Darren Reeves looks on during a training session. Image: Eliza Montgomery.<\/p>\n
Port Adelaide forwards coach Darren Reeves\u00a0said the group had a clear focus on team defence on the\u00a0weekend, but\u00a0lacked some method with its ball movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a reasonably close affair,\u00a0the Power lost to the Giants on Saturday night,\u00a0and faces another big test at the SCG this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves spoke to the Adelaide media on Monday about the team review, the opportunities for young players and how the group continues to stay motivated.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on the game review\u00a0
\u201cWe had a real clear focus from a team defence standpoint going into the game, so the review was really based around that. Some positive outcomes, some growth from the last couple of weeks where we’ve been challenged defensively.\u00a0So\u00a0it’s a bit of a tick for our team defence on the night. We understand\u00a0we were\u00a0a little bit clunky around contest and then offence.\u00a0So\u00a0we touched on that a little bit, but it was pretty positive again, and some growth in our team defence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand where we’re at as a group, and we’ve obviously got a large injury list. We’ve got\u00a0a number of\u00a0young guys that are just making their way at AFL level. The experience for them to be playing is enormous, and the time that they’re getting out on field is huge for us moving forward. Within that, though, there’s some guys that are a little bit fearful\u00a0of\u00a0making mistakes at different times.\u00a0So\u00a0the encouragement for us is we’re okay to make mistakes\u00a0if we\u2019re playing\u00a0our way, and we’ll keep showing them vision of that. We’ll keep showing them clips. We’ll keep encouraging. We’ll keep putting them in those positions in training, and we understand that\u00a0there are\u00a0times when a young player gets ball in hand and is fearful of doing that, but we’ll keep encouraging and make mistakes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on keeping the motivation going\u00a0
\u201cJosh\u00a0(Carr)\u00a0has been great in reinforcing\u00a0the\u00a0message that we’re accelerating into the end of the year, and that’s player\u00a0driven. The energy amongst the group and the want to keep getting better and\u00a0to\u00a0find ways to keep getting better is existing there.\u00a0So\u00a0it’s not hard to drive that. The players are really driving that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Balyn O’Brien was one of seven players playing on Saturday who have played less than 20 games, gaining valuable AFL experience with every outing. Image: Matt Sampson.<\/p>\n
Reeves on Zak Butters\u2019 rehab\u00a0
\u201cYeah, it was great\u00a0(to see him running again), and he’s determined. We understand that it was a significant injury, but he’s making solid progress, and we’ll see how that plays out. I’m not the medical expert. I know that he’s doing everything he possibly can, but we’ll just see how that plays out in the couple weeks\u00a0(as to whether he plays again this season).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEver\u00a0since he came back into the building after the surgery, his energy amongst the group is infectious, and you can hear where he is, no matter where you are in the\u00a0building. So that’s always a positive for the group, and I’m sure it was great for the guys to go to see him out there\u00a0running\u00a0around today.\u00a0I know that he loves the\u00a0footy\u00a0club, and he goes about things\u00a0in that manner every week.\u00a0So\u00a0we’ll see how\u00a0(his future)\u00a0plays out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on Sydney at the SCG\u00a0
\u201cOur guys have been great all year\u00a0in\u00a0taking on the challenge of the\u00a0really good\u00a0footy teams, and we’ve had that over the last couple of weeks.\u00a0We\u00a0played Fremantle\u00a0and\u00a0Brisbane over the last couple of weeks. GWS is a high-quality footy team, so it doesn’t get any easier. And Sydney\u00a0in Sydney\u00a0is one of the bigger challenges in the game. And what a great opportunity for our young group to go and get after them and see where that\u00a0lands us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat it does create is an opportunity to get after them and force some turnovers. And we\u00a0were able to do that last time we played them. What we’ve seen with them over the last little period, though, is they’ve been able to change their game within game and go to a different mode.\u00a0So\u00a0they provide different challenges for us, and what a great challenge for us from a defensive standpoint.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on the SANFL\u00a0side\u2019s performances this year\u00a0
\u201cWe understand that we’ve got a large injury list\u00a0at the moment, which makes it difficult down there. We understand there’s\u00a0(list)\u00a0rules in place as well for our\u00a0SANFL\u00a0team, but it was only two weeks ago that with a similar team,\u00a0we were able to\u00a0beat a top five team.\u00a0So\u00a0it wasn’t a great performance yesterday. We recognise that, but we’ve also got a very young group out there playing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s\u00a0opportunities for guys to play in different positions. We’ve been able to throw guys around in different positions throughout the year. There’s certainly\u00a0a lack of experience because of our injury list\u00a0at the moment, and even the guys that are on our\u00a0(AFL)\u00a0list that are playing our\u00a0SANFL\u00a0team are really inexperienced. So that’s a challenge as well, and we understand us what it looks like. But we just keep getting to work each week on making sure our development\u00a0through\u00a0the week stays the same.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on\u00a0injuries presenting\u00a0AFL\u00a0opportunities\u00a0
\u201cFrom a forward line perspective, we’ve got a number of guys\u2026Mitch Zadow, came in at start of the year. Xavier Bamert comes in mid-year, and they’ve got games of footy under their belt now, which is going to hold them in great stead moving forward. And we’ve seen that right across our group. We’ve got a number of guys that at the start of the year, we probably didn’t think they were going to play AFL footy, but now they’ve had some experience and they get to a taste of what it looks like and what they need to do to improve and be ready to go next year. And it’s going to hold our whole squad in a great place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mitch Zadow’s work rate was on show on the weekend, with the forward both hitting the scoreboard and impacting valuably in defence. Image: Matt Sampson.<\/p>\n
Reeves on the improvement in the depth of the list\u00a0
\u201cAbsolutely, we\u00a0have, and\u00a0we get to see evidence of that week in,\u00a0week out, and we\u00a0understand they’re going to make some mistakes. We understand that it’s going to be a challenge against the\u00a0really good\u00a0footy teams at different times. But we’re really pleased with how they’ve developed and the ground we’re making in that space.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on Todd Marshall\u00a0
\u201cWe’ve been\u00a0really clear\u00a0with\u00a0Todd.\u00a0We’ve had some real clear focuses week in, week out, and he doesn’t end up with a lot of possessions on the weekend, but I liked his defensive actions. I thought he was\u00a0really influential\u00a0in that space, particularly in the first half. He was able to hit the scoreboard. We probably missed him a couple of times when he had\u00a0really good\u00a0space on his opponent, but he’s making good progress. He’s in a good headspace, and he understands what he needs to keep doing to keep getting better, which is great.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reeves on Joe Richards\u2019 recovery\u00a0\u00a0
\u201cI think probably unlikely\u00a0(this week). I think there’s still a bit of healing still happening there\u00a0(with his finger), but we’ll see.\u00a0You\u00a0never know, these guys are\u00a0pretty competitive, and they\u00a0want to\u00a0get back playing pretty quickly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darren Reeves looks on during a training session. Image: Eliza Montgomery. Port Adelaide forwards coach Darren Reeves\u00a0said the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-841572","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\/841572","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=841572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}