Welcome to the fifth edition of the Shinboner Finals Dossiers. For new readers, the aim is to comprehensively profile each of the top four* teams.
This year’s format is a little different to previous editions, thanks to new Patreon features. Firstly we’ll start with a look at how the team has evolved from week to week with the Team Structures tool.
Then it’s a look at how each team beats you, followed by the opposite: how you beat this team. To finish it off there’s a section titled ‘the narrative’, aka what to watch out for in potential matchups and locations.
Today we look at a team that has been a regular season constant, but only won two of their last six finals: Port Adelaide.
(*and then get annoyed when one of them goes out in straight sets, as has happened three of the previous four times I’ve completed this exercise)
Perhaps the ultimate ‘prove it in finals’ team are once again in a position to prove it in finals.
Since the start of 2020, Port Adelaide’s 74 wins in the home and away season are only behind Brisbane (75 and a draw) for most in the competition.
Yet of the three finals campaigns they’ve made in the same time (2020, 2021, 2023), they’ve won just two out of six games. In all those years, their campaign has ended at home; two preliminary finals (Richmond 2020, Western Bulldogs 2021), and a semi final (GWS, 2023).
In each of those years they entered the finals on a winning streak; five in 2020, six in 2021, three in 2023, and they do so again this year with six.
The question now is twofold: Will this year be any different to the last three trips to September? And how much will Dan Houston and Kane Farrell’s absence cruel Port’s chances?
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The Evolution Of Port Adelaide
A normal disclaimer for this: It’s naturally not going to be 100 percent correct; there’ll be a couple of minor points missed, along with getting the right balance between primary mid + secondary forward or vice versa. Ultimately it’s me saying this has all been done manually by one person all season and to go easy when pointing out the things I’ve missed.
The key (voluntary) change to Port Adelaide’s structure came five weeks ago, Esava Ratugolea moving forward to provide an extra contested presence and switching the defensive unit to a two-tall look instead of three.
It covers for Charlie Dixon’s diminished presence at this late stage of his career, reducing the workload on the 33-year-old and allowing Port to play in their preferred state with strong fulcrums to work around.
The deeper on-ball rotation than most opponents, and the envy of many, allows for greater variety in their forward looks as well. Sometimes it’s Jason Horne-Francis rolling forward, other times one goes out to a wing for a stretch, and there are always levers to pull if needed. This season’s continuity in the unit has played a large part in recent good form, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Elsewhere, the query comes with how Port set up their rebounding defenders in the absence of Houston and Farrell. Without Houston against the Dockers, they were able to switch Ryan Burton in and spread the load among a few players.
It’s not as easy to do the same when both are missing from the start of the game and to make forecasting tougher, there’s no exposed form to figure out their plans. Since Farrell returned from his ACL tear in 2022, Port have played exactly zero full games without either of the pair.
How Port Adelaide Beat You
Their all-star midfield takes the headlines, but before we get to that let’s start with where and how Port move the ball.
No side gets close to how often the Power move the ball through the corridor, both out of defensive 50 and through the middle third of the ground in general. It’s almost funny how far ahead of everyone else they are in the stat.
When it works it’s nearly impossible to stop – take the first quarter and a half against Geelong for example. Fuelled by contest wins, they were unstoppable with their ball movement. Even post-match, Chris Scott more or less admitted when Port get on a roll there’s not a lot any opposition can do.
The contrast between Port’s ball movement and other teams is Port will keep doing the same thing almost regardless of situation, strange afternoon against St Kilda in Round 16 notwithstanding. Glass half full people will label it confidence in their method, glass half empty people will label it stubbornness when it’s not working.
If we start from the half backs and move forward, the trio of Houston, Farrell, and Miles Bergman – since his mid-season switch from the wing – provide the bounce. Interestingly enough, that switch has allowed some variety in how they each use the ball.
Before Bergman’s move, Houston and Farrell were long kickers more often than not. But over the second half of the season, Bergman has taken that mantle out of the back half, allowing Houston and Farrell to change it up when needed. Not necessarily in direction – it’s still corridor ahoy – but in length.
As will be a common theme during this piece though, how does it change in September without two of those three?
What hasn’t changed is Port’s formidable on-ball rotation, the envy of nearly every other team. The Rozee/Butters/Horne-Francis/Wines/Drew/Mead group unlocks all sorts of possibilities, with their versatility in roles not only allowing the midfield to rotate, but also allowing different looks down forward.
Between the six they’ve only missed six games this season (Rozee three, Horne-Francis two, Wines one) so it shouldn’t be a surprise they’ve progressed well as a group as the season has progressed.
In their wins this group just overwhelms opponents with their aggression. This year the Power are +280 points from stoppages in wins, both scoring and conceding at rates that would rank top three if maintained over a full season.
It’s a bit of an intangible and hard to measure, but the value of intimidation plays a large part in the Power midfield, aka the ‘how on earth do we stop them’ mentality other teams have fallen into at times this year.
When it’s all humming opponents try to stop one of Rozee, Butters, or Horne-Francis. But then it allows either of the remaining two to go, to use a technical term, full send because they know two things:
a) The opposition can’t run two blanket tags at once
b) The rest of the Power on-ball unit can cover them
Or if Port need to block a game up they have the option to send both Drew and Wines in at the same time; the former carrying out all the unglamorous work and the latter winning contested ball while other midfielders spend time closer to goal.
Finding the right combinations has played a large part in what’s gone a touch under the radar since the Brisbane loss: team defence around the ball. It just may be the best defensive stretch Port have put together for years, all based around their pressure.
