PORT ADELAIDE defender Hamish Hartlett has confirmed he won’t play in Sunday’s season opener against North Melbourne.
Hartlett missed his side’s pre-season game against Adelaide with hamstring soreness and despite training fully on Thursday, will sit out the meeting with the Kangaroos.
He told FIVEaa Breakfast he hopes to be good to play in Round 2.
“My fitness is good, it’s fine but I had a very minor niggle with my hamstring about two weeks ago so unfortunately that’s meant that I haven’t been able to train too much in recent times,” Hartlett explained.
“I did the full session with the boys yesterday but I’m going to give this week a miss on the back of that.
“I’ll just make sure I get plenty of conditioning in over the next week and then be right to go.”
Hartlett’s absence could open the door for draftee Lachie Jones or second-year player Miles Bergman to make an AFL debut.
The leadership player nominated Bergman as a potential replacement, going off a very strong pre-season from the teenager.
“There’s a strong chance we’ll see Miles in amongst the backline, which is super exciting,” Hartlett said.
“He’s done everything right this pre-season.
“He’s really developed as a person and as a player and he’s got some real excitement about his game so we look forward to seeing what he can produce on an AFL scale.”
Port Adelaide has been very forthright in its desire to win a Premiership in 2021, going further than the six-point preliminary final loss to Richmond last season.
But Hartlett said the side needed to perform each week because the competition was tight and every side would improve this year.
“Many of us were around in 2014 when we made a Prelim and we weren’t too far away from reaching a Grand Final in that year and then 2015 and 2016 were not too good for us, I think we finished just outside the eight,” Hartlett explained.
“The lessons we learned from that were around complacency and not just rolling through the motions for another season expecting that things are going to happen for you again so we feel like the group has really matured over the summer and we are really keen to show the competition that we are a good team and we want to sustain that competitive edge no matter what game we’re playing.
“I think that’s a sign of a good footy club too, that no matter the game or the time of year, you go about your business the same way – whether that’s in a Prelim Final or a Grand Final or a pre-season game, we really want to attack each game with the same mindset and perform at our best, so we’ll look to do that on Sunday.”
Port Adelaide’s Round 1 encounter against North Melbourne at Marvel Stadium gets underway from 12:40pm ACDT / 1:10pm AEDT.
