Mitch Zadow has become the latest AFL player from Western Australia after earning a spot on Port Adelaide\u2019s list through the Pre-Season Supplemental Selection Period (SSP).<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old was rewarded for a strong pre-season at Alberton Oval with a rookie gig for 2026, with fellow East Fremantle product and Power senior coach Josh Carr fittingly breaking the news to him in front of the playing group on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cMitch is a 21-year-old who we monitored in the back half of last year\u00a0when\u00a0his footy with East Fremantle really grew,\u201d Port Adelaide list manager Jason Cripps said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is\u00a0a very clean\u00a0ball handler below his knees and\u00a0has\u00a0hit the scoreboard on a consistent basis displaying a combination of power and work rate in the front half.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shows strong defensive intent and hunts the opposition when the ball spills or on turnover.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carr praised Zadow on his work ethic over the summer and bouncing back from a pre-season setback to impress on the track over the past few weeks.<\/p>\n
The Sharks goalsneak was on Port Adelaide\u2019s radar after a breakout WAFL season in 2025.<\/p>\n
Zadow booted 18 goals in 14 senior appearances last season including a dozen in his last six games.<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t the only familiar name to the WAFL earning a list spot this week with former Peel Thunder utility Wade Derksen getting a lifeline at Carlton.<\/p>\n
Derksen was drafted from the Thunder in the 2022 AFL Mid-Season Rookie Draft, spending three-and-a-half seasons at Greater Western Sydney before getting cut at the end of last season.<\/p>\n
He had originally signed for the Blues\u2019 VFL side for 2026 but impressed enough on the track to secure a second chance in the AFL.<\/p>\n
\u201cWade has shown significant development over the past few seasons. His versatility, athleticism and work rate stood out throughout this pre-season, and we believe he has the attributes to add real value to our squad,\u201d Carlton list boss Nick Austin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitch Zadow has become the latest AFL player from Western Australia after earning a spot on Port Adelaide\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-498679","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-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498679","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=498679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}