Over the last nine weeks – eight wins, one loss – Port rank second for pressure applied, which then plays a part in being second for scores conceded per inside 50; pressure forcing rushed entries that are easier to deal with.
Pressure acts are an imperfect way of boiling team efforts down to individuals but it’s the closest metric publicly available. In this case it does tell a story of the less ‘flashy’ players carrying the load and allowing the top tier players to do their thing.
Across this run of form, Drew (who leads by a mile), Mead, Wines, and Byrne-Jones make up four of the top five Power players for pressure acts. Only Rozee is among them as the ‘star’, so to speak. When a team has the top end talent like Port, role players executing allows the match winners to go full steam ahead.
The defence improving has minimised some of the flaws on show through the first two thirds of the season (and previous years), all of which culminated in the Brisbane thumping…
How You Beat Port Adelaide
The Round 15 Notebook had a deep dive into Port’s defensive issues, some of which will be replayed here.
Until the last nine weeks – and it may pop up again in finals – Port’s base defensive structure wasn’t covering the space they needed to at the starting point. So when their pressure in the immediate vicinity of possession wasn’t up to scratch, they got exposed.
Think of it this way: Although an AFL ground is anywhere between 155-170 metres long and 115-140 metres wide, really the game is constantly played in roughly a 90-metre long and 65-metre wide block – give or take a few metres for specific situations – as both teams shift up and down, left and right.
What it means is when a team defends, they need to first be able to cover that base area, and from there shift in any direction when required.
Port’s problems come when their pressure drops off and their foundation often isn’t close to covering said base area at the starting point. Using the Brisbane game as an example, sometimes their defenders – in this case Brandon Zerk-Thatcher – look for intercepts when they’re not there, breaking the setup and conceding easy ball over the top as a result…
…or they sit back passively and gift possession out of a contest…
…or the general setup isn’t covering the dangerous space at all, stuck too narrow and gifting the middle as a result.
That narrowness also happens when the ball is moving in general play, getting stuck behind the line of the ball when out of possession and left susceptible to simple shifts of angle.
The way Port Adelaide defend would be a great way to stop … Port Adelaide (and Sydney!). It’s almost as if their defence is set up to stop teams (…and Sydney) playing the way they do.
So when teams like Brisbane come up against the same defence they’ve handled consistently in recent years – seven wins from their last eight clashes – it’s a straightforward solution. It’s not even full switches, just slight shifts on subtle angles, time and time again.
In this example coming out of the stoppage, we see the Power defence shade behind the line of the ball and inboard after the Brisbane clearance falls to Kai Lohmann. So Lachie Neale and Jarrod Berry simply move to the outside for an easy continuation of the chain and short kick inside 50. It’s a training run.
When Port’s pressure is on, weaknesses turn into strengths, because this defensive setup is primed to get forward in aggressive positions. But strengths turn into weaknesses when it’s not on and they leak on the scoreboard.
Earlier we touched on the midfield advantage in wins. When the aggression is neutralised, it suddenly becomes a liability. In Port’s losses this year they’re only -7 in total clearances, but -100 in points from clearances, conceding scores at a ridiculous rate.
There shouldn’t be any route where their midfield, as balanced as it is with all the different types of players to call upon, is a key point in most of their losses.
It comes back to the same conundrum they’re directed to play with: their strength is their weakness, their weakness can turn into a strength, round and round we go. The ability to adapt hasn’t been there yet, but they’re forced into adapting in one key area of their game.
That’s right, it’s back to the Houston and Farrell absences. This section has had a string of rewrites over recent weeks because of how important Port’s ball use is to unlocking many of their strengths.
Based on recent reports at time of writing it appears Byrne-Jones might be the frontrunner to move back at this stage. Personal preference would be for Josh Sinn as he’s probably the closest available fit to what’s now unavailable, along with keeping Byrne-Jones’ value in the front half.
(Update after teams: Guess it wasn’t Sinn. Can’t win them all.)
With so much of Port Adelaide’s ball movement predicated on aggressive corridor movement, losing two of their main drivers behind it throws up all sorts of unanswerable questions at this stage:
– Will Port keep trying to move it in the same way?
– Can the remaining players pick up all the slack?
– Does the ball movement profile change to something else?
– How will they transition the ball effectively?
– Do the Power elect to fall behind their pressure instead and make it a scrap?
– Is it something they can maintain for an entire finals series, because…
The Narrative: Will it be different this time?
A couple of weeks ago it might have been open mutiny amongst the fan base if this year brought another crash landing from September, albeit Houston and Farrell’s absences might slightly mitigate the reaction now.
Then again it surely wasn’t a coincidence Port’s best form of the season came after they, and the coach, were booed off the field against Brisbane. Maybe a touch of external accountability – without crossing any lines, to be clear – isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Nevertheless, if 2024 is to be different it comes down to three things:
a) Whether their team defence can hold up under pressure
b) Whether the Dixon-Ratugolea forward duo holds up to allow Port’s ball movement to stick with plan A
c) If they can still move the ball cleanly from their back half
The team defence has been covered ad nauseam, as has ball movement in previous sections. At the other end of the ground how much Dixon has left in the tank is an open question. Meanwhile Ratugolea was largely ineffective in four of his five finals at Geelong, save for a couple of bursts in the 2019 semi v West Coast.
If neither of those two questions are answered in the affirmative it’ll be left to individuals to drag Port over the line. It can – and has – happened with regularity in the home and away season against lesser teams. It hasn’t happened in finals to date.
In A Sentence
How high you are on Port Adelaide’s chances depends on your confidence in their system carrying over to September. This time.
(That’s technically two sentences. Sorry.)
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