyalla on March 7.

Port Adelaide ranked as the sixth-best team in the month-long pre-season series (behind 2019 grand finalist Greater Western Sydney, 2019 wooden spooner Gold Coast, Melbourne, Fremantle and St Kilda). Here is the first asterisk. What does pre-season form mean when just one of these five teams, the rebounding Giants from western Sydney, backed up with victory in the premiership-season opener?

For Port Adelaide, there was the objective met in delivering new hope for a new season by measuring up (albeit in the usually misleading pre-season) against two sides that carried strong top-eight prospects for Season 2020.

Certainly the 18 AFL captains filing their predictions for the year were encouraged. Tom Jonas had 10 of his 17 colleagues rank Port Adelaide as a top-eight finalist for September - and seventh overall (behind West Coast, defending champion Richmond, Greater Western Sydney, Collingwood, Brisbane and the Western Bulldogs).

Port Adelaide lived up to this status with its season-opener at Metricon Stadium (soon to be the club's new home away from home) by beating Gold Coast by 47 points, a margin again limited by an unsatisfactory scoring conversion rate (10.16).

Port Adelaide has carried the unbeaten tag - and the honour of leading the 18-team AFL competition - for the past 10 weeks. The club's AFL record, from rounds 12-22 in Season 2003 has been matched and will be broken at the weekend. Another asterisk.

Port Adelaide's league-leading percentage - 262.1 - rewrites the record from the club's 2004 AFL premiership-winning season that began with a 96-point belting of Essendon at Football Park to deliver a percentage of 254. No asterisk here. This one stays in the record books regardless.

Of course, there has been nothing since ...

The COVID19 pandemic has shutdown the AFL home-and-away season until its restart on Thursday, June 11 - with Port Adelaide waiting until Saturday, June 13 to host Adelaide in Showdown XLVIII at Adelaide Oval in the fourth rewrite of the AFL fixture.

But let the review continue, category by category.

GAINS

Vice-captain OLLIE WINES wins from the shutdown. After injuring his left shoulder in pre-season training and requiring corrective surgery in early February - 13 months after the same outcome to his right shoulder from a water-skiing mishap on the Australian Day weekend in 2019 - the Port Adelaide midfielder has banked a major benefit with less haste to return to AFL action. His build-up to the season restart is far more controlled than last year ... and no player has gained ground by being able to play week after week.

Key forward CHARLIE DIXON also wins with a longer "pre-season". Dixon was absent from the season-opener against his former club, Gold Coast, after suffering a groin complaint in the pre-season closer against the Western Bulldogs. The images of Dixon in training with assistant coach Chad Cornes suggest the 29-year-old forward will restart the season in strong physical condition. Dixon was limited to nine AFL games last year by a difficult recovery from the serious leg injuries he suffered in the Round 21, 2018 clash with West Coast at Adelaide Oval.

LOSSES

Game-changer ROBBIE GRAY went through the pre-season appearing to be in his best physical condition - ever. Then, a fortnight ago, the mercurial midfielder-forward dropped a weight onto a toe leaving it broken - and some doubt on his path to his 19th Showdown (after being the best-afield in five of his 18 derbies).

Every player who felt he had advanced from the pre-season with good health, momentum and sound form for the premiership season. At Alberton, first there was the 14-day self-isolation demand on the return from the Gold Coast; then the uncertainty on when the AFL would resume; and more self-isolation for the Port Adelaide players who had used the unexpected break to return to their family bases outside South Australia.

Staff at the Port Adelaide Football Club, including assistant coach Scott Thompson and physiotherapist Michael Wilson in the football department. The fall-out from the COVID-19 pandemic is still to be counted.

Port Adelaide's SANFL campaign. The AFL's demand that no AFL-listed player be part of any other competition has forced Port Adelaide out of the SANFL premiership race for the first time.

GOOD

AFL Rising Star 2019 runner-up CONNOR ROZEE certainly backed up his debut-season form with his 21 touches against Gold Coast. Midfielder or specialist forward to torment defences?

West Australian draftee MITCH GEORGIADES (pick No. 18, 2019 AFL national draft) lived up to the promise of testing air-traffic controllers with his exciting leap.

DAN HOUSTON is advancing his portfolio as a midfielder after making the shift from defence during Port Adelaide's clash with St Kilda in Shanghai last season.

No Port Adelaide player has created an unwanted headline for a non-football matter.

BAD

Port Adelaide's goalkicking. Another asterisk? The 10.16 - including 1.13 in the second half on the slippery Metricon Stadium turf - continued a theme from last season when Port Adelaide converted at less than 50 per cent in 10 of 22 home-and-away games.

UGLY

COVID19. 

OFF FIELD

Port Adelaide's big win off the field certainly from the 150th gala function at the Adelaide Convention Centre in early March. To quote AFL premiership captain Warren Tredrea: Club's best-ever function.

