While the setting for Port Adelaide’s round 20 clash with Greater Western Sydney remains in doubt - on the Gold Coast or on the docks of west Melbourne? Editors note: Metricon Stadium has now been confirmed as the venue - the other giant questions centred on the ruck battle on Sunday.
Can Greater Western Sydney keep calling on veteran ruckman Shane Mumford?
Does Port Adelaide keep Peter Ladhams to support lead ruckman Scott Lycett?
Last time, in mid-July last year at the Gold Coast, Lycett had pinch-hitting support from (now retired) Justin Westhoff and key forward Charlie Dixon while Mumford left some ruck tasks to team-mate Jeremy Finlayson.
Lycett won the ruck count 21-16 against Mumford; Port Adelaide scored a significant 17-point win when challenged to respond after being exposed in a 37-point loss to Brisbane at the Gabba seven days earlier.
Squads - rather than 22-man line-ups - will be named by fourth-placed Port Adelaide and top-eight rival Greater Western Sydney on Thursday evening with the match-day teams to be confirmed on Friday.
For now, the prospect of rookie-listed veteran Mumford continuing the duel with Lycett is most likely.
“We went into match committee (on Wednesday) picking a team with Shane Mumford - and one without,” said Greater Western Sydney assistant coach Steve Johnson before the team’s training session in Queensland on Thursday morning.
“He has done an amazing job this year,” added Johnson of the 35-year-old ruckman who expected to be spending more time alongside Johnson in the coach’s box rather than on the playing field.
“We keep wheeling him out - and he keeps performing. But there is no doubt it catches up with him a bit. It is a week-to-week basis whether he plays or not.
“But we certainly play better when he is in the team.”
Mumford played 10 of 17 matches last season. He would be in game No. 11 for this year’s campaign if he duels with Lycett on Sunday afternoon.
Mumford worked against Essendon’s tandem of Sam Draper and Peter Wright last weekend when Greater Western Sydney returned to the AFL top-eight rankings with a 13-point win at the Gold Coast.
“The plan (this season) was for Shane to be a top-up player who might have played two or three games and do the ruck coaching with the two young ruckmen on our list,” Johnson said of a program scuttled by injury to 2021 recruit Braydon Preuss and Matt Flynn (dislocated shoulder).
“Shane does the work. He loves his fitness. When he was called on, that first game he played, he absolutely dominated,” added Johnson of the round 4 clash with Collingwood in which Mumford had 16 hit-outs against Brodie Grundy.
“We thought, we look a better team with Shane in it. So he just soldiers on. This probably will be his last year, but for him to do what he has done is incredible.
“I’d love to see him keep going on. You just look at him early in the week - I am not giving away anything to the opposition - he walks out, with a straight back and can hardly move. You ask him how he is going and he will say, ‘I am bloody sore’.
“But we put more anti-inflammatories in his body and see how he is later in the week.
“It will be interesting again this week.”
Selection is expected to bring back specialist goalkickers for each side - Essendon recruit Orazio Fantasia for the first time since the bye after had corrective knee surgery and Greater Western Sydney livewire Toby Greene who was forced into isolation after being at a COVID exposure site in Melbourne.
“Toby will come back into the team this week,” said Johnson revealing Greene has been in training on a farm in south-east Queensland. “He has done a fair bit of training rather than be locked up in a hotel room.
“We have no hesitation in putting Toby straight back in the team. We have missed him the past couple of weeks but he is like a caged lion ready to come out and roar.”
