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<\/p>\nPort Adelaide star Jason Horne-Francis faces his former club, North Melbourne, in Melbourne for the first time in the clubs\u2019 first hitouts of 2026.<\/p>\n
The Kangaroos will unearth two debutants, Lachy Dovaston and Tom Blamires, as they look to finally make inroads up the ladder in year four under Alastair Clarkson.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s meanwhile a new dawn at Port Adelaide under Josh Carr, with recruits Jacob Wehr and Corey Durdin playing their first games for the club as well as mature-aged debutant Jack Watkins, as the club looks to kick off the Carr era with a win in enemy territory.<\/p>\n
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Watch every match of every round of the Premiership Season LIVE and ad-break free during play on FOX FOOTY, available on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n And Tigers champ Jack Riewoldt is expecting former Pick 1 Horne-Francis to feel that hostile environment from his former fan base.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think there will be anything with the players … but the fans don\u2019t forget,\u201d Riewoldt said pre-game on Fox Footy.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was at North Melbourne for one year and it was obviously highly talked about the way he left.<\/p>\n \u201cFive years on he finally gets a chance to front up at Marvel Stadium. But (fans) do not forget.\u201d<\/p>\n This match gets underway at 1.10pm AEDT from Marvel Stadium.<\/p>\n Watch it live on Fox Footy (channel 504) and Kayo.<\/p>\n Follow North Melbourne v Port Adelaide in our live blog below! Can\u2019t see the blog? Tap her<\/a>e<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Port Adelaide star Jason Horne-Francis faces his former club, North Melbourne, in Melbourne for the first time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[9126,638,14405,64,63,689,55,639,684,2105,1823,171198,12106,27709,268138,208941,16712,647,7204,677,268139,6082,1124,268137,85,93810,660],"class_list":["post-541210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-adelaide-crows","tag-afl","tag-alastair-clarkson","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-ben-cotton","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-jack-riewoldt","tag-jack-watkins","tag-jason-horne-francis","tag-josh-carr","tag-kangaroos-v-port","tag-live-scores","tag-matthew-nicks","tag-melbourne","tag-north-melbourne-kangaroos","tag-oceania","tag-pick-grudge-match","tag-port-adelaide","tag-south-australia","tag-spicy-season-opening-clash","tag-sports","tag-tom-blamires","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541210","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=541210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}