One round in, both the Power and Bombers are under the pump to show something following horrific performances in their first games of 2026?<\/p>\n
Who will stand up in this Sunday afternoon clash? FOLLOW LIVE.<\/p>\n
Q1: DISMAL DONS BLOWN OFF THE PARK<\/p>\n
Essendon is getting embarrassed by Port Adelaide at Adelaide Oval, and it is just a quarter in.<\/p>\n
Both sides came off heavy Round 1 losses and the Bombers are set for a second-straight thumping and their 15th straight defeat with the Power putting them to the sword in a dominant display to be 32-points up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I have seen a more dominant display at one end of the ground,\u201d former Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley said on Fox Footy.<\/p>\n
The Bombers have often been their worst enemies with a handball-heavy game, especially out of defence inviting plenty of pressure from the Power.<\/p>\n
Young star Jason Horne-Francis has kicked three goals, with the Power having the game completely on its terms. <\/p>\n
Essendon defender Mason Redman has been ruled out for the rest of the game. <\/p>\n
Redman limped off towards the end of the quarter with a knee injury and is on the Bombers\u2019 bench with ice on it. <\/p>\n
The Bombers say it is suspected he has suffered a lateral meniscus injury. <\/p>\n
PRE-GAME: CARR HITS BACK OVER ROUND 1 ERROR<\/p>\n
New Port Adelaide coach Josh Carr says talk of his pre-match address in round 1 have been \u201cblown out of proportion\u201d in the wake of his side\u2019s disastrous loss to North Melbourne.<\/p>\n
The Power faced questions about its approach to its clash against the Kangaroos in the wake of half-back Jase Burgoyne\u2019s comments that players needed to \u201cpay more respect to the teams that you probably don\u2019t think you\u2019re likely to lose to\u201d.<\/p>\n
Carr told Fox Footy his side\u2019s mental prep wasn\u2019t what it should have been but that any regrets he may have had over the address has been taken out of context.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo doubt it was blown out of context, it was purely a review\u00a0of our game, a view of our mental prep and I owned a certain bit of that,\u201d Carr said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, because you can\u2019t give the details of what it was it was probably blown out of proportion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically speaking to his former mentor Ken Hinkley, Carr said there was one key difference in stepping up to the top job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess it falls on you as the coach, you have a result like we did last week and you\u2019ve gotta front up to the media and show strength but also leave your players out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One round in, both the Power and Bombers are under the pump to show something following horrific performances…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[274758,638,64,63,689,55,639,182198,2105,27709,7484,274755,7198,677,6082,12104,274752,274757,274754,274756,274753,1124,85,23510],"class_list":["post-556340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-matchidafl20260206","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-disastrous-loss","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-josh-carr","tag-ken-hinkley","tag-mental-prep","tag-michael-willson","tag-oceania","tag-port-adelaide","tag-port-adelaide-power","tag-power-coach","tag-pre-game-talk-critics","tag-pre-game-team","tag-pre-match-address","tag-show-strength","tag-south-australia","tag-sports","tag-zak-butters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556340","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=556340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}