Brendan Lines. March 19, 2020

Port Adelaide Coach Ken Hinkley will give forward Mitch Georgiades his AFL debut for this weekend’s Round-one season opener against the Gold Coast Suns. Today Hinkley spoke about Port Adelaide’s approach to what is the most unusual season, before a ball has even been bounced.

Image: Adelaide Now

Hinkley had his is own spin on the ‘unusual’ situation as the COVID-19 pandemic shrouds the season’s opening round.

“Everyone works really hard to keep the environment up-and-about and up-beat, it’s really easy for us, if we can take away the coronavirus stuff, it’s round one, you don’t get much more excited that you do in any footy season normally than before round one,” he said.

As the AFL’s revised 17-round season kicks-off tonight it will be the first look at the new 16-minute quarter format, which Hinkley says is ‘good news’ for the game’s speed, taking near twenty per-cent off game time.

“You’re dealing with similar rotations, similar numbers on the bench, I think that would be really good for the game, to be honest it’ll create some genuine speed in the game and keep the speed there a bit longer,” he said.

The factor of speed does weigh into the equation for Hinkley as the Suns’ pre-season form has been strong around fast ball movement and ability to hunt the opposition.

Hinkley is happy enough that the Power’s forward efficiency will be enough to counter the Suns, given Port’s good form in the Marsh Cup.

“Our pre-season has been really strong, we’re really happy what we’ve been able to do against two quality sides, we’re coming up against a side that’s in equally as good form as us on their home deck, so we’re going to have to be really sharp with our efficiency going forward,” he said

The caveat on that efficiency will be the absence of key-forward Charlie Dixon, who will not play as a result of an adductor injury that has not met the teams liking, forcing Hinkley to take a ‘no risk’ approach.

“It’s an adductor injury we thought would be fine, normally they are, but unfortunately for Charlie he’s not up to the speed we need him too, he’s not too far away, but we couldn’t take a risk being Round one,” he said.

Dixon’s omission opens up the opportunity for Brad Ebert to come back in the side, but does put Port Adelaide back into the position it was last year without a key-forward, albeit with slightly more optimism about Dixon’s return.

Hinkley also indicated that Jackson Mead will still not be up for selection for at least another two weeks due to a Hamstring injury.

The question over availability and match fitness of SANFL players given their season’s postponement, will not allow any look at true form, Hinkley says for now that situation is ‘not too bad.’

“So I think early season we’re ok as the season goes on and how long that will continue for, we’re going to have to manage that the way can, and that will be to get opportunity to have those [SANFL] boys compete as much as we possibly can,

“It’s not perfect but we understand and our players understand that obligation and that is to train and perform at our best, when there’s a chance,” he said.

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan’s possible inclusion of a supplementary playing list to be available to the clubs through a ‘mini draft,’ is yet to have details released, but it can only raise the question of; eventually there may be an imbalance of players fit to make the transition to AFL.

Hinckley expressed right now the playing group is comfortable for the season to go ahead behind closed doors and outlined the precautionary measures travelling to the Gold Coast.

“We will have a chartered flight that will basically be us and our staff alone on that flight, we’ll fly up there tomorrow [Friday] and we’ll stay in a normal hotel which has some isolation around the floor we’re on,

“So there will be no outside contact and we’re as safe as we can possibly be, we’re doing everything we can do with the AFL support to make sure that is the thing we do well,” he said.

Suns v Port Adelaide kicks-off 7.10pm ACDT at Metricon Stadium