THE quality of the cricket was “mixed” but the competition was certainly willing in the first Backyard Bash League event run by the Port Adelaide Football Club.

Players were divided into three teams representing the club’s joint major partners MG, GFG and KFC and coaches made up a fourth team representing coaching partner, Tyrepower.

The MG Marvels, led by Travis Boak, Hamish Hartlett and Connor Rozee met the KFC Buckets in the final, having dispatched the Tyrepower Slicks and GFG Steelers respectively.

The Buckets were made up entirely of defenders with skipper Tom Jonas, Darcy Byrne-Jones and Ryan Burton among their better performers.

In the end the Marvels were victorious, but Senior Assistant Coach Michael Voss told portadelaidefc.com.au, it was more about connecting as a group away from the training track than who won on the day.

“We’ve been training pretty hard through the week and this is a slightly different connection piece,” Voss said, explaining that the event was part of a “camp week” where the training load has been ramped up.

“We always throw in a bit of a team activity that’s a bit of fun in the middle of the week.

“After a really solid training session in the morning, it’s a chance to be able to relax and have a bit of fun.”

Voss explained that the “camp week” was always in the training schedule and team activities were a key part of that.

He said it was also important to build connection beyond the playing and coaching group to include other staff and club partners.

“It’s always been a really unique and different week in the calendar for us,” he said.

“For us to be able to get together and do team activities like this, train exceptionally hard, be able to use connection opportunities – this is a slightly different one that has a fun spin.

“We’re also not talking about just what connection we want with the players but across the whole club. Our partners have jumped on board and helped us out and we’ve been able to lean on them to make this happen and they didn’t flinch, they jumped in straight away and we’re really grateful.”

While there was no trophy for the Marvels, the success on the cricket pitch – or tennis court in this case – the result will count towards team points that will be tallied at the end of the week.

“Given the fact it’s pretty competitive and pride is on the line, they tend to have a crack,” Voss said.

“It doesn’t matter what you do with these guys. You put points attached to it and make a competition and it’s always pretty willing.

“The Tyrepower team – our coaches – were not as good as what we would have hoped.

“We thought we might have been a fair show against the MG Marvels but we weren’t quite good enough and got rolled in the end.

“It’s a lot of fun and clearly as cricketers we make really good AFL footballers.”