Former North Melbourne and Collingwood forward Jaidyn Stephenson will not be resurrecting his AFL career, with Port Adelaide reportedly denying him a list spot.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old retired from football after 122 games across the two clubs at the end of 2024, saying he had lost his passion for football.<\/p>\n
However, he surprisingly came out of retirement late last year and had been training with the Power in hopes of winning one of its two available list spots as a pre-season supplemental with Ivan Soldo\u2019s ACL injury opening up a third spot on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The 2018 Rising Star had looked odds-on for a spot, having received a glowing endorsement from Mitch Georgiades last month.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s super talented,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the stuff he does out there, it looks like he hasn\u2019t missed a beat, really. Very exciting. So we\u2019ll just see how that turns out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was still with the Power as recently as Friday night, booting 2.4 in their reserve game against Adelaide, but it\u2019s now understood he will not be offered a selection.<\/p>\n
It leaves East Fremantle small forward Mitch Zadow, former Geelong midfielder Ted Clohesy and Norwood defender Balyn O\u2019Brien still in the mix for the remaining list spots.<\/p>\n
Zadow was invited to train-on after booting 18 goals in 14 games for the Sharks last season and also impressed in Friday\u2019s reserve match, kicking two goals againnt the Crows<\/p>\n
It comes as the Power remain optmisitc after scans cleared former No.1 Jason Horne-Francis of serious injury after coming off in Friday\u2019s trial match loss to Adelaide.<\/p>\n
Horne-Francis experienced foot soreness in the same foot he had surgery on last year that restricted him to just 15 games in 2025.<\/p>\n
He also missed the Power\u2019s internal match simulation with a shoulder knock.<\/p>\n
However, after being given the all clear Port Adelaide are optimistic he will be available for their round 1 clash and could still bring him to face West Coast in their AAMI Community Series clash next Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely feel I can turn it around and have a good season still,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy goal for this year is to get out there, be healthy and hopefully play as many games I can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former North Melbourne and Collingwood forward Jaidyn Stephenson will not be resurrecting his AFL career, with Port Adelaide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,46529,588,85],"class_list":["post-494234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-port-adelaide-football-club","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494234","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=494234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}