PORT ADELAIDE Coach Ken Hinkley has admitted he is still to settle on his best side heading into finals after he revealed there would be three changes for Saturday night’s clash with North Melbourne.
Port will travel to the Gold Coast on Saturday to take on the Kangaroos with Kane Farrell, Steven Motlop and Dan Houston coming in to replace Justin Westhoff, Riley Bonner and Brad Ebert.
Hinkley said with a near-fully fit list, the side is being picked on form, which is both a good and tough position to be in.
“It is tough,” Hinkley said during his weekly press conference on Friday.
“People have got to play well to get their spot in the side and to keep their spot in the side.
“It’s a good challenge at the moment. We’re in a lucky position we’ve got lots of fit players.
“We’re trying to get our best side on the park as often as we possibly can at the moment and you’ve got to play well to stay in the side.”
Hinkley said it did not matter whether a player was young or experienced, they all faced the same challenge when it came to getting into and staying into a side which is top of the ladder and looking for its best 22.
“We still haven’t quite settled on what we’d quite like to be our lock-in side going forward and injuries always interrupt that,” he said.
“You’ve got to have a big enough squad to cater for that, we’ve got a fit and available squad and now we’re just maximising the form of that squad as best as we can.
“We’ve got three more games so we’re exploring that still but we’re going to want to get close to that pretty soon.
“We’re close. We’ve used 30-odd players for the season. We haven’t used a deep list but we’ve got a deep list available.
“We’re not putting anyone out of the picture even if they haven’t played this year.”
Hinkley’s charges will not look back fondly at the most recent encounter with North Melbourne – an 86-point drubbing at Marvel Stadium late last season which spelled the end of Port’s finals hopes.
Like that occasion, where the Kangaroos were smarting after a poor performance the week before, Hinkley is expecting them to be fired up.
“We’ve got some pretty terrible memories of what North Melbourne did to us last year late in the season,” Hinkley explained.
“We respect their club and the way they play. I know (coach) Rhyce (Shaw), you’ve only got to listen to his press conference last week and we should expect a pretty fired up and angry North Melbourne on Saturday night.
“We’ve got a lot of things we’ve got to play for though and we’ve got to make sure we match that.”
With finals locked in, Hinkley is hoping to use the final three games of the season to build form and settle his side for a push at a premiership, backing up his pre-season claim that the side was “coming” in 2020.
“At the start of the year we set out wanting to become a team that was going to be capable of challenging and right now we’ve put ourselves in a position where we’ve earnt that opportunity,” Hinkley said.
“We’ve got to make sure we play really well tomorrow and we’ll worry about the week after.
“We’ve got to keep playing well because the competition is so tight.”
First bounce at Metricon Stadium is at 7:40pm AEST / 7:10pm ACST on Saturday night.
