TO quote the late (and great) Phil Walsh, it is a small sample. A very, very small sampler of what might be in AFL Season 2021.

One swallow does not a summer make; one pre-season game does not tell all of how a winter campaign for the AFL premiership will be made. But to borrow from Ross Lyon's kitbag, this game is built on opinions - and this will not change just because there were only nine matches played in the AAMI Community Series.

Generally, the round of derbies closed with the 2020 rankings unchallenged. St Kilda is more than a step ahead of Carlton; defending AFL champion Richmond dealt with Collingwood's late charge; the restocked Geelong held off the reshaped Essendon; West Coast responded to a Fremantle unit that could be the biggest challenger from last year's bottom 10 and Port Adelaide has proven there is a big, big gap between the No.1 ranking of the 2020 home-and-away season and the No.18 baton held by Adelaide.

Australian football - much like life - is all about timing.

Port Adelaide learned during the darkest hours between 2010-2012 that it was not the time to be at the bottom of the AFL rankings while the league was expanding to 18 teams with Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney. The draft concessions granted to the northern expansion teams meant the early picks Port Adelaide could have expected were no longer among the top-five calls (all with Greater Western Sydney in 2011). Late access to prime talent does not speed up a rebuild.

And during the COVID era of health protocols and wealth cuts to football department spending, this is not the time to be rebuilding squads or teaching new game plans or caught amid massive development challenges for overworked coaches.

This time, Port Adelaide has its timing sorted, very well sorted.

Defence coach Brett Montgomery notes Port Adelaide has very little to lament from the COVID-shortened pre-season that ended on Sunday with a 71-point walkover of Adelaide at Noarlunga Oval. The cost, physically, is forward-midfielders Connor Rozee (foot) and Sam Powell-Pepper (hand) having needed corrective surgery; tall forward Todd Marshall carrying bruising that was still evident on a cheek while he sat in the stands on Sunday and defenders Hamish Hartlett and Trent McKenzie feeling some aches in their legs.

But time - shortened time - has not been Port Adelaide's enemy during a far-from-ideal pre-season in which travelling across borders for meaningful tests on the field was out of reach.

"A shorter pre-season this year was a challenge, but for a group like ours - that is ready to play - not changing things means we are well placed," Montgomery said. "I am not sure if we were a younger team looking to implement a new gameplan we would be all for a shorter pre-season. But for us, it has worked.

"We feel we are in a good position because we are not trying to reinvent too many things. We are looking at tightening and strengthening the things we have been working on. Last year, we saw a lot of the things we were doing we were pretty confident in; they were quite successful."

One long weekend of pre-season matches is indeed far too small as a sample for any definitive conclusions on 50-metre penalties, tactics for NOT standing the mark (as practised by St Kilda) and just which AFL squad has gained or lost the most from a summer of significant player movement.

But there are some notes worth taking from pencil to ink from Port Adelaide's pre-season bouts with Adelaide that produced a collective 123-point margin.

SYDNEY recruit Aliir Aliir not only ends the debate on Port Adelaide being too short in defence - he also offers Montgomery the "intercept" defender to cut off the supposedly increased threat from opposition forward sorties. His 14 marks (six contested - nine intercepts) in Sunday's world record team count of 189 marks made a point.

DEMANDING every Port Adelaide player develop a secondary role during the short pre-season has made for some imposing rotations from wing to centre-bounce to half-forward (where Port Adelaide has gained Orazio Fantasia from Essendon).

ZAK Butters never stops impressing. That well-timed bump on Adelaide midfielder Paul Seedsman that turned possession to Port Adelaide's favour is a one-percenter moment that highlights Butters' "football smarts".

KARL Amon will not regret staying at Port Adelaide after thinking he would find greater opportunity elsewhere in the AFL. He is now a damaging clearance player. As Montgomery says of Amon, "He is in a for a big year."

JUST leave this note to two words - Robbie Gray.

Short and sweet, as this pre-season was.