MITCH MEAD is desperate to join his dad as a Port Adelaide premiership player, but time is working against him as he attempts to prove he has overcome a hip injury that has sidelined him throughout the SANFL finals.
It’s a Thursday night and Port Adelaide’s SANFL eligible players are enjoying the last of their four days off, having secured the club a spot in the 2019 SANFL Statewide Super League Grand Final at the weekend.
Only staff are at the club, except for 19-year-old Mead who is running sprints along the boundary of Alberton Oval.
He knows it’ll be hard to change a winning team, but with fellow forward Aidyn Johnson’s heartbreaking suspension for the Grand Final, there is a chance Mead could be called into the team.
“It would mean a lot,” Mead says of the chance to win a premiership for the club he has supported since birth.
“Coming in as a young kid, winning a SANFL flag has been a dream of mine for a long time.
“My dad has won three so I’ll start by getting one and then have some catching up to do.”
At 175 centimetres tall and just 74 kilograms in weight, Mead presents a much different figure to that of his father Darren, who was the first, and potentially the only, player to have played 100 games for the club at both AFL and SANFL levels.
Darren Mead won premierships with Port Adelaide in 1994, 1995 and 1996 before being the inaugural John Cahill Medallist as Club Champion for the AFL side in 1997.
He played 127 SANFL games for the Magpies and 122 for the Power in a career that spanned from 1989 until 2002.
“We’ve got his memorabilia hung up on the wall and he loves to watch the flashbacks that come up on facebook or on social media,” Mitch Mead explains.
“So yeah, he likes to talk about his glory days and he has told me that whether I play or I’m watching on from the sidelines to take it all in and enjoy it.
“You’re not in these situations a lot, some people don’t win flags or get a chance at all in their career so I just feel lucky to be in that position.”
And Mead knows his chances of playing in the decider are limited by his lack of game time since his last SANFL game against Sturt in Round 9.
Chronic groin soreness has limited him to playing just two amateur games since.
But he has returned to full training determined that he’ll put himself in the best position to play, and be there to support his teammates if he isn’t chosen to take the field.
“That’s the ultimate goal – to win a flag – and we’ve been working hard towards that this year and we’ve had lots of AFL players come back to help us and they’ve done a terrific job and us SANFL players pitch in where we can,” he explains.
“I think it’s worked really well and we’ve put ourselves in a position to take it all the way.
“The attitude that we have this week, whether the AFL players come back if they’re dropped or they haven’t been in the AFL side for a while, or us SANFL contracted guys come in, or even if we’re spectating, we’ve all got the same attitude.
“We’ve got one goal – that is to succeed, win games and win premierships.”
And with much external debate about whether AFL players belong in the SANFL competition given Port Adelaide’s run to the Grand Final after ten wins in its last eleven games, Mead says the players are only interested in breaking a 20-year SANFL premiership drought.
“This club has a rich history of winning flags and the media like to scrutinise us a bit but we block out that noise and focus on what we can control,” he says.
“Lokes has said it a few times to us this year that it’s us against them and lots of other clubs doubt us, they want to put us down but we’ve got a resilient mindset and we want to just keep winning games.”
