Jack Watkins tackles Jacob Wehr during Friday’s Internal Trial. Image: Matt Sampson.<\/p>\n
Alberton Oval was bursting at the seams on Friday\u00a0evening\u00a0as Port Adelaide put on a show for members and fans at the club’s internal trial and family day.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Queen Street was transformed into a\u00a0buzzing\u00a0street party filled with food trucks, a petting zoo, a rock climbing wall, face painters and activities galore for kids and families, while on the field, a fierce battle between the black and white teams ensued for four 30-minute periods, with Josh Carr’s new game plan on show to supporters for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The white team eventually\u00a0claimed\u00a0a five-point win in particularly tough, windy conditions, with Ollie Wines\u00a0converting\u00a0three beautiful set shots and small forward Benny Barrett kicking two in the first quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Young key forwards Ollie Lord (two goals) and Jack Whitlock (three goals) both had some nice moments as the forward line competition continues to heat up ahead of Round 1, while Jordon Sweet and Dante\u00a0Visentini\u00a0felt evenly matched in the ruck.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joe Berry was lively, slotting a neat running goal in the third,\u00a0set up by Darcy Byrne-Jones, while Todd Marshall looked at home in his new backline role.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Late in the first term, Marshall switched the footy with a lovely lateral kick, setting up a\u00a0strong\u00a0end-to-end passage of play to get\u00a0Barrett\u00a0his second.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Third-year player Will Lorenz showed his pre-season growth, 19-year-old Christian Moraes got plenty of the footy and the\u00a0quartet of\u00a0train-on\u00a0players\u00a0pushed\u00a0their case as the supplemental selection period deadline looms closer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mitch Zadow, Jaidyn Stephenson, Ted\u00a0Clohesy\u00a0and Balyn O’Brien all had nice moments, with Stephenson\u00a0earning\u00a0plenty of opportunity around goals. Zadow and O’Brien both\u00a0set up\u00a0majors for their\u00a0respective\u00a0teams, while\u00a0Clohesy\u00a0managed\u00a0to slot\u00a0a set shot from 50.\u00a0<\/p>\n
SANFL-listed players Nick Moore and recruit Harrison\u00a0Elbrow\u00a0both made an impact, as did new Magpies captain Jez McLennan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christian Moraes found plenty of the ball in a positive showing ahead of his second season. Image: Matt Sampson.<\/p>\n
“There were some great passages,” coaching director Andy Collins said after the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“A really good strong black team around stoppages. The blacks had a strong score source from stoppage and the whites had a strong score source from turnover intercepts. We set the teams up very uniquely and just kept\u00a0trialling\u00a0things throughout the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We had some moments that we’ll review that were scrappy,\u00a0but in those conditions\u2026it made it a lot tougher. But at the same time, there were some\u00a0really good\u00a0ball\u00a0movement passages, some\u00a0really good\u00a0challenging speed on the game, different modes of play, which is\u00a0really positive\u00a0for us too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had some\u00a0really different\u00a0looks\u00a0offensively.\u00a0Defence\u00a0is still a work in progress but\u00a0that’s\u00a0also exciting for us.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I really like the dynamics of\u00a0(Joe)\u00a0Richards, Berry\u2026Darcy was really lively around forward 50 stoppages, so that half forward line is very dynamic. Then if you think about the keys – Whitlock, Lordy,\u00a0(Jack)\u00a0Lukosius.\u00a0(Miles)\u00a0Bergman looked\u00a0really good\u00a0inside,\u00a0(Willem)\u00a0Drewy was\u00a0really solid, Ollie (Wines) became a goalkicker today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ollie Wines kicked three goals in windy conditions. Image: Matt Sampson.<\/p>\n
“Match\u00a0committee is going to be really interesting heading into our first game. We are in a really fortunate position where we do have some depth.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rather than\u00a0As\u00a0versus Bs, the teams were evenly-split, however some key cogs were missing – Zak Butters and Mitch Georgiades were both in Perth\u00a0preparing\u00a0for AFL Origin, Kane Farrell was a late out with illness, and Corey Durdin was held back with a heel gash from Wednesday’s training session.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jason Horne-Francis served as the runner for the match, with the star midfielder managing a minor shoulder issue,\u00a0however he\u00a0is expected to be available for next week’s\u00a0match sim\u00a0against Adelaide.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Port Adelaide will host the Crows at Alberton on Friday, 20 February in an official pre-season match simulation, before heading to Perth the following weekend for the AAMI Community Series game against West Coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Final score\u00a0
Black team 10.15(75)\u00a0
White team 12.8(80)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Goals\u00a0
Wines, Whitlock 3, Barrett, Lord,\u00a0Lukosius, Stephenson (train-on), Moore (SANFL),\u00a0Elbrow\u00a0(SANFL) 2, Byrne-Jones, Berry, Anastasopoulos,\u00a0Clohesy\u00a0(train-on).\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Watkins tackles Jacob Wehr during Friday’s Internal Trial. Image: Matt Sampson. Alberton Oval was bursting at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-478446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}