PORT Adelaide coach Mark Williams says there will be more changes to the Power’s game plan after this week’s bye.
The Power have been criticised for having a rigid style of play in the opening 14 rounds, but after winning both the clearances and contested ball against the Western Bulldogs, Williams said it was clear his team was working on their inefficiencies.
“The game plan, I know it’s a lovely term that’s thrown out there, but every week we critically analyse and try to change the way we play a little,” Williams said.
“I know it’s difficult for people to see what we might and might not do, but we try and change things. It might be a centre bounce set-up, whether the wingman runs in defensively or not, the half-forwards coming around the side of the square, it might be kicking it longer inside 50m or it might be a different kick-out or opting to go man-to-man instead of zone.
“There are a stack of different things that happen every week and I can’t say we put it out there for everyone to know because it’s not in our business, but there are subtle changes every week and there will certainly be more after the break because we would have had a whole week to sit around and consider it.”
Williams described criticism the Power moved the ball ‘too wide’ as “fair”.
“In the past, we might have gone inside 50m wide, but if the ball went out of bounds we were the best side at kicking goals at stoppages. That hasn’t happened this year,” he said.
“Part of that would be our game plan. You might criticise it, but we’d say it got us terrific results over the past year or two from forward stoppages. This year is hasn’t. We’ll reconsider that, that’s for sure.”
Williams put some of his team’s ball handling errors down to the Darwin humidity, but said a decline in skills would be one area addressed over the next week
“The Bulldogs had armbands on and maybe that had something to do with it [their good skills]. I can’t recall people like Robbie Gray [in the past] just dropping the ball, 10m out from goal all by himself,” he said.
“They said it was very humid and quite slippery, so maybe we dismiss a few of the bad turnovers that we saw in the game. You can improve and there’s no doubt you just get back to the track, keep working on them and getting better and better at it.”