"Congratulations to the football club for putting this on," Tredrea said to more than 1000 of Port Adelaide's family in the ballroom. "This is the best function I've ever seen. It's almost like a footy trip revisited.

"It's team-mates, it's sponsors, it's friends, it's the (Port Adelaide) community. It has been wonderful".

Restrictions imposed to protect public safety has taken away much from the Port Adelaide 150th anniversary calendar since the gala. The hope remains for a big finish to the delayed party, in particular with the release of the club's Archives Collection that tells the story of Port Adelaide's rise from the pioneer days of South Australia to fulfilling its mission statement of playing in the best football competition in Australia - and taking the game abroad.

NEXT

Port Adelaide has a four-week block of matches in Adelaide (versus Adelaide), Brisbane (versus Brisbane) and on the Gold Coast (versus Fremantle and West Coast).

Never before in Port Adelaide's AFL story - not even the inaugural season of 1997 - has it been more difficult to assess where a team stands. The script is loaded with new themes. No lead-up matches to a Showdown for the first time. A long break with no trial games. No structured competition for the players who are not selected in the first 22 and those needing to find match fitness in a secondary competition to prove their readiness for AFL selection.

And there is the 16-minute question. Who can create an advantage from the shortened game?

Theory might have it that Port Adelaide's wish to play fast-paced football early does not carry the risk of being spent in "red time" - the time-on period of quarters. In the season-opener against Gold Coast, Port Adelaide's scoring and leakage rate during a quarter broke down as such -

SCORED (quarter-by-quarter)

0-8 minutes: 0.1/2.0/0.1/1.2 - (total) 3.4

9-16 minutes: 2.0/1.2/0.0/0.2 - 3.4

Time-on: 2.1/2.2/0.2/0.3 - 4.8

Conclusion: Port Adelaide finishes hard in shorter quarters. Very small sample however. Load up another asterisk.

CONCEDED (quarter-by-quarter)

0-8 minutes: 0.1/2.0/0.2/0.0 - (total) 2.3

9-16 minutes: 1.0/0.0/1.0/0.0 - 2.0

Time-on: 0.0/0.1/0.1/0.0 - 0.2

Conclusion: Port Adelaide's defence is under the least pressure in "red time" while the midfield-forward connection keeps the scoring in the other half. One game ... another asterisk is appropriate here.

TAKE IT TO THE BANK

(Five things we learned in the past week)

1) Port Adelaide's supporter base was nudged last week to answer the question: Should the black-and-white bars be worn in Showdown XLVIII at Adelaide Oval on June 13 ... when there will be no fans at the venue (but many proudly donning the bars in their loungerooms)? Clearly the answer is: If Port Adelaide played a game on Mars, the supporters would demand the club design the space suits with the bars.

The bigger question is: Should the Never Tear Us Apart anthem be played to echo across the empty terraces from the sound system at Adelaide Oval?

2) Two tweets from former Adelaide-based players, Josh Jenkins and Charlie Cameron:

Jenkins: 'In the AFL world, everyone is brawling with everyone ..."

Cameron: "Is it just me or everyone in AFL Media is arguing each other to make a story out of it?"

And Collingwood president and multi-media personality Eddie McGuire seems to be central to each of the spotfires.

3) No debate in Australian football will draw a such a variance in opinion than the size of the interchange bench (currently four) and the cap on rotations (currently 90 for each side in an AFL match).

The push from the league coaches for extended benches when the AFL restarts on June 11 highlights - as Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley noted last week - that clubs are now managing squads rather than 22-man line-ups. This is more relevant when there is no second-tier competition to use for working players back into form and match fitness. So coming off the bench as the sixth interchange player did offer relief for coaches in managing their full lists in these "unprecedented times".

4) SANFL football will resume - on June 27 with an eight-team competition, but for the first time since the league was formed as the SA Football Association in 1877 there will be no Port Adelaide presence. There will be a final four rather than a top-five major round that was first introduced in 1973 and abandoned for just one season in 2003 when the SANFL was a nine-team competition. To be remembered from the first top-five final series in 1973 was the SANFL's need for a second venue while it ran the elimination and qualifying finals and first and second semi-finals head-to-head with 2.10pm starts on Saturdays. Despite being ranked higher (fourth), Port Adelaide was sent to Norwood Oval to play fifth-ranked Norwood in the elimination final while Adelaide Oval was used for the Sturt-North Adelaide qualifying final.

5) Australian football's most-loved night - the national Hall of Fame induction - will be spread across four evenings as a television event with subscription television network, Fox Footy, starting on Monday and continuing until Thursday evening. The COVID restrictions do not allow for a black-tie function, but AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder is determined to have some ceremony by the end of the year - circumstances permitting. In the meantime, there will be the 2020 inductions - with six new members of the Hall (plus Simon Black who was confirmed last year but unable to attend the function) and a new Legend.

NEXT: Second week of contact training, with the countdown to the Showdown against Adelaide at Adelaide Oval being as highly anticipated as that for the first derby in 1997 at Football Park.